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#1
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Does anyone own this? I was thinking of using it at home as I start my
instrument training for help with repetative proceedures. If you own it do you have a recommendation for a Yoke or Joystick? Thanks in advance. Trip |
#3
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I just bought FS2004 and have been using FS2002 since it came out. In
FS2002 the IFR clearances were pretty limited - precision approaches only, to the longest runway only at a given airport, no pop-up clearances - but these shortcomings appear to have been addressed in FS2004 although I havent played with it much yet. In general though I would say at $50, it's a no braniner - when I was doing my IFR training I could only manage to fly once a week, but I found that doing a few approaches during the week on the sim made a big difference in keeping the IFR synapses firing. Just counting the extra training time I saved by doing this 'refreshing' on the sim (and continue to do) I'm sure paid for the package and the joystick several times over. In addition, you can do stuff in the sim that is pretty hard to do in real life: 1) Shoot any approach you feel like - want to practice an approach with a DME arc, or a localiser back course approach - just find a plate somewhere and fire up the sim. 2) Customizable weather - being able to set the ceilings just above minimums with a programmable variation means you dont necessarily know if you'll break out above the MDA or not - hard to get that kind of experience in the air. Or playing with all sorts of wind conditions 3) Quickly shooting multiple approaches - just slew your plane back to the initial approach fix and shoot it again. 4) There is a flight analysis page you can use to review your flight/approach and replay it which is quite helpful when you want to see what those procedure turns looked like, or how well you corrected for wind, etc. - I guess you can do this with a GPS in real life too if you have one. 5) FS2004 has a full Garmin GPS simulator in it which is great practice. I think it takes several hours of practice with these things to feel comfortable relying on one for a real approach and much of this can be accomplished on the ground with a simulator, saving you flight/training time in the air. 6) Pause button. 7) Practicing approaches in the sim before you do them in real life is great preparation. 8) Practicing instrument/engine failures. The things that the sim doesnt simulate well are (in no particular order): 1) VOR and ADF needles dont exhibit course roughness or the same 'analog swing' that they do in real life which makes them a bit too reliable. 2) In FS2002 at least, the markings on the ADF guage (in the 172) were poorly aligned so that with the top of the needle on North the tail of the needle was about 5 degress off South - or maybe it was the fixed cardinal markings around the guage that were off - but in any case, you had to do a bit of correcting for this when outbound from an NDB which was pretty annoying. Might be the same in FS2004 too. 3) Compass error isnt nearly as bad as it is in real life - I'm not even sure if there is any magnetic dip error or not. Certainly in real life it bounces around much more than in the sim. 4) Turbulence and wind variation were pretty crude in FS2002 - you could use it too mess you up a bit but trying to hold an approach course in real turbulence and changing wind is much harder in my opinion than in the sim because in the sim it seems that if you dont react to the disturbance it all averages out and it doesnt work out that easily in real life. 5) Spatial disorientation and fear (obviously), and when you're making it up yourself it's hard to create the same kind of workload-saturation that occurs in real life which is the hardest thing to handle I think (although having an instructor throwing instructions at you while you fly the sim isnt too far off). 6) Along the same lines - I dont think you're likely to get an ATC hold instruction or a request declined, or even a clearance other than the one you filed in the sim so the ATC side of things is pretty predictable, but at least it lets you practice managing the radios for handoffs, etc while your try to keep flying. Just my 2cents. |
#4
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On 5 Aug 2003 18:13:07 -0700, (mike) wrote:
I just bought FS2004 and have been using FS2002 since it came out. In FS2002 the IFR clearances were pretty limited - precision approaches only, to the longest runway only at a given airport, no pop-up clearances - but these shortcomings appear to have been addressed in FS2004 although I havent played with it much yet. In general though I would say at $50, it's a no braniner - when I was Sam's club has it for $45.57 and there is a $10 rebate sticker inside the can if you have an earlier version of FS such as 2002. If you get one that is in the metal anniversary can. My wife bought me a copy yesterday. Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member) www.rogerhalstead.com N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2) |
#5
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