Flight Basics: Take Off, Fly, and Land in Flight Sims by Michael Flaminio These instructions are intended to provide only a basic understanding of flight navigation to help gamers use flight sims. A few months ago I picked up novelty book detailing what to do in any worst-case scenario. The book provided helpful hints on what to do in numerous bad situations such as a bear attack, delivering a baby in a taxi and of course landing a plane. Who would have thought that you could learn to land a plane in a few short paragraphs? Well, I won't be volunteering to land any planes in the near future, but I will offers some basic tips for flying planes in virtual airspace on your computer. The Gauges With the exception of a couple displays, most airplane gauges are pretty self-explanatory. The knobs and switches controlling things is another story, but an airplane's information displays are pretty easy. Here are some of the most important displays. Airspeed This is usually around the top left of the pilot's controls. This tells the airspeed of the aircraft at sea level. The airspeed is measured in knots, which is approximately 1.15 miles/hour. Actual speed of the aircraft will vary based on altitude and temperature. Horizon The Horizon gyro is a device for displaying your plane's heading with respect to the horizon. This is useful if you can't see the sky or ground outside the window. Altimeter The altimeter displays the plane's altitude at sea level. Note that this is not the distance to the ground, but instead where the ground would be if it were at sea level. If a runway is located at 500 feet above sea level, the altimeter will read about 500 feet when you are on the ground. Altimeter works much like a clock, with the minute hand representing 10 - 100 feet intervals and the hour 10 - 1000 feet intervals. There may also be a numerical "odometer-looking" display within the altimeter giving the altitude. Vertical Speed Indicator The Vertical Speed indicator shows how fast your plane is raising or falling. This is useful for maintaining smooth changes in elevation, and also can help determine the lift capacity of your aircraft. VOR/ILS Indicator The VOR indicator is our main radio navigation tool for our tutorials. It's used to track courses based on tuning to navigation radios. It can also be used for the instrument landing system, providing both vertical and horizontal guidance to the runway. Auto Pilot Autopilot works differently from sim to sim. Some sims have buttons to push, while others offer just a keyboard toggle. Autopilot can essentially do two things, first maintain the current status of the plane, and second be used to fly the plane to new headings and altitudes. By setting the heading and altitude autopilot, users can effectively fly the plane without using a stick or yoke. While not as much fun, it is almost essential to navigating your way around with any degree of precision. Using autopilot to fly basically entails setting a heading, altitude and if need a vertical speed setting and letting plane do the work. Controls Now that we can understand the aircraft, lets look at some basic controls. The main control is the flight stick or yoke. This is fairly intuitive to use, but first lets talk about the three axes of movement in a plane. First is roll, where the wings move up and down on the x-axis, next is pitch, where the front and tail of the plane move on the y-axis, and finally in yaw where the plane pivots on both axes. Stick and Yoke By pulling back, you will cause the plane to rise and pushing forward will cause it to decline. This is pitch, and doing this controls the elevators on the horizontal tail fin. Pitching the plane up or down causes the plane rise or decline as it travels through the air. Moving from left or right will cause the wings to tip from side to side. This is roll and controls the plane's ailerons, located on the trailing edges of the wings. When turning the aircraft, you will need to roll from one side or the other and the aircraft will slowly change direction, depending on the degree of roll. You can also accelerate heading changes by simultaneously rolling and pitching the aircraft. Yaw is a bit more confusing. The rudders on the plane control the trailing edge of the vertical tail fin, and this causes the plane to yaw. In real planes, foot pedals control rudders. Unless you have a pedal system with your computer, you likely will use another control to handle rudders. Most popular joysticks have a twist feature, intended for rudder control. Using yaw, you can pivot your aircraft without changing the aircraft's direction. This is helpful especially during landings and take offs when slight changes need to be made to the aircraft's heading. If you apply full rudder or apply too much rudder at high speeds, you'll cause your aircraft to sort of spiral turn downward. Using a plane's rudders can make things a little easier if you know what you're doing. If you don't want to use them, it's not really going to hurt your flying. Throttle Another important control is the throttle. This is your plane's gas pedal, except it's on a lever. Pushing the throttle up, increasing the engine speeds, down decreases it. Probably the most important thing to remember about the throttle is energy management. You don't always need throttle to move the plane. When raising or decreasing your altitude, think of it as driving a car up or down a hill. You obviously need more gas to go up a hill than you do down. Flaps Flaps are basically an extension of the wing. They can extend or retract to provide more lift . Because of this you should really only use flaps during take off and landing. In smaller planes, you shouldn't even need them. But if you do want to use flaps, they can help soften a landing or get you in the air faster after take off. On the Ground Occasionally you may want to taxi your plane on the ground. You might be making your way to a runway for take off or clearing the runway just after landing. "Driving" your plane is pretty simple. The only real difference is that you drive with rudders instead of the stick/yoke. Using rudders, you'll control the tail fin, plus the front wheels. To move, your generally accelerate the throttle to get moving then ease off to roll forward. When moving on the ground, you'll also want to make sure the flaps are retracted to limit your plane's lift. Brakes are also helpful to stop or slow down for turns. You really don't want to taxi too fast, as you'll want to keep it slow for turns and you also don't want to be moving so fast that you'll start to lift off the ground. Take off Taking off is probably one of the simpler things to do in a flight sim. You basically keep the plane in the middle of the runway using the rudders and accelerate until you have enough lift to get off the ground. If you're using a big or heavy plane, you may want to extend your flaps some to get extra lift. You'll want to take off the breaks, and then accelerate the throttle to full power. When going down the runway, you'll want to watch to speedometer until the plane reaches an adequate speed to take off. Each plane can take to the air at different speeds; you just need to find the best speed for your plane. Once you're up to speed, you'll want to ease back on the stick/yoke to raise the nose of the plane. Then all you want to do is slowly pull back until the rear landing gear are off the ground. You don't want to pull back too much; otherwise you'll stall out and come back to the ground. Once you're up in the air a little ways, take up the landing gear, if you plane has retractable gear. Once you've built up a little speed and altitude, you're free to go where you want. Landing Landing an aircraft is an art. It takes a good degree of practice and skill to successfully land a plane. Hard bouncing landings are one thing, but soft easy touch downs can be quite rewarding. I recommend reading the ILS Landing tutorial to help ensure the best landings. If you can land a plane well, you'll really enjoy flight simulators of all kinds. Remember, be patient when landing. A standard landing usually starts 10 nm out and should take five to ten minutes to complete. When landing you need to keep three things in mind. First is to keep lined up with the runway, second keep your altitude neither too high or low, and third, keep your speed under control. When landing, you'll want to think about energy management. If you need to lower your altitude, this will cause your plane to accelerate, so you may want to ease off the throttle, keeping your speed constant. The same goes for pulling the plane higher. Commanding the plane to go higher will eat up speed, so you may wish to increase your throttle to maintain speed. Conversely, increasing your altitude is a good way take off some extra speed during your approach. When you approach a runway, you will fly over navigation marker devices. These indicate a particular distance to the runway, meaning you're almost there. Runways may have outer, middle or inner markers, or any combination of each. When I hit the outer market, I usually lower the gear and get ready to bring the plane down. You don't want to come at the runway at too steep or shallow of an angle. I usually like to kill my throttle just as I pass the front of the runway and easy myself down. If I need any more flaps, I extend out, and I gently pull back on the controls to level the horizon with the bottom of the cockpit window. This will bleed of any excess speed while bringing me down slowly. You'll want to be careful not to slow down too much. If you stall out, you'll likely nose over and things could get a little rough. Don't be afraid to rev the throttle to keep you going for those few extra feet to the ground. Once you hit the ground, apply the breaks. Some planes have thrust reversers to help slow you down too. After you slow down a little you can leave the runway to one of the taxi ramps and you're finished. Congratulations!