On Feb 13, 7:43 pm, wrote:
Hi All,

I'm a longtime lurker here, but now I have a question I hope the group
can help me with. I am working toward my instrument rating (21 hours
so far), and want to use MSFS to practice (cheaply). I do fine with

Steve,
For my instrument training, I used the Elite program and followed
their Instrument Training Syllabus. I completed this self-taught
course along with actual simulated instrument practice with my husband
as safety pilot before we took the accelerated instrument training
with Bill Zaleski in Schenecdaty NY. Bill told us that we were ready
for the checkrides after 5 days. My logbook showed that I only had
the 'minimum' dual instrument training time so the $150 I spent on the
core Elite program + $50 for the IFR training manual were well spent.
I highly recommend you giving it a try. We 'played' with MS Flight
Simulator for years mainly for the scenery but did not find it
realistic enough for control inputs/feedbacks. I also purchased X-
plane but did not spent a lot of time with it to compare with other
programs. By the way, we even bought the Dream Fleet Cardinal addon
for MS FS to 'simulate' our flying experience with our Cardinal. The
look was there but not the feel of the control. I have not used MS FS
for the last 2 years but my recollection was that the control
adjustments were not fine enough (with both my old Thrustmaster
Joystick/CH pedal or my new CH yolk/pedal). With Elite, I was able
to adjust the sensitivities to get pretty close to real life
flying. If you are interested in Elite but don't want to spend alot
of money, you may want to check ebay. A friend of mine just bought
the program for $100. I plan to loan him my IFR training manual to
practice in preparation for his IFR checkride. You can also download
Elite trial program. It allows you 5 minutes of 'practice'.

Hai Longworth