I used (and continue to use for recurrency practice) Jepp's FlightPro.
I would recommend it, but not necessarily over the rest. My
requirements were to have something that I could practice procedures
with. FlightPro has no terrain graphics, but I don't care about that.
There are three planes to fly (a 172, a bonanza, and one other I can't
think of right now). It has approaches to almost every airport in the
country (very handy to shoot the approach the night before a lesson). I
would recommend a yoke (I have CH Products and it works just fine). You
can get rudder pedals, but I'm not sure they are worth it. You can turn
the plane just fine without them, and, while I usually land at the end
of an approach (after going missed a few times), I don't care if the
plane lands a bit sideways due to a cross wind. FlightPro (as do the
others, I presume) has some nice features like random failures of
instruments, wind settings, etc. I think I spent about $220 on the
software and yoke, and can run it on my laptop as well as my workstation
(which is nice, as it has a 21" screen). Again, I'm not recommending
FlightPro over the others. It's just that I have experience with it,
and found it to be quite helpful. My instructor(s) indicated that the
training flights usually went smoothly (baring any stupid actions on my
part) because I prepared for the flight beforehand. (After my
checkride, the DE called my instructor and said I did quite well, but
said that I fly the plane like a simulator. My last instructor lamented
that, as well. So I'm less than subtle on the controls! Isn't that
what they're there fore?! :-))

Hope that helps.



ivo welch wrote:
I have started on practical IFR training in the real world. (Vans
RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on
precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns,
approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per
training hour.

Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now
pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home
computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004",
"jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but
could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly
appreciated. help, please.

sincerely, /iaw


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