First Flights

Fired up the simulator and completed tutorial missions one through four. These are basic flight concept sorts of missions so I didn't learn much more than I already knew. You pull back on the joystick to pitch the nose up, etc. The first mission was in an ultralight, which has to be the easiest plane to fly, and set at Edward's Air Force Base in California, which has to be about the easiest airport to fly around since it's out in the middle of the desert. I took off, climbed up and flew through an imaginary gate in the sky, then cut power and landed back on the same runway. Not too challenging. Next I took back off and actually flew around the air field a bit. There are some SR-71 Blackbirds parked there so I landed again and tried to taxi around one to get a better look. Unfortunately I failed to take my own wingspan into account so as I taxied around the back of the SR-71 I clipped it with my wing. Oops! While probably not fatal, crashing into parked planes is definitely not how I want to start my flying career.

Mission #2 had me in the ultralight again, but starting already airborne. This mission was over the bay area around Hong Kong. The goal was to maneuver through a series of gates in the sky to practice turning. As with mission #1, this wasn't too challenging. I even flew a series of bonus gates including one over the deck of a moving ship. That was the only tricky one, but I got it without crashing into the ship or the water. With the mission complete I decided to try to land, although that was not a mission objective. I gained some altitude and found an airport off in the distance. I flew over and touched down on a runway built for jumbo jets.

Mission #3 involved another ultralight flight, this one taking off from an airport out west (Colorado maybe), and then locating and flying around three hot air balloons, then returning to the airport and landing on a small grass strip, more suitable to ultralights than Hong Kong International. This was also easy to do, although the landing on such a small strip was certainly harder than at Edwards or Hong Kong.

Mission #4 was a taxi exercise. Given my experience at Edwards with that SR-71, I suppose that's something I should be practicing. You start in an ultralight, taxi to a Piper Cub, switch to that plane then taxi to a DC-3, switch to that one and taxi to the runway for takeoff. I took off in the DC-3 but then decided I wasn't ready to try landing that one and ended the mission in-flight.

Not a bad first day, but I'd prefer something closer to actual flight training than this.