Having read all of these, I will offer this. If you fly the NGX etc, to altitude, then fly the full decent by hand, you can learna great deal. I have no real world stick time, but flying the Level D and first PMDG 737 I was able to land a 777, manually, by hand, three times in a UAL simulator and one of those times was in a 20 knot crosswind. But the thread here that is correct is you have to fly the plane.

 

Load up the NGX and hand fly a 2,500 foot patters around a quiet airport with no AT. Then add some weather, wind and visibilty.

 

It's fun too!

I got into FS because of GA and not the big arliners. I always enjoyed it a lot more and after so many years I still love it, it is much more of a challenge then having the autopilot fly the plane for you. It's what is called bush flying! You can't beat it!

I still own the Pmdg 737 because it is amazing but I still prefer GA. We pretty much have it made now that Orbx is doing such beautifull scenery and there are a lot of very nice plane addons to fly.

With a small airplane I feel like I am in command, with an airliner I feel like I am an accessory to the autopilot. I love trimming why way out of a strip in the PNW after having carefully planned the flight, accounting for weight and balance, performance charts and weather. I now you do the same with airliners but in the Ga world it is much more adventurous!

 

 

 

 

David DD

Good topic, thanks Jaggyroad..

 

I fly everything, can´t get enuff!

 

On a more serious note, it seems that it´s a problem in real life too:

 

http://europenews.dk/en/node/50578

 

On a positive note, it´s nice to see a pilot handling an MD80 like this:

 

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Wow.

 

The guys are going to have to inspect very jackscrew, servo, bellcrank, connecting rod, and every other connecting hardware from the flight deck to the control surfaces, as well as the hydraulic levels and temps, after that exercise.

 

And the pilot may have to relocate his jaw after gnawing away at the gum as vigorously as he was! :LMAO:

He-he!

 

You´re d.... right, and he didn´t land on the centerline, so it was tough I´m sure..

Great topic indeed.

 

I started some 12 years ago with flightsiming, back then I flied it via keyboard, really bad, that flights was totally out of control, I was happy when stay in air for few minutes. All that changed with FS2002 and great pdf tutorials included in that package. Passed almost whole flight school lessons excluding jets, and from these days im in love with classic navigation. Today I still like to load default cessna 172N and fly some SID/STAR combination with ILS, or to pick up some VOR/DME station and work DME ARCs.

 

I started to fly airliners when I discovered VATSIM. At that time I wasnt even heard about any addon for FS. For my first VATSIM flight I chose EGCC-EGLL flight (UK VATSIM ATC is really nice), default sceneries and default 737. I prepared myself really well, flied whole flight by my hands and with radio navigation, unfortunately I lined up at wrong rwy (27L instead of Rwy27R assigned by ATC), and landed with gear up. I guess it was information overload for the very first online flight, but anyway I think I did good job.

Anyway, point of story is that in that time I was unaware of all that complex (for that time) addon aircrafts, so radio navigation was only right choice (I always felt that GPS is a little bit unrealistic although is not, but anyway, it just spoil that nice feeling classic navigation creates, you know when you make series of turns, perform ILS app in low visibility and wait for rwy lights to pop-up), and Im feel happy about that because I know I would not learn that much things about flying if I used FMC/MCP from the day one.

So advice for all new simmers, just use FS flight lessons, you will learn a lot (its not cr*p that some of "experienced" simmers try to convince us), use default aircrafts as long as you become fully conformable with them, thats nice aircrafts too, nothing wrong with them, there are no in depth systems simulated to draw your attention, just pure, classic things to get used with it.

I got into tubeliners because of spending so much time as a passenger in them, and just wanted to know how they work. That got me into SIDS and STARS and things I'd never heard of. Programming the FMC in the PMDG 747 was a real learning experience.

 

Flying the 737NGX with FS2Crew gets over that one man operation problem and gives a really good approximation of the real thing, or at least it compares to the dvds I've seen.

 

With regard to the video of the landing it often seems that the pilots are yanking the controls about, but you have to remember that at slow speeds the controls are really sloppy. At cruise speed the effects would be very different.

 

P.S. I like low and slow too.