by Xyn_Air » Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:21 pm
Greetings Aritrixia!
I am always glad to see someone else new to SimV and learning to fly so I don't feel so alone! (I wonder when I will mature into a grizzled veteran and can stop saying that. ;D) Anyway, glad you are here!
In answer to your first question, I found that I often got excessive pitching when I took the autopilot off after extending flaps. Now, this could be because in my inexperience I have the aircraft trimmed poorly, but it is perhaps one thing to try. Also, if you are using a joystick and the flight surfaces want to move to where the joystick is located/calibrated versus where the flight surfaces were trimmed during autopilot, you may get some pitching as you match your joystick to where you want the aircraft to be trimmed. One example of this is if you move your throttle setting (if your joystick has that) and then disengage the autopilot. The throttle may then adjust itself to the throttle setting on the joystick, and if significantly different than the autopilot setting, you could get excessive pitching of the nose.
The best thing is to keep practicing, keep learning (those flight lessons are very useful), and try different things to discover more about how the aircraft handle. Fortunately, we get to make a lot of mistakes to learn from in FS without a high insurance deductible. ;)
As to your second question, there are some other options besides sleeping to get you through a long flight. Here are my suggestions:
1) Save the flight at different points along your journey and do a bit at a time. Often I will fly for a couple hours a night, save my flight progress, and continue on the next day.
2) Set up your "cockpit" to provide you with necessary supplies and entertainment for a long flight. By your cockpit, I don't me the one in the game, but I mean wherever you are physically sitting to play FS. I have a narrow, three-shelf rolling cart to one side of my chair, my desk and computer in front of me, and a refrigerator to the other side of my chair. On my cart, I put everything from magazines to airport maps to coffee pots . . . anything I think I might need if I had to sit down for the long haul. If you prepare yourself to have everything in reach that you might want on a real flight of significant duration, you might find that you can pull off some long haul flights in FS pretty well.
3) If you are using speakers and have your aircraft trimmed well (or on autopilot), don't be afraid to get up and stretch your legs while keeping and eye on the screen and listening for ATC. Sometimes real life gets in the way of what we would rather be doing. ::) So, there are times I keep an eye on what is happening in FS during a long flight while I take time to get up and do dishes or laundry, or clean up the flat. This is not too terribly realistic, but on long flights in say passenger liners, the flight crew can and will get up every now and then (well, not all of them all at once! ;D). Anyway, don't be afraid to multi-task if you need to.
4) Finally, if you are just wanting to move from where you take off to where you are landing, and the intervening distance and flight experience is of little interest to you, you can always use the time compression as Esselbach mentioned, or you can also use the slew mode to move your aircraft where you want it in short order. If you are looking to practice a lot of landings, you might want to consider saving your flights to your favorite destinations right before you begin your final approach. That way, you can load up your flight and start right at the exciting bits.
Well, I hope something in all of that was of help. Glad to see you, good luck, and hope to continue to hear from you.
All the best! ~ Darrin
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