With all the flaming etc for and against FsFx, (mines works reasonably OK on P2.4), the basic facts of sim life are maintained.I wanted to go to Cape Town from London.London-Malaga-refuel 737, head for Accra.Crashed on approach.Not scenery, not sim, just me getting it all wrong!737 now embedded in African bush 2 miles short of runway.I did so many things wrong, should have aborted, but thought I would rescue the situation only making it worse.So, FsFx is as unforgiving towards idiots.I have been doing this since Bruce Artwick days, I KNOW what I am doing, so in a nutshell I am an numptie!

Does it help that there are so many like you?Like me for example. I sometimes take the easy way out and use PSPilot,how great was that perfect landing! Cheer up the world is full of numpties who really in the end get things done despite themselves. Do you really want to be an anorak? Best wishes. Alan

Practice, practice, practice.I used to crash every time i landed the 737/747 but after a while i learned how it worked and how i could manouver it.After that it became as easy to land as an fighter jet. Turn into the approach vector on the GPS, set flaps, pop the wheels out and set it gently down on the runway.

Indeed.I can do anything with the 737!Landing is no problem, until, you plot wrong aproach to runway, and try and correct it from 400 feet as you drop through AS6 cloud base.I did not switch from GPS to Nav, and was happily following wrong needle.I switched to APP on FMS, which is no use unless you have NAV on on approach. I KNOW this!So, moral is, even expereinced simmers get it horribly wrong at times.

Now think about piloting a real plane with hundreds of real people behind you. No matter how good you are, we all make mistakes. Simple mistakes. Simple mistakes that cause BIG problems. I forgot to switch from Nav to GPS. Oops.I've been reading a bit about Ultra Safety and its application to aviation (and medicine). It's a really interesting topic, trying to figure out how to eliminate mistakes from a process. Training is part of it. But it can't do it all. No matter who you are you WILL make a mistake someday. Even if you are a computer! :)So what do you do? Do you punish people for making mistakes? That's what the system does today. Will that eliminate mistakes? I doubt it. The good thing is, the people responsible do understand this and are look for/at alternatives.(I'm not claiming to be an expert about it (I'm not). I'm just saying it's a really interesting topic).Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Ichinin said "Practice, practice, practice."Perhaps in your case, Ron, it should be, checklists, checklists, checklists. R-

Heheheh and who said flightsim can't be used to train for the real world. :-)Think about what happened, what you would do differently next time? Learn from it and find another new and innovative way to bugger it all up ... and repeat the process. A non jeopardy/destructive way to learn.I recently stuck a cargo 747-400 into a hill just to the east of Anchorage at night. Before departure I paid no attention at all to the terrain, took off with a nice hefty derate and pointed towards my first waypoint, gently climbing to my cruise alt.Next thing I know, these numbers appear on the PFD, I'm thinking, "that's odd, don't normally see those now, what were they again?". As the penny dropped the GPWS went off (quite a bit later than the real one does) and I reacted ... way too slow and the next thing I know all I can see is the silhouette of trees and buildings and the aircraft attitude jumping about the place uncontrollably as I crash into the hillside. Now I have crashes turned off (because I don't trust the AI pilots not to fly or taxi into me) so the aircraft stayed in one piece as it careened over the hill ... I felt a bit of a donut though.Lesson learnt, since then I've managed to get in and out of Quito, Bogota and La Paz in a 707 both in fog and at night and haven't hit anything as solid since.Take care,Ian

>So what do you do? Do you punish people for making mistakes? >That's what the system does today.Depends on the airline, the airline I fly for lets us get away with bloody murder providing we report it to them, tell them what we learnt and how we won't do it again. If, however, they detect it from the trace of each flight and have to contact us ... we could get into quite a lot of trouble. The idea being that absolutely anything and everything is reported, they are usually very understanding and all but the most dangerous/negligent of errors are "punished". Even "punishment" is in the form of training and/or extra sim sessions going over what happened and how best to handle it.In the fleet newsletter we also get a breakdown of the reports received and the trends noticed by the trace. Makes interesting reading .. well, on a long flight it does. :-)Hope this helps,Ian

>I did not switch from GPS to Nav, and was happily following>wrong needle. x( Been there...done that. It certainly does mess up a perfectly good flight doesn't it? You are not alone! (-:John

Ian,Done the three airports. Great nerve janglers.For me Innsbruck will always be the tester. In FsFx the mountains are so much clearer, therefore more scary as you fly the approach. Biggest issue here is scenery watching instaed of nose to windshield!Have you tried Maderia? That is a nasty wee approach in bad weather.Theh razy thing is that we are our own harsh monitors. I could easily plop 737 at gate at Accra, but no, I will not. I will fly the whole route again! I will do London-Cape Town and back again, with good landings and accurate navigation. Weather will be whatever AS6 makes of real world on each leg.Obbsessive / compulsive just a tad, but it is what makes sim work for me, the challenge of getting it right every time. So when I screw up, it hurts!regards,

>>I did not switch from GPS to Nav, and was happily following>wrong needle.>ouch. Admittedly, I have done that too. The VOR I was tracking was about 5 miles from the airfield. Made me feel like a dolt when I popped out of the clouds and realized where I was and what I had done. I did not crash, but I did have to go missed and try over. RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>>I've been reading a bit about Ultra Safety and its application>to aviation (and medicine). It's a really interesting topic,>trying to figure out how to eliminate mistakes from a process.> Training is part of it. But it can't do it all. No matter>who you are you WILL make a mistake someday. Even if you are>a computer! :)>It certainly is an interesting topic. In my line of work, mistakes are made on occasion, and they cost $$$. But, as we explain to customers, we are all human beings, and human beings make mistakes. We just have to accept some error in what we do.I really wouldn't like having 100's of people sitting in a steel tube behind me, depending on me not to make a mistake. That part of it, I wouldn't like.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>Think about what happened, what you would do differently next>time? Learn from it and find another new and innovative way to>bugger it all up ... and repeat the process. A non>jeopardy/destructive way to learn.>Yes in the incident I mentioned above, I landed the plane about 10 times since then and every time, I was VERY concious about making sure I had the right freq dialed in. I guess a lot of times, if you mess up ONCE, that one time is all it takes to burn it in to you.>>Lesson learnt, since then I've managed to get in and out of>Quito, Bogota and La Paz in a 707 both in fog and at night and>haven't hit anything as solid since.>:) I like ops in and out of Quito and La Paz a lot. Don't think I've tried Bogota (or its been a long time), but Medellin I have.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian