A new M.O....

[John_Cillis 2,406]

.....Modus Operandi

As being somewhat semi retired, until my cervical disability resolves itself someday (I sometimes have this nagging pain from a pinched neck nerve, combination of a rear ender of an SUV that almost ended me 18 years ago, and working hunched over long hours on computer keyboards), I spend several hours a day enjoying P3DV4 and Xplane11, using one or the other during week long stretches.

I have always enjoyed short flights, hand flying the aircraft, using the autopilot in a simple way, set it and forget it.  Never got into any FMS, setting up waypoints, etc, seemed way too hard.  Then I chanced upon a post in the screenshots forum about an Aerobask DA62 for Xplane11.  I prefer to fly a bit faster and higher at times and found they had an Eclipse 550, a fixed version of the somewhat buggy Eclipse 500 real life aircraft out of Double Eagle field in Albuquerque, where I once flew a trike in 2008.

What I have found, is just the joy that a well modeled, sim very light jet can bring to the hobby using its FMS and integrated autopilot.  It is so easy to plug in a flightplan in the FMS it is child's play.  As soon as you are wheels up, flaps retracted and in a stable climb, you engage the autopilot and the comms are yours while the FMS takes the workload off of you. And the autopilot has an airspeed hold, in climb, that uses pitch, just like any flight instructor would tell you to plug in your airspeed for the sweet spot in any real life GA aircraft.  Carenado gets kudos for doing this on their P3D 550 too.

Although I was inside a bizjet once in Napa, I have never flown in one.  These sims give low budget pilots or student pilots a way to vicariously fly aircraft they could not touch in real life, with amazing textured interiors, to make you feel like you are there either as a pilot or passenger.

When I flew to Europe once in 1984, I read a US News and World Report Article onboard my TWA flight about Flight Simulator II, which described it as being a main point of attraction for wannabe computer nerds, and I was snared into buying a computer by an insistent older brother who said it would change my life.  And it did, on that old C64 not only did I fly FS II, I learned assembler and made a program in binary encoded decimal to create prime numbers into mega digits, very fast, although you had to pull the number out peeks into the RAM to know what it was.

Then in Napa, a bunch of folks from Microsoft came to my PC users group (I had a Packard Bell PC by then), and gave out free copies of Visual Basic.

Although I have a program here, Landclass Assistant, that I made for FS2002 on up and it still works with P3DV4 with the right codecs, I am a poor programmer.  My computer career, launched by my interest in FS II, was in hotel business systems instruction, and finally in hotel, medical and retail business systems design and testing.  Will I go back to work?  The Lord above is helping me to heal, so in some way, a little program called FS II will provide a secure future for my unborn grandchildren, with my daughter having just graduated high school this May 22nd.

Thanks for reading into this, what I called as a high school and college poetry teacher once, stream of consciousness post.  I hope no one read this on their cell while driving and had a crash and pileup from falling asleep.....

John

 

 

[birdguy 3,943]

While my favorite flying areas are around the Bay Area and Northern California I fly out of Gnoss Field in Novato (where my brother lives) low and not quite so slow in the Lionheart Kodiaks.  Both land a float versions.  Also have Lyons Luscombe on floats that I learned to fly in from Commodore Center in Sausalito.

Who ever said 'You can't go home again' didn't know about computers and flight simulators.

Noel