Starting Over

Found a little more time to fly. During one of the PC Aviator weekly sales, I picked up Mega Scenery X - Southern California, which comes on 4 DVD's. I installed that and tried it out. This is me over Whittier, where I lived from about 1979 to 1984:

The main thing demonstrated by this flight, was that I really need to get back to basics. I managed to take off from one airport, fly over Whittier, and land at another airport, and even remembered how to use the radio, but otherwise I did not do so well.

A while back I purchased a book called Flight Simulator X for Real World Pilots. The book is designed for real pilots looking to use FSX for extra training, or Sim Pilots like myself who just want a more real-world experience in their simulations. I dug that book back out, downloaded the missions and such that go with it and started on the first one, a short flight in a Piper Cub at Post Mills Airport in Vermont. Here I am in the cub before takeoff:

I started up and taxied to the proper takeoff position at the other end of the runway (not easy to do in a trail dragger where your view out the front is just sky).

I then throttled up and after a few seconds, pushed forward on the yoke to lift the tail (nearly nosing down into the ground in the process), but then I was airborne and banking hard to the left for some reason. I have the realism set back to where it was before, but I should probably go back to easy mode for a while. The torque of the engine and other factors cause the plane to turn left unless you counter that with control inputs, and I'm pretty rusty at that.

Anyway, I got things under control without hitting the mountains and started a more leisurely spin around Lake Fairlee to my left.

The Cub is a simpler plane than my Skylane; basic controls, no flaps, and much slower. For this flight I kept it trimmed at about 60 knots, which is about stall speed on the Cessna.

After getting my bearings, I continued to turn back towards the field to land.

It's a grass runway, so not so easy to tell where the actual runway is compared to the grass on either side, but I figured it out, powered down and descended nicely although ended up a bit high at the threshold. I flared out but touched down a little rough and bounced back in the air. Not being used to a tail dragger on landing also had an effect.

You can't tell from a still image, but I've actually touched down here and bounced back into the air. I'll have to work on that.

Once down for good though I was able to slow down, stop, and kill the engine - successful flight and landing! I'm going to try this flight a couple more times, tour around the area some more and get used to how the Cub handles before I go to the next training mission.