orangeindiana

I don't really do forums very often, but I wanted to throw this up for anybody who was having trouble like I was. Maybe it'll pull in a few people from Google, too. I've had Flight since it came out in February. It didn't take long for me to get through all of the challenges, missions and achievements, except for one: the Maule Landing Challenge. Specifically, getting gold on challenge 4. There's a lot of tough ones in the Maule, butthis one, where you have to land on the narrow strip on a hill north at Mauna Kea-Honolii, was killing me. Even more than landing backwards for #6, which was at least fun. This one was pull your hair out frustrating. But after spending a long time with it, I finally nailed it tonight with about 1470. So, here's a strategy to try out if this is the last thing standing between you and getting an achievement. This is what worked for me; there's probably other ways, but I couldn't find any other suggestions out there. General tips --------------- * If you've already flown the Maule some, you know it's a headache to land. If I had a dollar for every time I heard passengers groan in a charter mission when I landed, I could probably buy a real one by now. So do all you can to make it easier: reducing fuel in the hangar to what you need for the challenge (under 10%), keeping the speed as slow as possible before touchdown, and maybe raising the seat up just a little for better visibility (Ctrl-W). I didn't end up using the last one for the challenge, but its been helpful in missions. * Land on the short side, not the long uphill. In other words, at the beginning, go left, not right. For one, the other side often won't trigger an uphill landing. But even when it does, it's so difficult to get a soft touchdown on the uphill that it's not worth your time. I ended up with much higher, more consistent scores by going left. Another bonus: it's much closer to get to the touchdown zone on the left side on the right, and you'll probably be spending a while on this. That adds up to a lot of saved time. * Avoid trying the challenge on multiplayer. It sucks to have a perfect landing lined up, just to have a lag interrupt right as you're about to touch down. * Make sure the last thing you did in the Maule left the engine on (so, no finishing up a mission where you turn it off on the tarmac). Otherwise your engine'll be off at the beginning of the flight. Same goes for the viewpoint and anything else saved. * Use the mouse, or a joystick if you have one. Forget about doing any of these on a keyboard. * Take a break when/if you get frustrated like I did. It's not fun to play at that point anyway, and you'll get sloppy. It's just a game. Step-by-step ---------------- Because of how many tries the challenge will take, you're just going to set up for a short approach. It saves time, and the advantage gained by a nice, long straight-in isn't enough to warrant spending a long while to set up over and over. Here's how to go about it. It'd be easier with screenshots, but that's more effort than I care to put in. 1. Once the challenge starts, begin a moderate turn to the left immediately. You'll be going about 20 degrees, to a heading of 335. I like having a visual reference instead of looking at the heading indicator. For me, that was the right tree out of a little triangle of them, just above where the forest ends before the ravine and field. Graphic settings may alter what's there, so don't worry if you can't tell what I'm talking about. Just find something that you'll remember to help put you on that heading within a few seconds. 2. As you're turning, pull the throttle back to 40%. 3. Once you're on the heading, center your mouse/joystick. This'll put you on a nice glide down. 4. Switch to the overhead view (F12). You may want to zoom out one notch from the standard view to get a little bigger picture. Along your route of flight, you'll be passing over a few different kinds of terrain: first there's a light green field with darker green lines that look like grill marks, followed by a brown field, then a darker green section of forest, then a ravine, and finally an open field that lies before the runway on the right. If your heading is correct, the runway should be about perpendicular (90 degree angle) to your route of flight. Stay on the map. 5. Watch your altitude as you pass from the brown field to the forest. You should be right around 2,000', no more than 100' above or below. If you're too high or too low, adjust your power a little on a subsequent run. Also, drop the first notch of your flaps as you pass this point. You shouldn't be any faster than 70 knots. 6. As you pass from the forest to the ravine, switch back to the cockpit view. Turn right to line up with the runway. It'll be a fairly hard turn, in part to help lose some speed quickly, but careful to not undershoot or fall below 55 knots. Sometime between the beginning of the turn and lining up with the runway, drop the flaps the rest of the way and pull power to 30%. Also, set your parking brake (Shift-X), which will help you stop faster later. 7. Everything from here on out is visual. You should be lined up, but lower than you would normally approach a runway, only a few hundred feet above and no faster than 60 knots. You're aiming to land on the small flat portion on top of the hill, but right before it can work too. Beyond that, and it gets pretty hard to touch down softly. Once you're lined up, depending on your altitude, you'll want your power between 0-15%. 8. Keep pulling up to keep from descending too quickly while losing airspeed. Ideally, you'll touch down right before you stall. Having a low speed will not only help you touch down more softly, which is where you lose the most points on this challenge, but it also keeps you from bouncing up and flying over the flat part toward the downhill. You'll probably have your noise high enough that you won't see anything useful in front of you as you're touching down, so keep an eye towards that side window to help control the last few feet of your descent. 9. After touching down, keep the nose down. Your parking brake is set, so don't touch the brakes. If you were a little off center, use the rudder keys to keep it on the centerline (moving up the viewpoint now with Ctrl-W might help for these last few seconds). 10. And that's it. Hopefully you touched down soft enough for a high score. Centerline and side skid are easy points in this, and rarely below 450, so it's all about getting it down gently. If you didn't make it, welcome to the club. It's gonna take some practice. Hope this helped out someone. It's a good feeling when you finally nail it, even though mine was mixed with "I can't believe I just wasted that much time doing this." Just wait till the ladies hear about this!