Arnold Palmer was asked once "How come your so dam Lucky?" To which he replied "The harder I practice the luckier I get" A Sim way is a good way to practice to be lucky. I know it don't mean to much in the make believe world of gaming, however if you have any desire to become a pilot, practice on the Sim is a very good place to start. An example is spin recover,ya set up the plane to stall,it does and you know it, you made it stall,you also know if you don't recover almost instinctively, you may make a hole in the ground.Your landing, low and slow, a little sloppy on the rudder,and ailerons, BAM! your looking at the ground spinning in front of ya! You will not have time to even think that your spinning,ya better react as traing taught you. Only repetition practice will save your butt. "ANYWAY REGARDS AND HAVE FUN" VIN

Obviously i like as much realism as possible, including weather dynamics, flight performance and ATC procedures. Many add-ons help achieve that.But i frequently question myself if i could safely land the plane that i fly, LD767 in my case.I think if i was in a training simulator for this plane that i could land it safely, no problem. That for me is realism :-) CheersDan

The first and biggest suspension of realism is that one person could fly an aircraft like a Lear 45, A320, B767.How many people do weight and balance charts / calculations? How many have realistic checklists? How many spend 45 min in pre-takeoff checklists? You are still missing well over half the switches and functions on the most complex payware aircraft.How many do full weather briefs? Though you don't want to call the FSS, you can do a very similar check on the internet?The great thing about FS is that you can have as much as you want up to the limitations of the software / panels. Random failures are a part of that enviornment if you want them.But do remember, FS will not survive unless a newbie can manage to fly and land a B734.

The only times I set failures are to practice proceedures in my real-world training, such as partial panel and engine flame-out. They're set to timers so I know they're gonna happen, but not when, which is rather realistic to the training environment when the instructor says "Today we're going to do partial panel work". As for just flying? I don't set them. Besides, the majority of aviation incidents are caused by pilot error. The problem with coding mechanical failures (which are relatively rare), they have to be quantified into numerical values to work. How do you come up with a number for the likelihood that something will fail?----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

Hi Getting back to the subject of failure modelling, there a few freeware and payware offerings which model engine failures through abuse. The AFG NAMC YS11 was one of the first freeware planes to do this. Its an old bird now but is still a great aircraft.CheersLungs

personally I like realism;on the stats alone you won't likely get a failliure in the real world.One pilot I know; real world for many years, he's mature, has only had one engine faillure in his time.So the chances of a failliure in a modern aircraft is a actually very small. Fairly small too on an older aircraft.More likely problems seem to be engineer panel issues like one of the generators goes wrong on start-up. In a boeing 742 this is often the case but with 3 good generators they still take-off knowing even if 2 mroe fail they can still land ok.So really what I'm saying is in real life the pilot does check rides in a simulator with a man behind a wall throwing in all sorts of disasters like engine failliure on take-off and various problems to see how the crew cope.So realism is to do these disaster check rides once in a while and also to practice the procedures for all kinds of flying. I wonder for example how many of us know how to use the charts properly and do an ILS "out" approaches or a demanding NDB approaches that require an overlfy of the airport, a timed or clocked procedure with a standard rate of turn to line up with the runway. Generally how to fly right, how to do a proper missed approach on the numbers for both plan and for aircraft procedure clean up etc.I wonder for example; how many people are doing CATIII landings on autoland as a matter of course in the 747-400 and thinking this is how the pros do it. For example, I only just found out that this is not what really happens. CATII full autolands only happen if the RVR calls for it (visibility) and typically that's around 700 feet. The tower will advise you this is the case and let you know they are only accepting CATIII landings. At all other times to do a CATIII you have to have special clearence to do this and then the airport often has to turn on extra ground equiptiment and or move back the holding postitions to ensure the higher precision can work. Ask Heathrow on a busy evening to do a CATIII and they will almost certainly say unavailable at this time, CATI landings only.Once you are sure you have learnt all the basic skills and know how to fly right then disasters comes next. Learn these as practiced procedures and after all that then maybe make the chance of someting going wrong to one in a million of what ever the odds are.So for me right now I'm still working on flying right, learning how to do proper go arounds and ILS landings etc.When I've done all this and go really good at it and mastered the aircraft, then I'll be learning disaster procedures.I can't imagaine I'll have those skills for some time. Still learning how to fly right here so a disaster enroute would only mean I do it all wrong to get out of trouble and end up practicing the wrong procedures.But I imagine it would be a lot of fun... and for some it would give a new dimention to their flights, especially long haul.Regards,

>Arnold Palmer was asked once "How come your so dam Lucky?" To>which he replied "The harder I practice the luckier I get" A>Sim way is a good way to practice to be lucky. I know it don't>mean to much in the make believe world of gaming, however if>you have any desire to become a pilot, practice on the Sim is>a very good place to start. An example is spin recover,ya set>up the plane to stall,it does and you know it, you made it>stall,you also know if you don't recover almost instinctively,>you may make a hole in the ground.Your landing, low and slow,>a little sloppy on the rudder,and ailerons, BAM! your looking>at the ground spinning in front of ya! You will not have time>to even think that your spinning,ya better react as traing>taught you. Only repetition practice will save your butt. >"ANYWAY REGARDS AND HAVE FUN" VINI agree that spin recovery on a desktop, IS valuable, since the basics are the same, and the sim helps commit them to memory. Of course, it helps to have a simulated plane that enters & recovers from spins with the right inputs! :) And there are some available.As to many other failures, I really don't care for them, since I don't have real controls, switches, knobs, etc. in their correct places for real time use in a simulated emergency. "Mousing" around for switches, just doesn't do it for me...On the other hand, something as simple as using the aux fuel pump switch, landing gear switch, and switching tanks within a sim, can help for remembering the process in the real plane.L.Adamson

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!I think that about says it. After a certain point, flying becomes hours of boredom punctuated by moments of shear terror. Sim pilots, their lives not being at stake, often want to make it harder for themselves due to the nature of the human spirit. They can do this by moving to a more complex or more realistically modeled aircraft or one with *less* avionics help, more realistic ATC, turning the weather worse, or failures. Really, it is *not* realistic to do this (weather) either. If any sane real world pilot could control it, weather would be CAVU till they start to get hungry. (wouldn't be good for the farmers) I turn it down to 200' ceiling, 3/4 to 1/4 mile vis much more often than it actually happens in my area. In the end, to each his own. My brother and I were recently up till 3:30 AM on a Wednesday. He could not be bothered flying anything less than an F18, and crashed every time, often repeating the same mistakes and also refusing to go around, trying to land runway 01 Slatington 69N. Then I finally convinced him more than 1,000 FPM or so at touchdown is too much even for a carrier plane. As he was celebrating right after touchdown I intervened with aileron to avoid a cartwheel as his gyrations brought the sitck left. So, he wasn't satisfied, and gave up 45 min later without one successfull landing all on his own. But he was enjoying himself...Best Regards, Donny:-wave