[Wing] Salmon Arm Fly in (fwd)

[Tedd McHenry]

Austin:

Good to hear from you.  I heard from George McNutt that you sold your RV!  It
must have been hard for you to part with it.

My project has been on hold since I got laid off last year.  In truth it was
already stalled before that.  But I have a contract back at my old employer,
for quite good money, and I hope that the regular hours and the regular income
will help me get the project back on track.  I think, after not building
anything for over a year (including parts of my house), I'm feeling motivated
to get back at it.

I don't have much experience with PC flight simulators.  I did have a chance to
fly a recent version of MS Flight Simulator about six months ago, and I was
quite impressed with it.  But you hit on the critical problems:  poor
visibility and poor "feel" in the controls.  I've heard that you can get very
high-end joysticks that have tactile feedback, but I've never tried one.  As
"simulators" I think the PC games are, well, games.  But they are useful as
procedures trainers, especially for IFR.

I know that people network their PCs and have virtual fly-ins using MS Flight
Simulator.  Silly, by comparison with a real fly-in, but probably fun in its
own way.  To really enjoy Flight Sim, though, I think you have to be a "gamer,"
which I'm not.  I never did catch the PC game bug -- too old, maybe.  I can't
say I'm sorry.

Years ago I had Flight Sim and a joystick with trim.  The trim worked pretty
well, but I do recall that I had to monkey with the settings to get the trim to
work the way I wanted.  I don't remember any details, though, and it has
probably changed a lot since then.

Here's what I think Flight Sim is useful for.

1.  Pretending to fly, if you're not a pilot.  Or, if you are a pilot,
pretending to fly something much more exotic than anything you've actually
flown.

2.  Practicing or learning IFR procedures and techniques.

3.  Learning other kinds of flight procedures, such as circuits, formation, or
watch-map-ground navigation.

I've flown formation with a PC flight game (not Flight Sim) and it wasn't a bad
way to practice.  Not quite like the real thing, but close enough to be fun and
somewhat useful.

When I get my project moved over to my new workshop in the garage I'll invite
you over for a look.

Tedd

---

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Austin wrote:

> Hi Tedd,
>                 Since you are our RV computer guru, I wanted to ask you
> about Microsoft computer flight simulators.
> I actually have a couple of them and never play them because I don't get
> much fun out of them.
> I wonder if it is because a player has no peripheral vision for a game or
> whether you need the manual nearby or memorize what keys do what since the
> stick only has a limited number of buttons on it and can't respond well.
>      Until I got my new computer, the stick would not even respond to
> aileron and it just annoyed me to fight a stick which would not act as a
> real a/c would.
> I even crash when I should not, and this in a lousy Piper Cub !
>     Needless to say, combat, or landing on a carrier is a disaster...I can't
> see how players get any skill or fun out of these things, but some kids
> actually do !
> One thing that really pisses me off is I don't seem to be able to set the
> trim properly on the stick, which is a Microsoft stick, and must continually
> hold back stick to keep any a/c level, or it will nose down...that should
> not be....
> Any comments ?
>
>  Austin.
>
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