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John_Cillis

More Light Sport, over SF Bay

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For those who love VFR, Seat of the Pants, great value add-ons for any sim, The VSkylabs Eurofox delivers, a recommendation from me, a real life Light Sport and Trike pilot (but grounded the past eleven years due to seizures).  People argue that sims cannot recreate the "feel" of real flight, that they just are not there yet.  I disagree, with the right flight model they are there.  I wrote a flight model for my FSX/P3D Trike that nailed my trike flying experience spot on, from stall speed (25 knots) to a cruise of 40 knots. 

This Eurofox, along with Xplane11's own Aerolight 103 Ultralight, nails the flight envelope of a Light Sport experimental spot on.  In an earlier post I mentioned I had flown two models similar to it--the XAir H and the Kitfox, both similar in weight, handling, balance and useful load.  With rudder one can as I was taught "draw the box" with this aircraft, my Flight Instructor Phil Leroy in Willcox AZ taught me to use rudder and ailerons to draw an imaginary box on the horizon to teach good coordination.  He said he made me an ace in coordinated flight and everyone I flew with after said the same thing.  But I had the last laugh because I switched to trikes, where there is no rudder, just weight shift, to control the bank and pitch.  That is why trikes are inherently one of the safest forms of flight, as are PPC's, also modeled in freeware in Xplane11.  Blade theory works in flight simulation because  I have not found an aircraft in Xplane that does not handle the extremes of the flight envelope, from low to hypersonic speeds.  P3DV4 is also good, I do not knock their way of flight modeling, because I have created slow speed trikes and a high speed Lost in Space, Jupiter 2 model.  End backstory, enjoy the pics, this forum is still my favorite hangout because it is where we bring the hobby to fruition, not only to advertise for add-ons, payware and freeware but to share our experience and skills, whether only limited to simming or a mix of real world and sim flight.  All the best!

Cactus521 (for those who wonder, my call sign honors US Airways and their pilots, like Sully, formerly the callsign of my hometown airline, America West.  I worked for USAirways/American on their Union/Crew Scheduling project under a short term contract in 2014.  It was the epiphany of my simming experience because I wanted to add an airline to my career experience, just to say my flight experience brought me into the field of real aviation.  Just for a bit, but it was enough for bragging rights, lol)

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Edited by John_Cillis
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Good reading, Cactus521.

And, this Eurofox seems like such a nice and "fun" LSA to fly by seat-of-the pants!

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My favorite ramblin' reading came from Flying Magazine and Richard Bach.  When I was hospitalized in 1977 my male nurse bought me Flying Magazine's 50th Anniversary, he took me outside of the hospital while I was recovering from a neurological issue, because I admired his convertible sports car, since I was a car buff and motorcycle buff going way back to watching Gary Bettenhausen, who knew my parents, the Indy driver, near Chicago in the 60's, he raced Spring cars.  I was also a big fan of Eddie Rickenbacker and I read his book Rickenbacker, along with the Spirit of St. Louis, cover to cover. 

When I was a small boy in Gary Bettenhausen's Tinly Park, Illinois, my next door neighbor, an older teen built motorcycles and he would let me watch and study how the engine worked.  That is why I have such good luck with cars and helping friends buy aircraft, I have an ear for a good engine and an ear for a bad one that my big "brother" friend taught me.  My cars lasted forever, except for my Mazda Protege which was underpowered and a lemon, the AC simply could not handle the Phoenix heat, unlike my Highlander, Camry, and Chevy Malibu and my aftermarket AC on my Nissan Sentra before that.  Those are all the cars I have owned in my life, and I gave my Highlander and Camry to my ex wife and daughter for the love they have given me after my divorce.  Sadly my Mom waited until I was an adult before she told me my motorcycle buddy in Illinois was wasted in Vietnam, as so many fine Americans were, but not in vain, since he taught me so much of what I know today about "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle/Car/Computer Maintenance"

After that, I loved sailing, I skippered my first boat at age eight in Oregon, long before I could fly or drive, my father and uncles taught me early on how to handle a boat, like the old Bobbsy twins, without the sisters--lol.  I loved reading the Dove, Two Against the Western Ocean, and the Tinkerbelle, small boats that sailed against incredible odds.  That is why I took such a liking to small aircraft, it came from a joke a charter airline pilot pulled on me and my classmates coming home from Europe in '77 in Gander Newfoundland.  He pointed out a Rockwell Commander ahead of our DC8-63 for takeoff, and dryly said: we have to wait for that little guy to wind up his rubber band...

 

John
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bettenhausen

https://books.google.com/books?id=SOUUuRXEFmoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

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