Flying The Cessnas

• Cessna Tips And Tricks
  
• Real World Cessna 172R VS The Pro Pilot Cessna 172R
  
• Step By Step Flying The Pattern At SFO In The Cessna 172R
  
• How Do I Quickly Change Between The Newer Cessna C172R & The Older 172P?
  
• Basic V Speeds For The Cessna 172
  

Posted to the Pro Pilot Forum by Unknown

If you love to fly the Cessna 172's, but are experiencing difficulty getting them to come down out of the sky with Patch 1.02, heres some help. First, go to the aircraft menu under Fuel/Cabin Settings and top off the fuel and set the cabin capacity to 601. You will be able to obtain proper slow flight configuration. Second, don't add more than 10 degrees of flaps on landing or you'll stay up there all day. Try it you'll like it.

When flying the Cessna in particular, you must slow down early. The modeling on this particular aircraft is just slightly off. There is not quite enough drag in the model. This is just a small error, not a bug. I've noticed its hard to get the Cessna below 80 KIAS (Knots Indicated Air Speed) when landing, but it can be done. This isn't really different here than in real life. In real life every airplane one flies is a bit different, and we must learn and put up with these differences.

Pattern altitude is generally accepted to be about 1000 ft AGL, try to be at 1000 ft. When you get to the end of the runway,"abreast or abeam of the numbers", is what your CFI would say, pull your rpm's back to 1500 or slightly less. Put backpressure on the stick untill the plane slows to 85 KIAS then put in 10 degrees flap, and turn to base when you get about 45 degrees past the end of the runway. When you get straightened out, put in another 10 degrees of flap. Try to hold the plane to a sink rate of about 500 ft/min. and slow down to under 80 KIAS. When you turn to final, put in another 10 degrees of flaps and hold the plane nose up to get down to 70 KIAS or even 65 KIAS. At this point do whatever is necessary to keep your speed down to 70 KIAS or slightly less. You'll probably have to pull all the power off unless you are way out from the runway. If you can get down to 65 KIAS so much better, but be really careful below 65 KIAS. In real life never NEVER get below 65 KIAS when you're this close to the ground.

If you try to land above 70 KIAS, your plane will indeed float a long way down the runway. This will happen in real life too.

Hope this helps and dosen't confuse.
Donald E. Donovan

REAL WORLD:

The Cessna 172 is a VERY stable aircraft. Trimmed for neutral while on the ramp, you really need not fight the trim throughout the flight except for minor adjustments, if you so desire. I don't for the most part, so I leave the trim pretty much in neutral and fly the aircraft with the throttle. In a standard take off with moderate ambient temperature (around 75 degrees F), I don't use flaps for takeoff. I rotate at 65 to 70 KIAS and do a climbout to departure altitude of 1,000 MSL. I maintain an 85 KIAS with full throttle during climb out. That gives me a nice and comfortable 440 to 500 FPM rate of climb. At 1,000 FT MSL, I start a standard rate turn to the left continuing to climb to 1,500 MSL (Pattern Altitude). At about 1/2 to 3/4 miles from the centerline, I turn to the downwind leg. I pull the throttle back to 2,200 RPM and that will keep me pegged at 1,500 MSL. No twisting or turning of the trim required. At the opposite end of the runway, I pull carb heat on, and lower the RPM to 1,700 (out of the green zone) and put in one notch of flaps (10 Degrees). That gives me a nice rate of decent for a turn to baseleg when I am just a bit further downwind. At about the 45 degee point with the threshold off my left shoulder, I start the turn to base leg, maintaining my rate of decent. On base, I put flaps down to 20 degrees and keep the nose down. I turn final with a good 600 or 700 FT AGL and on short final, I deploy flaps all the way. I then point the nose over and we do our touchdown.

I rotate at 65 KIAS and let her climb out just as in real life. No trim adjustments and she climbs with no back pressure on the yoke. There should be a little required, but not a big deal. No flaps, just like in real life. At 1,000 MSL I start my turn to the left for crosswind. I look over my left shoulder to get a view of the runway for orientation and can't see it. I settle out at a 90 degree heading from centerline and continue to climb to 1,500 MSL. Since I can't orient myself to the runway, I have to guess on the separation distance for downwind. I proceed a little further, but I am now at 1,500. Pull throttle back to 2,200 RPM and start my turn to down wind. Oops! Here is the first major deviation. 2,200 RPM won't get you in to normal cruise. Still climbing, at 2,000 FT MSL I pull throttle back to what I would use in real life for a comfortable decent which is 1,700 RPM. Finally, I stable at 2,000. But, now I am too high and too fast, and my comparison is going to go down the tubes. Pull the throttle back more and drop 10 degrees of flap. Extend my downwind, and at 1,500 start my baseleg. I am still way to fast and too high. More flap... pull throttle back ALL THE WAY! Turn final and drop all flap. Way too high. Push the nose over and try not to bust 100 KIAS.

So, my conclusion is that the model is slightly over powered or the drag coefficients aren't quite as high as they need to be.
Next review, I will compare the two in 60 degree turns around a point, standard 30 degree turns and stalls.
Hope that sheds some light for you on RW 172 and PP.

Tom Allensworth

This flight is flown using the Cessna 172R. The patch version that is being used is 1.02. For best results, make sure you are on this version or higher.

Prerequisites

During this tutorial, I will assume you are familiar with Windows 95. This includes using the mouse to navigate around dialog boxes, vertical and horizontal scroll bars, highlighting text, etc. Teaching you to use Windows 95 is beyond the scope of this document.

We will be departing from the default airport at San Francisco California (SFO). We will fly an extended rectangular pattern at SFO, making four 90 degree turns and terminating the flight with a runway approach to the same runway we departed from. I will take you step by step through the procedures from setting menu options through starting the engines, takeoff, cruise, to touchdown and braking. Practicing this flight several times until you are comfortable with it should give you the experience to expand your flights to whatever departure and destination airport you choose.

Since you may not have a joystick or other control devices, I assume you might be flying with the keyboard. I will call out the keyboard keys that need to be pressed for any control movements. They will be listed in bold letters for easy identification. If you have a joystick or yoke, use those devices for the appropriate controls such as thottle, trim, etc. We will be using the mouse for some instrument panel work. Many of the instrument panel functions, also have keyboard commands. I will not be calling out the keyboard commands to replace mouse functions, only control functions. You might find it helpful to have your "Controls Quick Reference" card handy.

When we start Pro Pilot we will position ourselves on runway 28R. We are then going to take off and fly the runway heading of 280 degrees until we reach the pattern altitude of 1000 feet. We will continue on that heading and altitude for a specified period of time. Pattern altitude is normally around 1000 feet AGL (above ground level). Since the altitude of SFO is only 11 feet, a 1000 foot pattern will serve us nicely.

We will make our first 90 degree turn to a heading of 190 degrees. We will hold that heading and altitude for a set period of time. We will then turn to our downwind leg (even though we have no wind) on a heading of 100 degrees. We will then be flying parallel to the runway we departed from. You will be able to see the airport on your left as we come abeam of it. We will stay on this heading until we are approximately 5 miles from the end of runway 28. At that time we will make our turn to the base leg of our approach on a heading of 10 degrees. The fourth turn will be the turn to approach on the runway heading of 280 degrees. We will have our NAV 1 radio set to the ILS frequency of runway 28R which is 111.70. Using the NAV radio, the ILS frequency, and the old Mark One Eyeball device of which we were all given two at birth. (If you only have one left at this point in your career, and are still flying flight sims, my hat goes off to you). We will not be using the COMM radios on this flight, nor will we be using a Co Pilot. It is just me and you. So let us get started.

To make the menu appear, move your mouse to the top of the screen.

Mode Menu
Under the "Mode" menu make sure only "Pilot In Command" is checked.

Aircraft Menu
Select Aircraft.....
Make sure you are in the Cessna 172R Skyhawk. You must be flying a mimimum of patch version 1.02 to use this aircraft. If the Cessna 172P appears as your default aircraft, go ahead and select it. While sitting in the left seat, press your F10 key. Now go back to "select Aircraft" and select the Cessna 172R.

Auto Coordination.....
Put a check mark by this field. Auto Coordination will allow your ailerons and rudder to work together. This way we don't have to worry about controlling each one seperate. All a turn will require from us, is a bank to the left or right. Once you feel comfortable with controlling the plane, you can turn this option off and control the rudder and ailerons seperately.

The default settings for the other fields under this menu item will be suffecient.

Airspace Menu
Airports.....
If the text block at the top of the screen doesn't default to "SFO - San Francisco International", highlight the text in the window by dragging the cursor across the airport name field until it is highlighted, then release the mouse. Next type in SFO. San Francisco International should now be the selected airport in the second window. If this isn't working for you, you can use the vertical scroll bar until you find San Francisco, CA and SFO. Once you've found SFO through whatever method, make a note of the field elevation in the lower part of the screen. The communications freuencies are important to jot down also, even though we will not be using them in this flight. This information will be available for you on the GPS display also. If you make a note of them before takeoff, and your GPS goes down the tubes, you'll still have them available. Click "Next" to bring up the runway selection screen. Highlight runway 28R. Make sure the field "Locate Aircraft on:" is set to "Runway." If there is a check mark in the box marked "Enable ATC Radar Vectoring", remove the check. Now click on "Finish".

Navigational Aids.....
We now want to find the frequency of the ILS (Instrument Landing System) for runway 28R. Click on "Navigational Aids." Select the tab at the top marked "ILSs." Drag the mouse and highlight the text in the upper text box, then type in SFO. Scroll down and select SFO Rwy 28R. Make a note of the frequency of the ILS at the bottom of the screen. It is 111.70. You will note that in the upper right of this window is a box titled "Tune NAV1 To Station." We will leave that unchecked for now. I will walk you through tuning that radio manually. If you get frustrated and can't get it tuned, you can come back here, select the runway again and place a check in that box. It will be tuned automatically for you. When you have the runway highlighted, click on "OK."

After you are back in the cockpit you should be on the proper runway. Look at your instrument panel. The second round gauge from the left on the lower row is the Heading Indicator. If the little airplane is pointing toward approximately 280 degrees and the airport terminal buildings are on the left side of the runway, you are on the proper runway.

Weather Menu
Since we are students, we want to control the weather. Something you can't do in real flight, but since we are simming, we can.

Surface Conditions.....

Make sure there is a check mark in "Calibrate Altimeter". Once you become more familiar with Pro Pilot, you can calibrate the altimeter yourself. You will have to listen to the ATIS recordings at the nearby airports to get the barometric pressure. Since we're going to have our hands full just getting off the ground, flying level, making four 90 degree turns landing in one piece, we will leave that task automated for the time being. Under "Surface Wind" make sure the speed is zero knots and that the radio button marked "Steady" is checked. Click on "OK" to save the settings.

Options Menu
We need to take a quick look at joystick settings. If you do not have a stick and are flying using the keyboard, you can skip this section, but go into 'Flight Controls" anyway and make sure "Joystick/Yoke On" is not checked. If you do have a stick or yoke, turn this option on by putting a checkmark in the box.

Flight Controls.....

For these settings, why don't you start off with all three sensitivity settings at 50 %. You can adjust them them up or down as you see fit during flight. The Dead Space setting is another issue. I suggest that you set your Dead Space setting at 60 %. If you will look in the "Joystick Problems" section of this FAQ, the procedure for optimizing your Dead Space setting is explained in the Joystick section. The procedure requires you to be in flight. Once you get in the air, you should check the Dead Space setting using those procedures as soon as possible. The Dead Space is the area around the center of your joystick or yoke controls where the device has no effect on the movement of the aircraft. If your dead space is to small, your joystick or yoke may be making the plane move in any of the four flight axis without you being aware of it.

Now that we have all our menu settings where we want them, let us see if we can get this puppy cranked up. I suggest you refer to your "Instruments Quick Reference" card for the location of switches and gauges. You will only have the Cessna 172P on your card. The panels are very similar. The following switches are all located on the extreme lower left of the panel.

The first thing we have to do is get some electrical power flowing to the instrument panel. Click on the BAT ALT (Battery Alternator)switch. You should see the fuel gauges come alive. Now click the AV PWR (Avionics Power). You should see several digital data displays light up on the right side of the panel. You did? Great! Now things get a little harder as we move along.

We must have fuel flow from the left and right fuel tanks. On the extreme lower left you will see the Fuel Tank Selector Switch. The red indicator line will be pointing down to the "OFF" position. You need to click it with the mouse until it points straight up to the "B" position. This selects fuel to flow in equal amounts from both wing tanks. This one is easy to get wrong. The red indicator should be covering up the letter "B". If it is covering up the first letter "F" in "OFF" you don't have it in the correct position.

We must also have a method of pumping the fuel from the tanks to the engine. Click on the "FUEL PUMP" switch to move it to the up postion.

The red Fuel Mixture Lever marked MIX should be pushed all the way in to the full rich position. The engine will not crank if it is pulled out to the full lean position.

Before cranking the engine, set your parking brakes by pressing the keys ALT + p (that is ALT plus p, meaning press the ALT key and while holding it down, press the p key. This is the format of many keyboard commands I will be giving you, so remember if you see a plus sign, that means hold down the first key while pressing the second key). You should see the word "BRAKES" display above the panel.

The second switch from the lower left is the Ignition Switch. Click it with the mouse over to the full right hand side and you should hear the engine crank. If the engine starts and then stops, you have probably not followed all the above instructions. Go back over them again.

If the engine continues to run, Congratulations!! Make sure you have the parking brakes set, and increase the throttle some ( keyboard = ). You'll hear the engine sound rev up and see the plane try to move forward against the parking brakes. Notice the gauges. Some of the indicators begin to move as you increase the RPM on the engine. Now bring the engine back to idle ( keyboard - ).

NOTE: If you have loaded the patch named pp12.exe, which is the final version of the patch, you will not be able to use the F10 key to change planes as described below. That function has been taken out of the code. I don't know if it is temporary or permanent. In the interim you will have to change the flight.ini file as described below, if you want to fly the older Cessna 172P.

You can quickly switch between the older Cessna 172P and the newer Cessna 172R that was added with patch 1.02. This is what you do. While you are using one of the C172's in Propilot, press the F10 key, now go to the Aircraft menu and select Aircraft Selection. You should see the other C172 pictured. Click once on another aircraft button and again on the C172, when you click OK, the other C172 will be loaded. This can be used repeatedly to switch between the Cessnas if you do not want add the 'Trainer=C172' line in your flight.ini file to switch back to the older C172 permanently.

Best Rotation Speed Is 65 Knots.
We don't fly V1, V2, Vr in a light plane, we don't live by the same rules as an aircraft certified for carrying passengers, so all we do is use a rotation speed. Some people choose 60 knots, since this is not an "official" speed in the POH. Rotation speed is the speed you need to attain before easing back on your stick/yoke to allow the plane to become airborne. This speed is based upon takeoff with no flaps extended. Once you are airborne, and have established a positive rate of climb, landing gear should be retracted if you are in a retractable gear aircraft. If you have used a notch of flaps for takeoff, the flaps should also be retracted fully. These functions are commonly referred to as "cleaning up the plane."

Best Rate Of Climb Speed On Takeoff Is 76 Knots.
Usually use this speed to attain a "safe maneuvering altitude" upon departure since you want as much air between you and the ground as quickly as possible. I usually use 2000 agl (above ground level) as a rule, at which point I transition to a cruise climb of roughly 90 knots. Pull back on your stick or yoke after attaining a rotation speed of 65 knots. Continue to increase your rate of climb with pressure on the stick/yoke, or by trimming the nose up, until your airspeed shows appx. 76 knots. This is your best take off rate of climb.

Flap Extension Speed Is 110 Knots.
You can extend up to 20 degrees of flaps at this maximum speed. This might have changed in the 172R (the modeled version) but in the 172P we could drop 10 degrees at 110 kts, but for more flaps than that, we had to wait to 85 knots. Flap extension speed is the maximum speed at which you should begin to extend flaps. In real life, aircraft damage can occur if you don't adhere to this. Extending flaps will slow down your plane. To slow down to the flap extension speed, decrease your throttle. You can also try some S turns to get down to flap extension speed. Note that as the flaps come down, you should see a tendency for the plane's nose to rise. Be prepared for this, and reverse the tendency with forward pressure on the stick/yoke.

Full Flap Extension Speed Is 85 Knots.
You must be at this speed before extending your flaps below 20 degrees. The speeds on the airspeed dial and the colored bands do have significance. The white arc represents the normal flap operating range. The green arc represents the normal no flap (clean) operating range. The yellow arc represents the operating range in smooth air only (the technical definition being that in the green arc, full control deflections can be applied without risk of bending or breaking anything of importance). The red line at the top of the yellow arc represents the maximum flying speed in smooth air. Note that this speed may not be attainable in level flight.

Best Angle Of Climb Speed Is 60 Knots.
Primarily used during short field departures to clear an obstacle, or where you want to get high in as short of a linear distance as possible. Used for short periods of time in order to clear something. Once clear of the obstacle, transition to a Best Rate Of Climb Speed.

Best Glide Speed Is 60 Knots.
I think this is the most important speed in any light airplane. This is the speed at which you will have maximum endurance with little or no power. Used once the engine has failed, this speed allows you the most options in choosing an emergency landing location. It is for this reason, that choosing a higher cruise altitude is beneficial for light aircraft. Just in case...