Game Discussions Microsoft Flight Simulator

AkenBosch

AkenBosch
I don't even watch the trim lever, I usually just eyeball it from the variometer and it works pretty good also to keep a steady climb or descent rate, of course you'll have to compensate each and every time you throttle back or forward. For landings I aim around 130 km/h as well, usually a bit over that when lined up on final approach, flaps to slow down and level the nose, then extend them fully to slow down to 100 or below just before touching down gently. From my short experience with it, giving a bit of throttle when coming short helps more in getting the nose up without losing additional speed than actually gaining it.

Earlier I did my first short night flight in the Robin, the 30 NM separating Cuneo-Levaldigi from Caselle, in real time and live weather (cloud cover). Flying at night is utterly, absolutely, completely spectacular. Also managed a quite good short landing, I'll see if I can upload a video for reference later.
 
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Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Right, under normal circumstances I don't look at the trim wheel or lever, and rarely pay much attention to the trim indicator in external cam, just look to achieve a steady rate of ascent / descent or level flight where I can take the pressure of the stick. The reason I looked at those things was because the angle of attack was so off (and on a number of occasions the plane simply lost airspeed and stalled), and I assumed this was to do with the trim. In fact though, it seems it was more to do with the airspeed, where the trim was compensating for the fact that at the speed I was traveling, the plane wanted to descend.

And yes, throttling up if you're coming in short simply means you can maintain the correct airspeed while descending less fast, and according to Squirrel (and others), airspeed is the most important factor when flying, which makes sense - hence I've been using the checklists which tend to give airspeed guides for the various phases of a flight, although in the case of the Robin, for cruise they only mention RPM (which of course can / will affect airspeed). Looking at the planes stats though it gives a cruise airspeed of about 115 ktas, and when I was having issues I was well under that.

It's one of the things I'm loving about the game / sim, learning the real world aspects of flying airplanes, and it's a most rewarding feeling (for me at least) when I learn something new, and things drop into place. :)
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
AkenBosch said:
......... From my short experience with it, giving a bit of throttle when coming short helps more in getting the nose up without losing additional speed than actually gaining it.
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Faded Glory said:
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And yes, throttling up if you're coming in short simply means you can maintain the correct airspeed while descending less fast, .........
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Is this not mentioned in the training within the game? I remember being told yonks ago that the most important thing was to use the throttle to control rate of descent. I remember wondering how that could be applied to gliders though. ;)
 

AkenBosch

AkenBosch
@Faded Glory - DR400 speed management on landing at my local airport. To be completely honest, landing was pretty much crap by any competent standard, VASI on full red, dropped on wheels and not even the ATC guy sounded exactly enthusiastic about my landing (even though I've yet to understand whatever he said. I'll have to hear it on proper headphones I'm afraid 😅 ). But hey, a landing is a landing. Also, look how beautiful my city looks at night! :D

Source: https://youtu.be/is7WcTHIzPo
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
So, I've got the Airbus stick and today, I'm about to return the T.Flight.

All the opinions posted here about it were absolutely spot-on, the Airbus stick is so much more accurate to fine adjustments that even controlling by left hand, I can land much smoother than before. The T.Flight was jittery, it was visible on the yoke.
As for flying without throttle, the pros already outweigh the cons. While it is not that easy to adjust throttle while landing (especially with standard keybinds of F1-F3), having left hand controlling the stick with right hand free to operate anything including looking around is a huge plus - not to mention that right hand stick took place of the mouse, so it was awkward to use the mouse (and I'm using it a lot in-flight). Also, I prefer that it occupies far less real estate on my desk and I don't have to relocate my peripherals just because I booted up MSFS.

One more commentary: having one analogue throttle is nice, but when flying the Beechcraft Baron G58 (at the moment my favorite aircraft for looks, and balance of performance) that has prop rpm and mixture adjustments as well, it is far from enough. I think I will simply map the six button from 'insert' to 'pg dn' to operate all three.
 
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avow555

avow555
Mole HD said:
The inner and outer Hebrides weren't too bad...I managed to fly over my old farmhouse on South Uist and the scenery wasn't too far off what I remember from living there (A giant peat bog surrounded by sea). The Orkneys however are a complete abomination more akin to Minecraft than a flight sim.
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Yes Orkney is quite poor.
Scotland in general could use a large improvement.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Faded Glory said:
It really is a pretty game... :)
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Depends where you are in the world. Some places are downright ugly. Sadly these "some places" often are the places I'm most interested in. This is Bing's fault, not Asobo, and I hope Bing someday gets its act together and gives us aerial imagery on par with Google Earth and Apple Maps.
 

askavir

askavir
Ian Skippy said:
It sure is, if you can see something that is. :p

Source: https://youtu.be/I6125IUzGCg
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Even when you can't, it's still mostly beautiful, even if you can only see the cockpit. Some cockpits are just drop dead gorgeous at night, the TBM930 and the King Air are my current favorite cockpits. Sadly I really don't like the sound of the King Air's engines, it's the Asp Explorer of MSFS2020 :D

I've been having tons of fun flying into stormy / foggy / cloudy / rainy places, the weather visuals are just absolutely fantastic! After 24 years of almost daily motorcycle riding (right until the pandemic brought the end of daily commutes - good riddance!), I've never imagined I would someday say that I'm loving the bad weather! :ROFLMAO:

It would be nice if the world map would have some kind of airport iconography to let us know before hand of things like airports with no illumination, airports with no ATC, availability of ILS, etc. I would also like if the world map wasn't so blurred when we zoom in, it would save me a lot of alt-tabbing to google maps to get a sense of locations.
 
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Faded Glory

Faded Glory
askavir said:
It would be nice if the world map would have some kind of airport iconography to let us know before hand of things like airports with no illumination, airports with no ATC, availability of ILS, etc. I would also like if the world map wasn't so blurred when we zoom in, it would save me a lot of alt-tabbing to google maps to get a sense of locations.
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I've kind of stopped using the world map for anything other than basic route plotting and have been using Skyvector to get ILS frequencies. It's pretty good and has lots of information including approach vectors with VOR / altitude info, and while I haven't been programming those in as of yet, I've been manually routing myself in using that info (headings and altitude), and have been having much better landings as a result.

I also re-flew a few sections of the USA bush trip, and that also was much more precise when you can get airport altitudes and altitudes of the world around. It's a free tool, and well worth a look.
 

AkenBosch

AkenBosch
@askavir - on the subject of airport iconography, after wondering myself a few days ago how to find VOR frequencies without going external, I discovered there are indeed filters on the map to show nav aids, it will add icons for the various VOR/ILS transmitters near airports and relative frequencies.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
AkenBosch said:
@askavir - on the subject of airport iconography, after wondering myself a few days ago how to find VOR frequencies without going external, I discovered there are indeed filters on the map to show nav aids, it will add icons for the various VOR/ILS transmitters near airports and relative frequencies.
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True, and it will add it to the flight plan. But once loaded into the game the freqs are removed from the flight log... :/
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
AkenBosch said:
@askavir - on the subject of airport iconography, after wondering myself a few days ago how to find VOR frequencies without going external, I discovered there are indeed filters on the map to show nav aids, it will add icons for the various VOR/ILS transmitters near airports and relative frequencies.
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Yep, if you turn on the navigation aids in the map, then some ILS frequencies are shown... Not all though, it's a bit hit and miss. For example, San Francisco's 28 runways do not have ILS frequency markers. I assumed, incorrectly that perhaps that was real world, but looking at Skyvector showed me that there is indeed an ILS approach, and it works just fine in the game / sim.

I have no issue using third party stuff - nor did I in ED - and there is another site that will let you plan out your flights and it will (I believe) input them into your chosen planes computer in the game. It's called Simbrief, and Squirrel has a video demonstrating how to use it in MSFS. I haven't used it myself as yet, as I'm currently more into flying than programming the planes to fly themselves. However, that could change in time. :)
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
And for @Old Duck you can disable the co-pilot in the plane cfg file. Just delete the text between those, so it says copilot = "". You have to do this for every plane type you want to 'fly alone'.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Over the last few days I have been extensively testing the DA40, DA62 and Bonanza G36. One of them would be my 'around the world' plane. The DA62 appealed the most: fast, great range, stunning sleek design, high ceiling, fully de-ice gear. Perfect!

But after lots of testflights I settled on a DA40. It's objectively worse than the other two but the canopy offers such awesome views and that is half the fun. :) No de-iceing at all, will figure that bit out as I go. Doesn't have the fancy weather system either, just nexrad as far as I can tell. Have to admit the 62 feels 'unfinished', both in handling and instrument modeling. :/

Anyway, I buy a used DA40 in France and a little later I receive a message from a 64-year old Frenchman. He explains the past history of this plan, the trips he made in it five years ago and wishes me lots of fun with.

Was a pretty cool gesture. :)
 
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