by macca22au » Tue Feb 19, 2008 12:58 am
Yep, your hundred dollars probably would only have covered the TIF - the Trial Instruction Flight.
If you are keen, committed and really want to fly, then like thousands before you, you will scratch up the money and learn to fly real planes.
In my experience it was the best thing I ever did. However I was able to fly myself on business, and had a friend who also leased several aircraft which I got to fly at no charge - right up to a Navajo. So although my personal outlays were pretty heavy, they were nowhere like they could have been for the planes that I flew. For instance a free instrument renewal is a big bonus. There are a thousand other stories from a thousand other people as to how they got their licence and got into a uniform.
But that's up to you.
I worry about people who come to flightsim cold, treat it like an arcade game, get bored and head off to the next first person shooter game on the market.
If you are interested in flying, work through the tutorials, treat each plane seriously, then it is satisfying and fun.
You can also do the things that you have always wanted to do, but never could because of real world aviation rules.
I am in Australia, so of course I have taken a Cessna, then a 747 under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in flightsim. In the real world if you weren't shot down, you would lose your licence and stare at prison bars for a while. It's a great safety valve.
Also flightsim gives rise to those who simply fly, those who go online into multiflyer situations, those who design add-on planes, airfields and scenery, those who paint add-on liveries to make the sky more real, others who invent utilities to improve this or that, makers of gauges, builders of cockpits, mission designers, and AI aircraft, bears, boats and vehicles etc, etc.
Every aviation nut, dreamer, builder and doer has a place in this world of simulated aviation. It's a hoot and an addiction.