I attempted to land at 3MY airport in Peoria, IL with fair weather in a Cessna 172. On final approach, I felt some turbulence and suddenly I was climbing at 700 fpm. I reduced throttle to idle, and the wind carried me for another 2 miles past the airport. I tried the same scenario again, same turbulence and had to nose the plane down causing me to overspeed. Under no circumstances could I land safely. Is this realistic?

Hee hee, what kind of turbulence you have selected? :)My guess is that you ar the victim of a bad frame rate. Try it first with NO wind and or turbulence and see how it goes. If your correcting for anything then its lag due to frame rate. This is one of the problems you will see once frames head into the low teens and single digits. Its not smooth enough to correct for deviations properly and you get what is called PIO or pilot induced oscillation.Hornit

Actually it sounds like you caught a strong thermal on final. You can disable thermals (or turn on a way to view them) in the Weather Settings screen.

That must have been one MOTHER thermal! :)Hornit

Such situations exist in real life.I've found thermal activity in FSX to be pleasantly realistic.James

I agree with Hornit. My personal experiences of flying through thermals are that they are pretty local. You get that "BANG" feeling and then you

This happened to me last week too coming in for a landing on a strip in the excellent flightzaone portland scenery addon. As i got closer to the runway my plane kept rising and rising on a pillow of warm air. It was so strong i ended up going around. Cool effect!

HiI have had the same situation with clear weather -(no wind - no clouds) the airplane suddently start climbing when on short final - several times.What cause's that?Anyone else had the same expierience?RegardsHenrik KorningBGGH

Sometimes you have to compensate for ground effect, although that's only supposed to happen when you're quite near the ground.James

Hi JamesYes - as I understand Ground effect - its the aircraft - in cooperation with terrain - riding on a "Pillow" of air produced by the wings.But this starts in 100-200 ft above terrain.Strange!RegardsHenrik

YES! this is realistic, and thank god for that at last!Being a glider pilot in real life, I can assure that a thermal can do that kind of thing, in fact it is one of the traps glider pilots are cautioned not to fall into. It's tempting to think 'ooh there's some more lift' and extend one's flight in a glider, but if you are going to land a glider, you should land it. However, in a Cessna there are no spoilers with which you could dump the lift and thus it might present the kind of problem you state.I can assure you that I have, in real life, experienced climb rates well in excess of 1200 feet per minute in a glider where decent thermal and wave lift are. This is why I have been saying that FSX is way better than FS9, one of the things you realise when you fly aircraft for real is that you are not driving along a road in the sky, you are moving through a living, breathing air mass and FSX finally goes some way towards emulating this.Several aircraft have come a cropper on the backside of this phenomenon where they hve been literally driven into the ground by excessive down drafts (do a search online for recent airliner crashes on landing and you'll find this is quite often the cause). Now simulator pilots have to consider this too, as do real world pilots.I personally know of one or two 747 pilots who fly gliders that have taken advantage of this phenomenon to extend the glide in a 747 (yes really). The really funny thing however, is watching them land a glider and them forgetting they aren't in a 747, initiating a flare that leaves them 50 feet off the ground, funny as ####.Anyway, this is what flying an aeroplane is like in the real world, so enjoy it because now it really is starting to become 'As real as it gets'.

Why 3MY?Did you drift over the field west of the airport on a hot day?

I attempted to land on this runway east, then west with the same results. I had no idea a thermal could have that kind of an impact on a light plane on a pleasant day. I guess it's very important to check ATIS before landing, although I don't know if thermal or updraft info is mentioned in the FSX ATIS reports.

Any flat land of suitable size will generate thermals on a good hot day by absorbing and then reflecting solar heat. I think darker land generates more lift - It may have been the other way around. Anyway, the open area west of Allen Road does this very well. I've been there in a real airplane and had this problem. I didn't let it climb, because I didn't want to bust Peoria's airspace, but descending was difficult. We stayed east of the road afterward. (If you are one of Adama's students, you have probably been in the same place in the same airplane. :()I haven't installed FSX yet, I just got it, but I'll see what I get and let you know. The Real World does bounce you around west of the airport, but east of it wasn't as much of a problem. The golf course didn't work as well, I guess.PS: 3MY is a unicom airport, it doesn't have an ATIS. The Peoria ATIS wouldn't mention anything at 3MY.

>Hi James>>Yes - as I understand Ground effect - its the aircraft - in>cooperation with terrain - riding on a "Pillow" of air>produced by the wings.>>But this starts in 100-200 ft above terrain.>>Strange!>>Regards>>>HenrikGround effect is typically half the distance of the wing above the ground. For example, if your wing was 60 foot long (from left tip to right tip) then the ground effect would be around 30 foot off the ground.Correct me if I'm wrong, its been a while since I studied my aviation stuff.