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Post by Tom Goodrick on Jul 7, 2009 19:43:55 GMT -5
Chip Barber has a good essay on flightsim.com questioning the wisdom of those of us hooked on flight simming. It's funny and a good read. But I felt I should state my view which differs a bit from his. He bemoans the fact that he can't impress anyone at parties by saying he is a flight simmer. I never go to parties.
I do find myself making small talk with strangers on occasion that leads me to mention I work on airplanes for the Flight Simulator and do a little sim flying now and then. I had such a conversation with a car salesman the other day as I was rocketing down a road in a fancy new car trying not to scare him too badly. The conversation went something like:
"What did you do before retiring?" "I was a rocket scientist at NASA. My specialty was flight mechanics of various strange craft." (I was driving a Honda CRV and could have told him I designed several hypersonic CRV's for NASA only they called them Cargo Return Vehicles (from the Space Station). My vehicles entered the atmosphere, slowed down without burning up and glided to a safe place to pop some parachutes. But I didn't.) "What do you do now for fun?" "I use my aeronautical engineering background to fix airplane models for the Flight Simulator. I used to be a pilot too so its fun in many ways."
We headed back to the barn. I didn't even get past Mach 2.
Most of the people I have met in cyberspace talking about Flight Sim are like me in that they had a fascination as kids with flying, maybe did a little of it, wondered how it manages to work so well so often and yet goes so badly wrong some times. So we sim and learn and have fun. We all have a wonder at the way planes fly, we respect the guys who do it well for real and try to see what challenges they face flying fast and fancy aircraft and try to experience some of that ourselves in a vicarious way.
It keeps us out of trouble except with our wives who will never understand why we waste our time in such a way - sitting stupidly in a dark room with only the glow of the panel lights as we line up for the approach. I usually wear headphones for isolation from roudy "passengers." Sometimes I even listen to ATC and the tower. Once my wife wanted to know what I was listening to so I took off the headphones and cranked up the volume. The drone of the turboprop almost drowned out the ATC instructions to which I replied in my best pro-pilot voice. She just said "Oh." and never asked again. So most of the time I am sitting here with headphones on as now listening to the screaming trumpets and trombones of Les Brown.
Let's go through a typical flight. You line up and push the throttles to the noted limit (80% power) which keeps the torque and temps low enough to save the engines from self-destruction; at the right speed you pull back gently and the nose rises a slight amount and the plane begins leaving the runway. You get the gear up, wait for 400 ft and then start pulling in the flaps while reducing the power slightly (75%) to maintain a comfortable climb rate while taking the departure headings and then climb on the cruise heading back at 80%. During the climb to 25,000 ft you check that all is going well while the autopilot holds the heading and the climb rate. On jets going to high altitudes, you have more work holding proper airspeed and climb rate as the engines lose power. At cruise you set cruise power after the autopilot levels off and gains some speed. Cruise power is about 65%. You make sure the plane is flying the proper course, coupled to the nav system.
When it is time to start down, you reduce power a little (40%) and set a proper descent rate and leveling altitude for use in the vicinity of the destination until you get near the approach. When you level, you adjust power for speed so you don't waste too much time getting to the airport but are slow enough when you get there to transition smoothly to the approach. This takes some planning. You set the instruments for the final approach and then make the transition. You add gear and flaps and reduce power or add power as needed to fly the approach with some degree of precision. It is satisfying to break out of the overcast with the runway just ahead with the plane on the glideslope. You make a slight flare and touch down at a nice speed and rate. You might even take the time to taxi in.
All of that is interesting, challenging and fun. That's why we do it.
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Post by Allen Peterson on Jul 8, 2009 14:40:23 GMT -5
Well said, Tom. My seven year old granddaughter says to her Oma, "When Opa says he's going to check his emails I know he is really going to fly". She does like to set in my lap and fly the Piper Cub though. There is some hope for impressing folks. We have an airport association here and they have one or two events a summer, usually a BBQ at one of the members' hangers. The members are mostly pilots and folks who have a business on the airport, but it is open to interested folks like myself. At the last event in early June a fellow introduced himself while I was munching on my burger and wanted to know if he could join me. I asked him what kind plane he had, he said a Cessna 172 and that he flies south for the winter (his wife drives) and he had just gotten back for the summer. I said that I was a Microsoft sim pilot and I liked to fly the Cessna. We had a nice chat about flying approaches, patterns and nearby airports. I told him about Magee (S77) that was a little tricky getting into and out of. He said that he had flown into it also and his experiences matched mine pretty close. We both agreed that the only way to get out was to take off to the south.
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Post by Bill Von Sennet on Jul 9, 2009 22:25:03 GMT -5
I've been flying Turbo-Props the last few days.
Piaggio Avanti II and Pilatus PC-12
I've retired my Cessna Mustang Jet. The Avanti is faster, and they both have superior payload capacity.
So Tom, what did you think about the CR-V? We looked at a Hyundai Santa Fe, Honda CR-V and a Saturn Vue. Still want to check out a Toyota Rav4. So far nothing suits us as well as our Hyundai Sonata, so we plan on keeping it another year. Its a comfortable car, but I would like something higher so it would be easier to get in and out.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Jul 9, 2009 22:49:22 GMT -5
We bought the CRV. Today I put 60 miles on it going to the bank, to the insurance agent, to the registy of MV and back to the bank. We did not even look at any sedans because my wife has difficulty getting in and out of them. I have an easy time getting in and out of this as long as I don't park too close to an adjacent car. Getting in when in the garage and my wife has slid the seat forward is another matter. I need to learn to slide the seat back before entering.
I made high-quality stereo versions of my songs from Soundclick recorded on an audio CD and it plays them very well. On today's trip I went through Stan Kenton, Hank Mancini, Les Brown and Tom Goodrick (not that there's much to compare). I am averaging 22.7 mpg in city driving. The Rav4 with a 6-cylinder engine option (for an additional $4000) has more pep but I did not feel the CRV was underpowered today. In a few days I'll test it on Monte Sano, east of Huntsville.
I shook too many hands the other day. I am coming down with the flu - maybe THE FLU.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Jul 11, 2009 10:17:27 GMT -5
(I've recovered from my very minor bout with the flu.)
One of the main reasons many of us fly the sim is that we can use it to learn many things about why airplanes do what they do. Take, for example, the main thing airplanes do - They FLY! I recently read an article in FLYING in which Peter Garrison fails to come up with a good explanation for what you do when the engine stops. This gets to the heart of airplane technology.
FS2004 comes with airplanes of a wide variety of types from heavy transports to light trainers and even to gliders that do all their flying without benefit of an engine. Flying a glider is great practice for any pilot. Learn what you can, and cannot, make the glider do.
The one truth about any airplane is that it can fly with good control only when maintaininga moderate but sufficient airspeed. To maintain airspeed it needs a component of force pushing (or pulling, if you wish) toward the nose. An engine does this job admirably. But when the engine stops, is there still a force toward the nose? Yes if you point the nose down a little bit. Then a small component of the weight points forward along the center axis of the airplane. Note that a small amount of airspeed is needed for the tail to hold the wing at any angle of attack the pilot wants according to his position of the stick and pitch trim. So as long as you maintain a certain minimum airspeed, the airplane will be controllable and will continue to generate both a large lift component and a significant thrust component to offset the drag even if the engine is not working or is missing from the aircraft.
Note to fly a glider, either takeoff and climb in a small Cessna and then switch to the glider in mid-air (as though towed up to altitude) or you can just go to MAP mode and enter an altitude several thousand feet above the ground and release the glider. In either case there will be a breif period when the glider is "upset" but you will quickly gain control and fly smoothly.
Gliders can do some things that may amaze you. They can do loops. But the one thing they cannot do is to sustain a climb to an altitude above where they started. They will always come down and land, eventually. To sustain a climb, you need an engine.
The key to an aircraft's gliding ability is the max ratio of lift to drag that it can maintain. The time it will take to come down is related to the max lift coefficient it can maintain. (These are not necessarily the same conditions. Max lift is generally slower than max lift/drag ratio.) It can be shown in a quasi-steady-state analysis that the ratio of lift to drag is the same as the ratio of distance flown to altitude lost. (Why "quasi"? because the glider always decelerates slightly as it descends due to the change in density.)
The force diagram for a gliding aircraft looks a lot like the force diagram for a mass sliding down an inclined plane. That is related to the inclusion of the word "plane" in airplane.
On my web site (click the icon under my photo) you will find some special gauges including a guage showing "Glide Ratio" which actually shows lift/drag at all times. You can put this on various aircraft, including powered aircraft flown with zero thrust, to see what the glide ratio is at various speeds and configurations. You will see that glide ratio is affected by gear, flaps and whether a prop is windmilling or is "feathered" (pull prop back) so it won't rotate. You will see that weight does not change the glide ratio but does change the airspeed at which best glide ratio occurs.
It is good to study this for an aircraft you like to fly a lot. Make a table of best glide airspeed versus gross weight. (There is also a weight and CG gauge you can use on any aircraft.)
Have fun.
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Post by hanspetter on Jul 12, 2009 2:50:41 GMT -5
My take on why we do this: It starts out with a curious mind -- why do airplanes fly? Then it's satisfying to master the controls (at any level) and check out what happens. For me it started out with FS98 back in 97 / 98. My brother-in-law gave me a disk since it was of no use to him. This flight "game" had no action in terms of combat and the airplanes just crashed whatever you did to them so he found it quite boring. Before I tried FS98 I was totally disinterested in computer "games". However, as soon as I had installed FS and started doing horrible things to a Cessna I was hooked. The learning curve was pretty steep but this "game" actually related to something real. Learning to understand the physics of flight and learning to master various aircraft was my kind of challenge. There were other aspects too. As I discovered Flightsim.com I found that FS enthusiasts discussed everything pertaining to aviation and even offered freeware enhancements. I could download new aircraft, scenery enhancements and other add-ons. Almost any aircraft I could think of was represented. I learned about historic aircraft as well as all flavors of current aircraft. FS was even my "Google Earth" at that time helping me learn more about geography. Then I stumbled into Tom Goodrick. He advised me to buy "Stick and rudder" and read up on the physics of flight. I did and took desktop flying to another level. Now I could better understand the basics required to get it right. Most gamers who dabble into FS skip this point as I did in the beginning. They think of an airplane as a race car in the sky and know nothing about trim, angle of attack and speed control. To go down they'll point the nose down rather than reducing power and trimming it up.
Flightsimming has the potential of teaching us something real. That's why I stay interested. Since FS98 our sim worlds have become prettier / more accurate and our computers are more powerful. The main thrill remains the same -- understanding why an aircraft flies and how to master it.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Jul 12, 2009 9:52:37 GMT -5
I want to add something about flight simulations in general. I don't think the people who think of this as a "game" really understand the meaning and value of a "simulation."
My first introduction to a flight simulation came in 1958 at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota. I was a 15-year-old Civil Air Patrol cadet who had about 15 hours as a participating "observer" in the back of a Piper J-3 Cub. I was selected to spend a breif time in the simulator they had for the F-86 interceptor. They had the simulator there for the purpose of giving their F-86 pilot practice in all-weather interception. It consisted of semi-cylindrical mock-up of the cockpit section of the single-pilot F-86 connected to a large computer (probably mostly analog) witha back room in which instructors could observe the progress of the flight and issue radio commands to the pilot. Their mission was to fly out and intercept Soviet bombers coming across the Arctic or Alaska to bomb the US - serious stuff.
When I got in, the aircraft was in cruise at 10,000 ft. I made some gentle turns to get aquainted and then was told to to turn hard to the right. I did what I would do in the Piper Cub - kicked in a significant amount of rudder and rolled into a 45 degree bank. Imediatly I saw the gyro horizon start spinning. I knew that was not good. An instructor reached in (I had the canopy up) and tired to recover from the spin. He couldn't. I tried some things because I was able to recover from spins in the Cub that just made things worse. My flight was brief as they had to stop the sim and restart. During the debriefing they laughed when I told them I applied the same controls as in the Cub. They said you opnly use the rudder in the F-86 when on the ground to turn the nose wheel.
That peaked my interest. Their sim certainly could show the difference between a Piper Cub and an F-86. How did it work?
Later, after I graduated from engineering school and began using computers in a hands-on way, I started developing programs that simulated various motions that were hard to understand - parachutes in flight, gliding parachutes being guided to a target on the ground, cargo loads sliding over the ramp of an aircraft and beginning to tumble, and cargo payloads landing under a gliding parachute and bouncing and sliding to a halt. This culminated in a program I wrote for NASA that simulates both orbital motion in space and aerodynamic flight as you enter the atmosphere of spherical, rotating Earth to land on a designated runway. I left the control loop open so you could fly well or poorly, squish yourself with too many entry G's, burn up when too hot or crash into a far corner of the globe. But I gave cues you could follow to fly properly and land where you desire.
It became obvious that a simulation was to an engineer as an acquarium is to a marine biologist. It is a "place" where you can experiment with elements of a problem isolated from other uncontrollable elements. You cannot always predict the outcome of an experiemnt but you know it will be clsoe to the outcome the experiment would have in real life. You can crash and not get hurt.
This is what it is for everyone. The only things that differ between us are the experiments we think up and the results we learn.
Today the aviation industry uses simulators to train all jet pilots and to maintain their proficiency. Jet-rated pilots all spend a fair amount of hours flying simulators. They do things in the simulator that would be dangerous to try in the real aircraft like recovering from emergency situations.
The word "game" is totally inapplicable. There is no goal, impediment and a win or lose outcome. You always win no matter what happens. You learn. Any experiment you try is a valid experiment as long as the sim is valid in the sense of physics and math. Here is where we have to be careful. As I have mentioned many times, FS does not simulate spins in an entirely accurate way because they calculate the lift as centered on the aircraft, not distributed along each wing. But for most aspects of flight - even spin recovery once you work at getting into a spin - you can learn valid lessons from FS.
With many of my aircraft, you can get into trouble such as an inverted flat spin from which recovery is essentially impossible. Note that I provide you with a ParaFoil gliding canopy and a Skydiver. You can change to the Skydiver and then to the man under the ParaFoil and glide safely to the ground.
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Post by Allan_Lowson on Jul 13, 2009 15:46:42 GMT -5
The Honda should take care of you, I've just passed my last company Accord back to the leasing company after 51 months with 136,700 miles on the clock and the only problem I had with it was all four headlamps cutting out one night. The garage fixed it the next day, I think it was something to do with moisture getting into the headlamp assemblies. I have another Accord in the garage that I have had almost 19 years old and over 100k miles. The aircon is out of commission because I didn't operate it often enough, but it has pretty much been wear and tear issues down the years.
I replaced the company car with a Passat mainly because Honda don't do spare wheels as standard any more, and I don't trust cans of scooshy foam to get me home with a tear in the sidewall!
Anway I got the low carbon diesel one - the exhaust is closer to the ground to get rid of the 170 horses worth of fumes.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Jul 14, 2009 9:16:01 GMT -5
I have a driveway that would wipe out a low exhaust pipe. It slopse down steeply from my house to the road and then the edge og the road starts an upward slope to the center that is significant. Most sedans leave ugly scrapes. The Honda CRV is just right.
In the US right now a big deal is selecting a dealer who will last more than six months. That means you must see evidence that they are selling cars and that their parent company is sound. I have had too many orphan cars to overlook that aspect. So GM and several other brands were ruled out from the start. But age is also a player. My wife would not let me look at any sedan because she has difficulty with her hips getting into and out of a low sedan seat. My own hips are not the greatest. Aging can be tough.
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