Back on the Horse

I couldn't go to bed tonight without attempting one more landing and I'm glad I did. With a freshly undented plane I took back to the skies, circled the airfield and came back in for another landing attempt. This time I got my alignment pretty good at a distance although I had to bank gently to the right on the approach to get it perfected. My glide slope was maybe a bit steep so towards the end I gave it some gas to shallow out. I crossed the end of the runway below 100 feet, probably below 50 feet and flared out nicely just above the runway:

Touchdown was nice and easy and lined up just right. I could have easily throttled up and gone around again but I decided to quit while I'm ahead - for tonight anyway.

First Crash!

Well, it had to happen eventually. I tried some more touch-and-go landing practice in Titusville this morning. The first landing wasn't so great so I throttled up and went around again. The second approach was looking really good. I was aligned with the runway, glide slope looked right, just looking like a good landing all around.

Then the landing lights at the runway started going red like I was getting too low, so I gave it a little throttle to make sure I'd make it to the runway. I throttled back to idle and prepared to land, but my nose had pitched up a bit when I gave it the gas, so my view of the runway was not great. I was still lined up correctly, but I was higher than I thought so I started my flare sooner (higher) than I should have.

The stall alarm went off, but I under-reacted because I thought I was almost on the ground. As you can see though, I'm still pretty high.

Next thing I know, the nose pitches down pretty hard and I head for the runway, nose-wheel first. You can see I'm still lined up good, but it really works better if the rear wheels touch down first.

Bang! Nose into the ground and the plane starts spinning to the side. No control at all at this point, I'm just along for the ride.

My final resting place, as seen from the control tower. Oh, the shame!!

I suppose later on I'll get my propeller unbent and practice landings some more. Lesson learned - treat any stall seriously, even if you think you're just inches off the ground.

Seven More Landings

Plus one abort. I've been in Titusville today, just flying some touch-and-go and otherwise working on my landing technique. My first couple of attempts were pretty poor excuses for landings. They got me on the ground, but that's about it. Third attempt was off so bad I gave up, increased throttle and aborted the landing, opting to fly around for another pass.

By my sixth and seventh landings of the day, I was improving noticeably. I've identified two main problems. First, I have a hard time judging my alignment at a distance from the runway. In a real airplane with real 3-D and peripheral vision it might not be so tough, but on a flat computer screen, it's just tricky to judge. I'm also still flying with real weather, which means I've got a slight cross-wind with which to contend.

The second problem is my joystick. It stinks! The movement in the middle of the stick is just mushy so you end up having to over-steer just to get anything to happen at all. I'm also convinced that rudder pedals would be invaluable for making minor corrections to alignment during the final approach.

Anyway, here's a shot from my last landing:

Not too shaby on this one. I'm a little off to the left from the correct alignment, and the lights say I'm a little low, but that doesn't really seem to be the case.

Jekyll to Titusville - Part II

As I gradually descended through the clouds without any sign that they were breaking up, I began to get nervous - especially when I dropped below 2,000 feet and still couldn't see a thing. Finally, at about 1,700 feet I broke clear of the clouds and found myself just north of Daytona Beach in MegaScenery heaven! Here's the view out the right/starboard side of the plane at actual photo-real terrain and houses, not the generic farmland I had left behind in Georgia:

Continuing south towards Daytona, I noticed an odd shadow on the ocean ahead. As I got closer, it resolved into a black triangle. I've heard of the Bermuda triangle, but didn't know Daytona had one as well. It didn't look that big or threatening, but I was careful not to fly over it just in case.
About then the clouds began to rise a bit so I climbed back up to about 3,500 feet for safety. Then it started to rain. Not bad, but enough to be distracting. It's hard to even see it in the still images, but this external view shows the streaks of rain maybe better than the cockpit view:

A bit further south, I finally picked up the Melbourne VOR station, which like Brunswick, appears to have a range of about 60 nautical miles. Once I had the signal, I locked in the appropriate radial and turned south-west, heading inland to intercept. I got lined up on the signal about 50 miles out, or about 20 miles from my destination.

About 10 miles from where I expected to find the airport, I spotted it dead ahead and began my approach. Being fairly tired at this point, and not having a clue yet how to use the communication features in FSX to request clearance to land, I just did a direct approach to the nearest runway. It had stopped raining by then, and the wind didn't seem too bad, but as I got closer I noticed the airport looked funny:

One problem with add-on scenery, like MegaScenery Earth, is that it doesn't always line up correctly with the default features of FSX, like the runways. The runway I'm lined up on is the FSX runway graphic, while the lighter runway angling away to the right is the photo-real aerial image of the runway that comes from MegaScenery Earth. I suppose for the larger airports, they check and try to avoid this kind of conflict.

Anyway, I proceeded in and made an acceptable landing, although it seemed more difficult than it should have. As I coasted down the runway, I glanced to my left and saw the wind-sock pointing in the same direction I was headed, meaning I had just landed with the wind instead of against it. That means my ground speed was a good bit higher than if I had landed in the other direction which explains why the landing didn't feel right.

I think I'll spend some time here in Titusville practicing landings and learning how to communicate with air traffic control, request clearances to take-off and land, etc., before I begin the net leg of my southward journey.

Jekyll to Titusville - Part I

As stated in the previous post, I decided it was time to leave the not-so-realistic scenery of Jekyll Island and head south into Florida in search of the MegaScenery I had previously installed stretching from about Daytona Beach almost to Miami. My particular destination will be Titusville, Florida, home of my in-laws. I selected a morning flight from Jekyll and real-world weather, although in hindsight, I should probably find out what the real world weather is first, and decide if I'm qualified to fly in it, before just clicking "start flight" and seeing what happens.

Anyway, I had a nice smooth take-off from Jekyll and enjoyed a nice sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean:

Although I must say, the darkish clouds were a a bit troubling. I flew south as planned, using the Brunswick VOR to keep track of my progress. As I crossed into Florida and flew past Jacksonville I noticed what appeared to be a nuclear power plant off to my right:

A little research revealed that it's actually a coal plant, the JEA Northside Generating Station, but it does have cooling towers similar in design to what you see at a nuclear power plant.

As I got south of Jacksonville, the cloud cover started getting thicker, making it harder to see the ground and determine my location along the coast. Since I was already flying pretty low, I decided to try getting above the clouds. In this image, it doesn't look like that should be too difficult:

In reality, as I began to climb I encountered nothing but grey nothingness, or clouds as thick as pea soup in front of me. I got up to about 6,000 feet and got into some small patches of openings, but from those I could tell that the clouds extended even higher and that even clear of them, I wasn't going to have much of a view of the ground or ocean. Here's what it looked like out my front windshield through about fifteen minutes of the flight:

I decided to head back down, figuring that there would be no mountains to contend with, so that as long as my altitude read greater than zero, I should be fine. Surely somewhere above 1,000 feet I should break clear of this stuff and be able to see where I'm going, right?

Intermediate VOR

Having tired of the unrealistic scenery around Jekyll Island I've decided to head further south. The next leg of my journey will take me a couple hundred miles further south to Titusville, Florida where my in-laws reside and where I've previously conducted some test flights using MegaScenery Earth downloads (see earlier posts).

The navigation on this one is going to be a little more complicated, so it's time to talk more about VOR. In a prior post, I described VOR (Very High Frequency Omni-directional Range) as homing in on a radio signal to find an airport and that's basically how I've used it so far. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. In fact, each VOR station emits two signals, one omni-directional, and one uni-directional but rotating through all 360 degrees around the station. By interpreting these two signals, the equipment in your plane can tell you where you are in relation to the station, and to any of the 360 radials (vectors/directions) going out from the station.

In addition to the nav radio in the plane, there's a VOR dial. It has a knob that lets you rotate through the 360 degrees, plus it has an arrow that can point straight down or to the left or right. Finally, it has an up arrow or "to" flag and a down arrow or "from" flag. To get to Athens, and then to Jekyll, I justed tuned in the frequency of the VOR at my destination, then rotated the dial until I got a straight arrow and a "to" flag. I'd then turn my plane until my heading matched the degree heading indicated at the top of the VOR dial. In other words, with the straight arrow and "to" flag, that heading would take me "to" the VOR station I had tuned in.

To get from Jekyll to Titusville is going to be a little tricker though, mainly because my destination airport, the Arthur Dunn Air Park in Titusville, has no VOR station of it's own. What I've learned from a bit of Googling though is that Arthur Dunn is 32.8 miles out from the Melbourne (Florida, not Australia) VOR along the 343 radial. That means if you flew from the Melbourne VOR on a heading of 343 degrees, you'd get to the airport after flying 32.8 miles.

Conversely, if you're approaching Melbourne VOR on the reciprocal course (163 degrees), you'd fly over the airport 32.8 miles before you got to the VOR. My trick then, is to find that 343 radial, get on it, and follow it towards Melbourne. The nav radio will tell me how far I am from the signal, so at about 40 miles or so out I should be able to spot the airport.

Of course, it's going to be a while heading south before I'll even pick up that signal, so I'm going to use the Brunswick VOR at the start of the trip. I'll tune it in and fly south, using the range finding feature to tell me how far I've traveled. I expect to lose the signal after about 60 nautical miles, by which time I'll be about 100 nautical miles out from Titusville. There will probably be a gap in there before I pick up Melbourne, but I can manage that by keeping ocean to my left and land to my right. No problem!

Here's a closeup of the equipment I'm talking about, taken during my flight to Titusville which will be detailed in my next post:

You may be able to right click the image and open it in another tab at a larger size. If you do, you'll see that on the top radio there are four frequencies displayed. The first two, 128.30 and 128.25 are communication frequencies. The second two, 110.00 and 112.25 are navigation frequencies, with 110.00 being the one currently tuned in. To the left of the radio stack there's a dial with a white plus sign in it. That's the VOR dial. It's currently turned to about 165 (between 150 and due south, which is 180). The vertical axis of the + sign is the needle I mentioned, which is offset slightly to the right. At the bottom of that needle, there's an up arrow which is the "to" flag I mentioned. This shows me that I'm slightly to the left of the 165 radial to the VOR at 110.00 MHz (which is Melbourne). Also, towards the bottom of the radio stack, you can see that I'm 53.1 nautical miles out (or just over 20 miles from the airport in Titusville).

This probably doesn't make any sense at all. A video demonstration would be a lot better, but I'm not sure how to make one of those yet. Anyway, coming up next - my actual flight from Jekyll to Titusville, which was completed in the midst of trying to write this particular post.

Jekyll Touch-and-Go, Day 2

I decided to try another round of touch-and-go landing practice at Jekyll, but without spending too much time taking pictures or trying to record videos. I also abandoned real world weather for today, since it would probably be pretty poor. Here's a fair weather view of what I've dubbed "Jekyll Farm" since that's what it looks like in FSX:

You'll notice I'm flying south along the beach where yesterday I was flying north. That's because the sim had me positioned on the opposite runway this time. I figured it would be a nice change of pace until I got lined up for my first landing. Look closely and you'll see four white landing lights, which indicate I'm too high; but look even closer and you'll see a big dang tree right at the end of the runway. Any lower and I fly right through that thing. I had to dodge up and around the tree and try to still land on the end of the runway. Trying too hard, I actually landed in the grass just short of the runway and almost landed on the fence surrounding the airport. Not good!

After touching down and taking back off again I switched patterns and resumed landing from the north. I also pretty much ignored the landing lights. Any time I got the correct signal, two while lights and two red ones, I was way too low. At least, I was way too low given my descent rate. I suppose if I could dial in a shallower descent I would be OK. Instead, for my next three landings I just ignored the lights, came in a bit high (but safe), cleared the end of the runway then flared out for three very nice easy landings. Satisfied with that, I quit for the day.

Oh, before I could fly I actually had to let my five year old on the computer for a while. He prefers the faster planes and has actually logged more hours in the F-18 than I have. Here he is buzzing a lake somewhere in Canada:

He actually did pretty well until his chaotic maneuvering resulted in an "aircraft overstressed" warning which terminated his flight. I suppose I should turn off crash detection and some of those other features when he plays, but I just didn't think about it.

Jekyll Touch-and-Go

I went to the doctor today and got a steroid shot and some other meds, so I'm feeling a little bit less like I've been hit by a truck. I actually tried to go to bed early and skip flying tonight, but my two youngest boys (ages 5 and 3), kept coming in and turning on the lights or trying to climb in bed with me, so that didn't work out. Instead, I retreated to my man-cave basement and fired up the simulator.

As I mentioned yesterday, I felt like I needed some landing practice so I decided to do a couple of touch-and-go landings at the Jekyll Island airport. The plan was to take-off, fly to the south-end of the island, swing around and fly north along the beach at about 1,000 feet, then turn around between Jekyll and St. Simons island to the north. After that, I would land and then throttle up and take back off to repeat the course.

I chose real world weather, which was probably a mistake. It was a bit windy, and around the north end of the island where I'd be making my final approach was cloudy and hazy, reducing visibility. On the first take-off, I pulled back too hard. Cessna's aren't jet fighters so they aren't meant to climb out this steeply:

I managed to get my nose down and into a more proper climb angle, but since I was distracted by that I let the wind push me off-course, so that I drifted east, off the runway and over the airport terminal and hangers. I'm sure they wouldn't have appreciated that in the real world.

The flight around the island was fairly uneventful, although I let my altitude creep up to 1,500 feet, which meant I had to descend a little steeper than I wanted on the landing approach. I also turned too sharply around the north-end of the island, so my approach angle was all wrong. I finally got lined up on the runway, but by then I was pretty close to it. I probably should have just throttled up and aborted that one, but I decided to land it anyway. The frantic maneuvering that ensued resulted in a fairly rough landing and even rougher take-off as I forgot to retract from full flaps after the touch-down. Here's a shot of me banking furiously to stay over the runway just before landing. The wings really aught to be straighter than that, but without rudder pedals, the only way to adjust course is to bank the wings.

I've also confirmed my suspicions from yesterday that the video recording feature in FSX is next to useless. While my first landing today was a bit rougher than I'd like, the same landing viewed on the video had me bottoming out the plane (wheels sunk into the runway, sparks flying, smoke, etc.). In fact, the impact caused the engine to cut off, but the plane continued to fly the second pattern with the propeller not moving at all. Very strange.

The scenery on the island was also disappointing. From the looks of it, you'd think Jekyll was mostly farmland with only a few houses. It's actually mostly wooded, with a golf course in the middle and houses all up and down the beach, plus a few older hotels near the middle. Here's a view out of the cockpit on the northward leg of my second lap. You can tell that I'm flying through some haze or a low cloud:

Another odd thing I've noticed is that when you switch to external view while flying through a cloud, the airplane itself does not appear to be in a cloud. It's drawn clearly which makes it look more like fog on the ground than a cloud in the sky. That makes sense from inside the cockpit, where you wouldn't want it to look like the cloud was in there with you, but doesn't make sense on the external view. Here's a shot of me banking to the west with the northern tip of Jekyll to my left and the southern tip of St. Simons to my right:

On the second landing approach, I did two 90 degree turns around the north end of the island instead of a single 180. That put me on a better line into the runway which allowed me to focus on the landing itself a little better. The actual landing, while not perfect, was smoother than the first one. On the recorded video though, it ended up being even rougher, with the plane bottoming out again. I wasn't fast enough on the take-picture button, and was too lazy just to back it up and try again, but here's an aftermath shot showing the smoke cloud just after touch-down:

Notice that the propeller is not turning at all. The shortcomings of the video recorder are really annoying. I wanted to use the recorder to review my landings as a training aid, but since they aren't accurate enough, they're worse than useless. I can't even use the system to get realistic screen shots during portions of my flights when I'm too busy actually landing to switch the camera view and take a shot.

Oh well, I think I'll try some more touch-and-go tomorrow, but with "fair weather" selected so visibility will be better and the wind won't be such an issue.

Heading South

I've been busy and/or sick for the past week so my virtual Cessna has been stuck in Athens during that time. I suppose if you have to be virtually stuck somewhere, Athens is not a bad place. I finally got some projects finished, including installing a drop ceiling in one of our basements rooms, plus started feeling a bit better by Sunday afternoon so I decided to get out of Athens.

Rather than just flying back to Dalton, I opted to continue south and head to Jekyll Island, Georgia, where I've spent a week almost every summer for the past 16 years. The island is owned by the State of Georgia, so development is controlled and it feels like you're going back in time when you cross the bridge from the mainland.

This was going to be a longer flight than anything I've done before. It should take a good two hours from take-off to landing. I also decided that rather than going straight to Jekyll, I'd fly over Savannah first and see how well the historic district is rendered in FSX. So I did some research, got my VOR frequencies for Savannah and then Brunswick (Brunswick VOR is about 2 miles from the Jekyll Island airport), and then created a flight plan in FSX and prepared for take-off.

I would have preferred a nice sunny day for flying, but I'm still stuck on using the real-world weather feature in FSX. As a result, I had to deal with rain and a low cloud bank while taking off from Athens. Knowing that it would be difficult to capture screenshots while taking off, I turned on the flight recorder figuring I could go back later and take screen shots from the recording. That didn't work out though. The recording option in FSX doesn't actually record a video of your flight. Rather, it records your position in space, orientation, speed, etc. every second or half-second or however you set it to record. FSX then uses that data to recreate the flight, but sometimes odd things happen. In this case, when I went back to replay the flight, the weather was nice, not raining. The take-off was accurate, but I didn't bother to take screen shots since the weather was wrong.

I had also decided to take off from runway 27, which would put me on a course to fly almost right over Sanford Stadium. On the real take-off, it was far too cloudy and rainy to really see anything. I flew over the city and then turned south-east and continued climbing to about 9,000 feet to get above the cloud cover. Even in the video, with sunny weather, I couldn't find any recognizable buildings in Athens. Too bad.

I was a good 200 nautical miles from Savannah, so it was a while before I picked up their VOR station. Once I did, I found I was pretty much on the right bearing. There was a wind blowing north or north-east which kept pushing me a bit off course, but that's not hard to adjust for. Most of the flight was just above the tops of the clouds and looked about like this:

As I got close to Savannah, I started feeling ill again (runny nose, etc.) so I skipped my planned fly-over of the historic district and instead just angled southward and tried to tune in the Brunswick VOR. I couldn't pick it up at first, which seemed odd given that I was only about 60 miles out at that point, but I did pick it up eventually. I probably could have found it regardless. I've been to Jekyll enough to recognize the shape of the island.

As I approached the island, I dropped through a cloud layer to find out I was almost right over it. As with other parts of Georgia, the ground scenery seems to be sort of generic, with nothing actually recognizable to be seen. I did however manage to see a lovely sunset before landing:

I circled the island, hoping to actually spot something interesting, but without success. As I came back around the north end I lined up on the runway for my final approach. I had a pretty good glide-slope, but the cross wind kept pushing me way off the runway. You can tell from this shot that my wings aren't level. I had to do a lot of banking left and right to get lined up correctly in the windy conditions.

After all the work I put into lining up on the runway, I decided at the last minute that I was too low and was going to touch-down in the grass just short of the runway. The Jekyll Airport has a landing light system that I've not learned how to use yet. In hindsight, and after watching the video of the landing, I realized that I was fine and just panicked a bit. The result of my error was that I gunned the engine just as my rear wheels were touching down on the runway. That caused me to bounce back into the air forcing me to cut throttle and land again. Not pretty.

As with the take-off, I had the video recorder running so I could take my screenshots off the video and not be distracted during the landing itself. Another thing I've noticed about videos is that the skip and stutter a bit, probably due to the sample rate not being high enough. In the video, I seemed to come down a good bit harder than in the actual landing. In fact, at the end of the video a warning popped up saying that the aircraft was over-stressed. Since I didn't get that warning during or after the actual landing, I'm assuming the plane is OK to fly the next leg of my journey, which will probably take me down to Florida.

This was my longest flight to date, taking about 2 hours to complete. At some point, I'm going to need to move up to a faster plane. The Beechcraft Baron I flew to Hunstville would have made this trip in just one hour.

Hopefully I'll get some more flight time in over the Thanksgiving holiday. I plan to do some touch-and-go landing practice at Jekyll though before continuing on.

VOR Athens

After the Dawgs defeated Auburn Saturday night I started missing Athens, where I spent 7 years of my life obtaining my higher education. Since I couldn't go there physically, I decided to at least fly there virtually. The problem with flying to Athens, compared to my only other long distance flight (Huntsville), is that there aren't enough good landmarks for navigation. You can head south-east from Dalton and hopefully fly over Lake Lanier, but then Athens is just somewhere south-east of the lake without any large mountains or rivers to guide you in. In the real world, maybe I could navigate by the major highways, but the graphics in FSX, at least on my laptop, aren't really good enough for that. In order to make sure I would arrive safely, I invested a little time in learning V.O.R. navigation.

VOR stands for Very high frequency Omni-directional Range and is a form of radio-navigation used by pilots. As I learn more about it I may post something more detailed, but basically you tune in the frequency of a known VOR station, say the one at the airport in Athens for example, and then navigate to that signal. It's more complicated than that, but let's move on.

I decided on an early morning flight with real weather. Take off from Dalton was complicated by a brisk wind, but the view of the sunrise over the north Georgia mountains was worth it:

With VOR you can set the frequency on the ground before you take off, but because it's VHF (very high frequency) it's strictly line-of-sight, so you can't actually pick up the signal until you gain some altitude. In this case, I picked up the signal at about 2,000 feet, by which time I was higher than any mountains between here and there.

For this trip, I actually used the FSX flight planner which suggested a cruise altitude of 5500 feet. Unfortunately there were a lot of clouds at that altitude, so I ended up climbing to about 7500 feet until the sun got a little higher and the clouds started burning off. Around Lake Lanier, I dropped back to my correct cruising altitude and took some nice images of the lake:

The road and the bridge there is Browns Bridge Road. I was able to use this picture and locate the same area in Google maps:

Anyway, while continuing to Athens I kept getting blown slightly off course by the wind, but it wasn't too difficult to get lined back up correctly. Here's a closeup of the VOR equipment in the Cessna Skyhawk:

I don't suppose you can tell much at this resolution, but the top radio (Nav 1) is tuned in to 109.6 MHz, the frequency for the Athens VOR, and the round instrument at the top just to the left of the radio shows your position relative to the selected VOR station. The white vertical line running through the instrument is actually pointing slightly to the right, which means I need to turn slightly to the right to get back on course.

The signal took me straight to Athens, but between the fog, my need to find the airport, and my graphics settings being turned down pretty low, I was not able to spot any recognizable buildings. I was looking for Sanford Stadium in particular. Anyway, just east of Athens I located the airport:

I decided to land on the shorter of the two runways, the one roughly parallel to my current course. I eased in a little closer, banked to the right a bit to get correctly oriented, flew out a bit and turned around to line back up. I had already descended when I got to Athens in order to see the ground better so I didn't have to drop much more altitude to get on the correct glide slope. In fact, I actually started out a little low on this one. Normally I'm too high, which is safer. This approach was particularly dicey because you're flying over houses on the way in. I got on the correct glide slope, but then got too low again just short of the runway and thought I was going to hit a tree. I throttled back up, jumped over the tree, dove back towards the runway, leveled off and flared out nicely at the last minute:

The touchdown was nice and gentle, although the video I took of the final approach, especially when viewed from the tower, was a bit alarming. At some point, I need to figure out how to post videos.

Anyway, here I am in Athens. Sure wish I was really there and could get me a big fat Taco Stand burrito. Mmmmm, mmmmmm.

Lake Spotting

Decided to head back to the mountains today. When I started that way yesterday I could see some lakes off in the distance, so before getting in the plane tonight I got on Google Earth and came up with a flight plan. Heading ENE from Dalton you can fly over three lakes in a sequence, staring with Blue Ridge Lake, about 30 miles away, and then Nottley Lake (Blairsville) about 10 miles after that, followed by Chatuge Lake about 15 miles further out. There's a little airport in Blairsville, so I decided to take off from Dalton, head east-ish and fly over the lakes, then turn around after the third lake and land at Blairsville Airport to take a break.

Had a nice take off and climbed to a couple thousand feet before turning east. To make sure I didn't run into a mountain, I decided to climb to 8,000 feet above sea level, which is a good 2,000+ feet higher than the highest mountain in Georgia. At around 6,000 feet I started getting into clouds. They're one of the more realistic features in FSX:

At this point I'm roughly over Fort Mountain. I believe the road winding away below me is Highway 52. Anyway, I got to altitude and proficiently trimmed in for about 100 knots and holding my altitude between 8,000 and 8,100 feet. From there, the lakes were easy to spot, as was the airport. After about 30 minutes of flying, maybe a bit more, I got to the final lake and turned around, lining back up on the Blairsville runway.

As is my habit, I came in too high and too fast. I've really got to work on that. I landed pretty rough, with one tire in the grass even. Of course, that still counts as a landing, so I taxied to the one building and take a break. After reading some bed-time stories (to my son, not to the folks at the airport), I got back in the plane, taxied back out to the runway and took off for home. This time I settled in at 5,000 feet, which feels pretty low when you're flying over some of those mountains. While cruising, I got this close-up exterior view showing the detailing of the aircraft models in FSX:

Pilot looks kind of nerdy. I hope in the next version you can pick a different outfit. Anyway, a short while later I found myself almost out of the mountains. From the cockpit, I could easily identify Ellijay to my south and the major highways in the area, including 52 which crosses Fort Mountain out of Chatsworth. In fact, here's a picture from the cockpit just south of Fort Mountain at around 4,500 feet (after I had started my descent):

The winding road starting on the far left and then cutting through the image is Highway 52. I've ridden that climb from Chatsworth on my bicycle up to the Fort Mountain park entrance. Takes about an hour at the rate I climb. Anyway, there are two peaks in the foreground, one on each side of the support strut you can sea outside the window. The peak to the right of the strut, and further away from me than the left-peak is Fort Mountain.

So from there I continued my descent towards the Dalton airport. At about 2,000 feet I banked to the right to fly the downwind leg parallel to the runway, flew out over Dalton, did a 180, and continued my descent to land. This landing was much smoother than the one in Blairsville.

Touch-and-Go

Had a little time tonight so I did some daytime flying in nice weather for a change of pace. I decided to work on landings and the easiest way to do that is to fly touch-and-go patterns where you take off, circle the airport, land and then instead of slowing down and pulling off the runway, you go back to full throttle and take back off again to repeat the process.

Here's a nice shot of me flying the down-wind leg on one of the loops: As usual, I'm probably higher than I need to be and too close to the airport, but the clouds sure are pretty.

All three landings were successful - meaning that the airplane was still flyable afterwards. The middle landing was a little bouncy though. Need to work on that.

Here's another nice shot, especially of the clouds, showing me

crossing the end of the runway about to land:

A little later in the evening, I had a chance to fly again. Took off thinking of another touch-and-go, then decided to fly to Chattanooga, then changed my mind and decided to check out the mountains to the east. While approaching the mountains, I spotted another plane, which is rare because I have other aircraft traffic turned down very low. I wouldn't have seen it at all, but FSX flags other planes in the sky for you with their name, altitude and distance. I spotted that text long before the plane, but out of curiosity, I gained altitude and tried to intercept. The closest I got was about 1.1 miles away and about 3000 feet below him. Using the zoom function, I was able to see the actual plane and to get this image:

OK, not much to look at, but even at this resolution you can see a little dot below the red text. It was a Piper Cherokee 180 flying south at about 8400 feet.

And how about that daytime crescent moon?

Night Flying

I got home from work today and it was dark and rainy, perfect flying weather! OK, I know I can turn the rain on and off in FSX any time I want to, but there's something appealing about flying in "real" weather. I guess the rain in the simulator and the rain outside the window of my office just work together somehow.

I fired up the simulator and did a couple of pattern flights (take off, fly the pattern, land), just around the Dalton airport. It wasn't actually raining during the first flight, but it started pretty good by the second. Here are some screenshots - including some improved external views since I learned you can pause the sim, then change views, grab the shot, switch back to cockpit view, and resume flying:

As usually, coming in too high.

Too high? Really? From tower view it looks like I'm about to clip those trees.

Looking better. Red-over-white and clear of the trees. Hard to see the rain at this resolution.

Over the runway with landing lights on. Notice that the wind is pushing me off to the right so I've angled the plane to try to stay off the grass when I land.

Flair before landing (pulling the nose up so I touch down on the rear wheels only and at lower vertical speed.

Touchdown! Notice the puffs of smoke coming off the rear wheels and that my nose wheel is still off the ground. You can also see the rain better in this shot.

Well, enough fun for one night. Oh, and these are higher-resolution images than before. Right click and select "open in new tab" and you'll see the full sized version. Much easier to make out detail that way. Oh, and these two flights make my third and fourth successful landings with medium realism and crash-detection turned on. Woo Hoo!

Dual Monitor Test

On a lark, I decided to steal, er...borrow, my childrens' monitor (after they finished their homework of course), and see if I could get FSX to run on two screens.

It's actually easier that I thought, although you really need a stronger video card to drive two screens properly. More on that latter.

You start by setting up Windows for multiple monitor support and for extended desktop, where Windows treats the two monitors like one extended screen. Then you launch FSX and start a mission or free-flight or whatever normally. Once in the simulator, you activate the menu, go the view menu, select new view and then virtual cockpit. That opens a small window, sort of like a picture-in-picture on the main monitor, which you then drag to the second monitor and resize to fill the screen. Finally, you adjust the view angle on each screen so they line up correctly or as close as you can get them.

Here's a photo of the results:

A laptop with widescreen sits a good bit lower than a standard monitor on a stand, so I had to put a phone book under the laptop to compensate. The effect is still not perfect, but you clearly get a better view than with a single screen. Imagine three screens, and the peripheral vision effect you get from that!

As I mentioned earlier, my laptop's video capabilities were not made for gaming, so forcing it to output twice as many pixels resulted in a noticeable reduction in frame rate, to the point that it made flying more difficult. I still managed to take off, circle around a bit and land without crashing, but the landing was not pretty. The lag between control inputs and the screen updates was hard to adjust to so there was a lot of over-correction on the approach.

To make this work with acceptable frame rates I'd need to reduce the graphics quality a good bit. Then the question becomes whether that's worth the extra screen real estate you gain from this setup. With a desktop system and a gaming video card, you probably wouldn't have to make the trade-off.

The other thing I noticed, and perhaps there's a work around, is that only one screen is "active" at any given time, and only that screen pans when you change your point of view (looking left or right for example). Thus, any effort to look around breaks the illusion that you're looking at one really wide screen. Maybe there's a way to lock the screens so they pan together, but I've not figured that out yet.

More testing to follow...

Getting Real (Part IV)

Touchdown (the crowd goes wild):

Actually, this is another tower-view image, taken shortly after touchdown. I was a little too busy to take pictures during those final moments, but I'm happy to say that even with crash detection turned on and reality set to medium, this counted as a successful landing. You can see that I'm a little to the left of the center-line, and have full flaps extended.

Satisfied with my accomplishment, I slowed down, exited the runway, and began to taxi back towards the hangers. Here's another tower-view image of my on the taxi-way:

I don't think the trees are actually that close to the airport in Dalton, but I've not been out there in a while. The runway that I've just pulled off of is at the bottom of the image.

OK, so this wasn't much of a flight, but as my first flight at medium reality and first with crash detection on, I suppose it counts as my first "real" landing. Congratulations to me on that one.

I completed the mission by returning to the hanger area, parking and turning off the engine. Here's a final exterior view of me proudly sitting in my parked plane without a scratch on it: