A week or so back it popped into my head that I might be interested in learning to fly.
So I've downloaded FlightGear 2017.2.1 on OSX and managed to get that up and running.
I guess I've now tried around 30 takeoffs, quite a bit of flying around in attempted straight lines, and 80 or so landings (as an ex-programmer I'm comfortable with command lines, so I have a bunch of those to set me up for landings), at various airports all around the world. I've exclusively been using the c172p - maybe one day I'll try some of the others, but I'd really like to get pretty competent in a little guy first, especially since this is supposed to be a precursor to actually flying one day. Strangely, or interestingly, I'm not sure which, I've never been able to actually land the tutorial landing.
I've looked around for some videos, but they're a bit thin on the ground, and seem to assume that, at least to some extent, you know what you're doing. Is there anywhere, a fully commented (in the audio) video of a simple takeoff, fly-around, and landing? Something that says, for example, "at xxx feet extend your flaps with 3 clicks", "from now on in you need to use the rudder", "Throttle should be more or less xxx", etc etc, or some such? My plane tends to wobble - not too bad in the air, but at takeoff I don't think I've launched off tar yet, and I've only actually landed smoothly, on the tar, maybe 5 or 6 times. I don't know if using the keyboard and mouse is a problem with that - is it a lot easier with a joystick?
I've seen there are planes with co-pilots - is it possible to sit next to someone landing a plane to observe (although my internet connection is not very good)?
After the initial frustrations of constantly crashing, I'm starting to enjoy my time in the e-air more - I'd just like to get to the next level of doing things a little more properly.
Thanks in advance for any pointers on the right heading.