My experience at Fly A Sim

[DMullert 216]

Hello Gang!I thought I'd post my flight simulation experience in this forum because FS9/FSX had a great impact in how well I performed on the real thing. First some background:Back in August my wife surprised me with the "Captain Experience" session from Fly-A-Sim. Fly-A-Sim is a company managed by Charley Shepard (Fligth Instructor for Southwest Airlines in Dallas), where he basically makes productive use of the Flight Safety flight simulators at the DFW Flight Safety facility when they are not in use. He mainly uses the Gulfstream II and Gulfstream IV simulators and has put together a very nice program where you spend one hour on a mini-ground school orientation and one hour flying several approaches and takeoffs from selected airports on the actual Gulfstream simulator.The experience was incredible. I am a pilot, so a lot of the things covered during the one hour ground school session I already knew, so I was anxious to get on the sim and start testing my true capabilities on the sim. My wait time to get on the simulator was almost 6 months due to scheduling conflicts and an overly busy Flight Safety facility, but this was allright with me as it gave me time to prepare and practice, somewhat, using FSX. I went ahead and downloaded the only Gulfstream availabe for FSX at the moment, which is the GIV by Rick Sasala. Believe it or not, after flying the real simulator I realized that Rick's addon actually flies very much in FSX as the real thing; it is somewhat dated and not very pretty in the outside graphics department (maybe someone can update it for FSX), but it flies well.When I finally sat down in the simulator (my wife Celia on the right seat), Charley quickly fired her up and set me up at 18L in DFW for our first takeoff. Not only did I perfrom the initial takeoff flawlessly, but every takeoff, landing, and maneuver thrown at me was performed right on the numbers. Charley was very impressed with how well I perfromed on my first simulator flight. He then proceeded to set me up on approach at KEGE (Eagle Mountain Colorado), in poor visibility, and the offset ILS approach was flown perfectly.I attribute my success with the real simulator to my practice runs in FSX. I had never flown this version of the Gulfstream before and had I not practiced my flying and my procedures with FSX prior to this flight, I would have certainly encountered a couple of the so called "Red Screens of Death". The real simulator is certainly a joy - it provides the motion, the behaviour, the physics, even the nausea associated with real flying, and everything you lack on the simulator at home. The graphics you see in FSX are much more better and detailed than what you get on the Fortran and Cobol based simulator program, however.I strongly recommend this Fly-A-Sim experience for those who can afford it, but make sure you practice your FS9/FSX before so you can get your money's worth.Sincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

[Sarge27 0]

Hello Gang!I thought I'd post my flight simulation experience in this forum because FS9/FSX had a great impact in how well I performed on the real thing. First some background:Back in August my wife surprised me with the "Captain Experience" session from Fly-A-Sim. Fly-A-Sim is a company managed by Charley Shepard (Fligth Instructor for Southwest Airlines in Dallas), where he basically makes productive use of the Flight Safety flight simulators at the DFW Flight Safety facility when they are not in use. He mainly uses the Gulfstream II and Gulfstream IV simulators and has put together a very nice program where you spend one hour on a mini-ground school orientation and one hour flying several approaches and takeoffs from selected airports on the actual Gulfstream simulator.The experience was incredible. I am a pilot, so a lot of the things covered during the one hour ground school session I already knew, so I was anxious to get on the sim and start testing my true capabilities on the sim. My wait time to get on the simulator was almost 6 months due to scheduling conflicts and an overly busy Flight Safety facility, but this was allright with me as it gave me time to prepare and practice, somewhat, using FSX. I went ahead and downloaded the only Gulfstream availabe for FSX at the moment, which is the GIV by Rick Sasala. Believe it or not, after flying the real simulator I realized that Rick's addon actually flies very much in FSX as the real thing; it is somewhat dated and not very pretty in the outside graphics department (maybe someone can update it for FSX), but it flies well.When I finally sat down in the simulator (my wife Celia on the right seat), Charley quickly fired her up and set me up at 18L in DFW for our first takeoff. Not only did I perfrom the initial takeoff flawlessly, but every takeoff, landing, and maneuver thrown at me was performed right on the numbers. Charley was very impressed with how well I perfromed on my first simulator flight. He then proceeded to set me up on approach at KEGE (Eagle Mountain Colorado), in poor visibility, and the offset ILS approach was flown perfectly.I attribute my success with the real simulator to my practice runs in FSX. I had never flown this version of the Gulfstream before and had I not practiced my flying and my procedures with FSX prior to this flight, I would have certainly encountered a couple of the so called "Red Screens of Death". The real simulator is certainly a joy - it provides the motion, the behaviour, the physics, even the nausea associated with real flying, and everything you lack on the simulator at home. The graphics you see in FSX are much more better and detailed than what you get on the Fortran and Cobol based simulator program, however.I strongly recommend this Fly-A-Sim experience for those who can afford it, but make sure you practice your FS9/FSX before so you can get your money's worth.Sincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

I went to Fly-A-Sim last year and flew the Gulfstream II. I have to agree that it was a great experience. The staff was very friendly, and set me up with just about any flight situation that I requested. (I flew the KEGE approach too...pretty cool!) I hope that I can go back one day soon. Regrets? Just one....now that I have flown their Gulfstream II, I've been looking all over the internet for a good one for FSX. So far, no joy!

[DMullert 216]

Hi Sarge!Glad to hear you enjoyed the experience as well. Yes, FS9/FSX does lack a decent freeware/payware Gulfstream. I did find, however, the following file over at Flightsim.com gulfivx2.zip, which provides a semi-decent GIV to use in FSX. I went ahead and fitted it with a decent set of sounds (I utilized the recently released TSS CRJ-200 sounds) to give it a hint of reality, and replaced the poor panel with the panel included in a file called l60_fsx.zip over at Simviation.com - it is for a Learjet 60, but looks somewhat similar to the GII/GIII panel. Surprisingly enough, even though the aircraft exterior model looks "somewhat ugly" in FSX, it does fly pretty close to what the real simulator felt like, so I feel I have achieved a happy medium with this aircraft.Hope this helps.Dennis D. Mullert

[ryanbatc 12,841]

I went to Fly-A-Sim last year and flew the Gulfstream II. I have to agree that it was a great experience. The staff was very friendly, and set me up with just about any flight situation that I requested. (I flew the KEGE approach too...pretty cool!) I hope that I can go back one day soon. Regrets? Just one....now that I have flown their Gulfstream II, I've been looking all over the internet for a good one for FSX. So far, no joy!

While you were there you should have hassled them about their virtual gulfstream creation policies. I think they've pretty much forbidden developers to make a flight sim model and sell it.