Saab JA-37 Viggen (Flightgear Jet Testing)

I've been a test pilot for the Saaba JA-37 Viggen lately. The plane is made by Anders Lejczak (3D model & textures) and Nikolai V. Chr. (Aerodynamics, animations, sound, effects, HUD, coding), and can be downloaded here. 

Now have to bear in mind this plane is under development, and I probably don't make a good test pilot.

Because:

...I kept crashing it.

Testing is done at KOAK, and embarrassingly, I never really left the airport compound and poked three holes in the area.

So, a little about the plane, for the brave souls who would like to try it out. First off, I wasn't able to control it with a keyboard, I'm sure others have better luck doing so, but the developer did recommend it would be better with a joystick. It requires a long runway, and afterburner takeoffs are recommended.

Being in development there are some minor issues with it, such as afterburner sound stuttering and all, hoping that it would eventually be fixed.

UPDATE : 30th May 2014 - I found the reason why I can't fly it. With a keyboard, the "5" key to reset all controls to center is not there, and because there is also no standard HUD I am not aware the plane controls doesn't reset when I hit "5" on the numeric pad. This explains why the plane is unflyable, as I kept thinking I had reset the controls. (It didn't help that the jet gave impressions that the center key was pressed when I do so mid-turn). Once I found out, and flew with a mouse, the plane was actually completely flyable. I contacted the author of the FDM about this and he said it's been fixed in a new version. I will try it out and blog about it. 


Model :

While the FDM is being sorted out (I'm confident it will be), I will talk about the model. It's a nice model, with nice livery, you have two sets of livery with it, one is the standard gray (I can not remember the names of the liveries!) and the other has a nice camouflage scheme that I quite like. The HUD is standard, showing altitude, attitude indicator and angle of attack, but I can not say how accurate this is to the real jet though, because I hardly know about Saab JA-37 Viggens. The cockpit is a bit sparse at the moment, but all the necessary items for flying are there to use, and with the radar screen(?) in the middle like all jet fighters should have.

Crashing :

I feel I should write about crashing it because I am already an expert. I don't know how others fly it with a keyboard, but I can't, and the jet seemingly won't respond to my key commands. So I just lose control and crash into the ground. The crash not only have an explosion sound effect, it also has the pilot gasping his last breaths. Hmm. Becaue I am an expert at crashing the plane, I came to dread hearing it .  My last few flights, when losing control and about to crash, I just pause and quickly reset it. Didn't want to hear another pilot getting killed :) .

Flightgear Plane Download : 787-8

  I downloaded the 787-8 manually from work and after some difficulty, installed it on my computer at home with a USB drive. Loaded up for a test flight, in its Boeing Dreamliner livery, what a beauty.

  First "test" is to pushback, taxi out into an empty spot, and look through all the cockpit systems, test out the flaps, spoilers, thrust reverse, engine, aileron and rudder. Looks great. Position it on the runway, check flaps, brakes on, throttle up, release brakes, roll down the runway. Awesome. The animations are very nice, the nosewheels turn, on rotation the rear wheels angle upwards.

  Unlike the FG 777, the FG 787 is doesn't jump off the runway with ease, and seems to require a little bit longer runway than the Triple Seven. However, it does get off into the air nicely, and once in the air flies smooth and easy.

  A short round trip in the air and got back in for a landing. I set the autobrakes setting to "2", and lined up nicely with the runway with surprising ease, checked the speed and it's about 140knots. Seemed like my best approache so far, every is right. HOWEVER, upon touch down (a little long, thanks to my flare that kept it in the air for a little bit longer) about a few feet from the runway numbers I activated the thrust reverse, spoilers, added some power, waited for a bit and......

  Wait.... it's not stopping. OK, add more thrust. Brakes. Slowing, but still not stopping.. brake, brake, end of runway is fast approaching... in that panic I activated the parking brakes... but the plane went off the end of the runway.

  So imagine, the 787-8, with the nose poking into scenery just off the runway, and the tail still within airport boundary, slightly nose down position (runway elevation is slightly higher). How embarrassing.

  To save from the situation I thrust reversed out back onto the runway, which must've looked real funny to any bystanders.

  It seems to fly very although obviously I have never flown a 787 IRL (or any aircraft in real life, for that matter), but I'm may have screwed up the approach. Perhaps I let the speed increase during the approach, resulting in my overshoot.

 Comparisons: From what I could see, the 787 has the advanced stuff (such as Electronic Flightbags, Fly-by-Wire, etc.), and a great failure management system but then again I have to get familiar with the plane more to provided a better summary.

Download it here

My Flight Sim History, Part 1

When I was about 5 years old, bashing away at my father's Apple ][ , my father booted up a copy of Bruce Artwick's original flight simulator for me to have fun with. At that time, with the primitive graphics and wireframe outlines, I only recognized the runway and amused myself looking at the dials on the instruments watching them spin round and round. After a succesful take off in to oblivion (the map was only so large) and not knowing where the airport was I remembered typing in "A-I-R-P-O-R-T" to see if the computer got what I was trying to say. Of course, it didn't.. and that was it. I was having more fun with other games, namely, Hard Hat Mack, SeaFox, BreakOut and some sort of PacMan clone (I do not remember what it was called, but it sure wasn't PacMan), amongst plenty others.

Then we got a 286 computer. In 1990s, it came with Windows 3.0, which was state of the art. The 286 had been around for much earlier, but it was only after the price went down that we could get one. And there it was, among the dozens of games I got, was a diskette labeled "Flight Simulator 3.0".

That familiar startup screen - Runway 36, Meigs Field.

Flight Simulator 3.0. I actually (tried) learning VOR navigation with this one.

FS3 was what really got me hooked. The first FS, well yeah that was fun too, but it was the wrong time, I was about 5, it was on an Apple ][, and it's more like a novelty. FS3 was light years ahead in comparison. It had 640x480 graphics, it had nice vector graphics, it had color, it had buildings, and it had a whole world of airports to explore (north America). I also had manual for FS3, which I read it over and over the pages became so worn. I treasured that manual; I still have it today.

I cannot recall how many hours I put into FS3, even choosing it over other games of the time because my fascination with flight and planes are so strong. Eventually I figured out that there are other places besides Chicago Meigs Field, and make use of the airports list to explore places. I practiced takeoffs and landings, I show it off to many of my poor friends, whom, many of them was disinterested with my toying around with a computer plane that doesn't shoot missiles and things. I did get convert a few friends who eventually became simheads. At that time my passion for planes are going overdrive too, everything is airplane themed about my life, including a shirt and cap that my mother bought and sowed on various badges telling me that it was a pilot uniform. Although it had a shuttle on it. And I loved it.


Back to the FS3. The sim had one annoying feature in that the planes flew totally unrealistically because of the simplistic flight dynamics. It flew on rails, basically. And the plane will continuously move forwards in flight, no matter what you try to do, even in a stall. It will move slowly, but it will be forwards. The very basic flight dynamics also meant that you will go upwards if you point the nose up, and down if you point the nose down, but not nose up downwards and not nose down upwards, which makes landings totally unrealistic, because with every landing, you slam the nose wheel into the ground. I couldn't figure out how to make planes land like the real-world planes, and bugged my poor father to no end wondering out loud about the problem, which he had no real solution for. This and a box of an older FS2 I found at a computer shop compounded the problem because it had a screenshot of a Cessna in flight at the end of the runway, in a nose up altitude, as if flaring for touch down (it was a box marketing trick, you see, and poor 7 year old me thought that FS2 had that feature.)

Citation X WBGR > WBGB

I forgot to take screenshots. Here's a beauty shot of a Citation X from FlightGear wiki site.

What's up, internet!

 I have been neglecting this blog lately and for a good reason, I haven't touched FlightGear in a while. Busy with Kerbal Space Program... oh my that was so fun.

 So I learnt yesterday that FlightGear 3 was out and of course I downloaded it immediately.

 First flight I did was with the Citation X, taking off in the early morning (sim time) from WBGR (Miri) and, due to time restraint (it was night and getting late, real time) flew a short distance and landed at WBGB.

 I thought I did pretty well, landing was smooth although I did have to make a few steep turns and the roll & sink rate warning sounded a bit (oops), and did have to make use of the spoilers while in mid-air to slow the plane.

 Random thoughts : The FG3 is far smoother than FG2. And either my skills have improved, or it seems easier to land a Citation X (or it has to do with the smoother simulation).

 Terrain data for WBGR and WBGB is basic. I wished I could make the terrain and contribute scenery data here but I have tried and simply stumped by just how to go about it. Plus, I hardly have time nowadays, but I will figure it out one day.

Rules For Flight

Basic Flying Rules:
1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.
2. Do not go near the edges of it.
3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

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Rules For Flight

1. Every takeoff is optional. Every landing is mandatory.
2. If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again.
3. Flying isn't dangerous. Crashing is what's dangerous.
4. It's always better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.
5. The ONLY time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.
6. The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.
7. When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with the sky.
8. A 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. A 'great' landing is one after which they can use the plane again.
9. Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself
10. You know you've landed with the wheels up when it takes full power to taxi to the ramp.
11. The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. Large angle of arrival, small probability of survival and vice versa.
12. Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn't get to five minutes earlier.
13. Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might be another airplane going in the opposite direction. Reliable sources also report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds.
14. Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of take offs you've made.
15. There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
16. You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
17. Helicopters can't fly; they're just so ugly the earth repels them.
18. If all you can see out of the window is ground that's going round and round and all you can hear is commotion coming from the passenger compartment, things are not at all as they should be.
19. In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum (or balsa) going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose.
20. Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment.
21. It's always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as possible.
22. Keep looking around. There's always something you've missed.
23. Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It's the law. And it's not subject to appeal.
24. The four most useless things to a pilot are the altitude above you, runway behind you, fuel back at the airport, and a tenth of a second ago.
25. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. There are, however, very few old, bold pilots.

How to get Started in FlightGear

Here's a tutorial I did mainly for a friend who's completely new to FlightGear on how to get started off the ground.

1. Press "H" to see the HUD. This gives you a virtual display of the plane's informations such as rudder and aileron position, throttle position, altitude, speed and heading. This would be very useful later on.

2. Assuming you're starting out on the default runway, and the engine has started (use Help > Autostart feature), the first thing you should do is to get power to the engines (we will leave all the preflight check etc for purposes of QuickStart guide). Do this by press PageUp key repeatedly until the throttle reaches about 80%. You can go up to 100%, but this is not necessary because 80% is enough to get you airborne, and most real planes don't go 100% to save on tear and wear and also prevent failures.

3. Once you have the throttle powered up, you will realize that you are now moving along the runway and gaining speed. You might need to correct a bit to the left or right due to wind conditions. The 0 and Enter key on the number pad of the keyboard is the planes rudder. Tap 0 once to correct left a little, and Enter to return the rudder to position. Enter to go right. Remember to return it to center position. Try to stay on the runway, as excursions will destroy the landing gear on some aircraft. Don't worry too much about this part, as the plane will more or less stay quite straight.

4. Usually the take off run is quite short, and you would have gained enough speed to take off. Tap the "Down" cursor key about 3-4 times. This will pull back on the yoke, and your jet will start to liftoff. At first, the front wheel will lift off the ground, but the rear wheels will still be on the ground. Eventually as the plane gains enough lift, the whole plane will be off the ground. Remember to center all ailerons and rudder!

5. Now you're airborne. To slow things down a little, throttle down (PageDown key) to about 60%. Tap the "Up" cursor key one or two times and watch how the plane is. At this point you might need to make a lot of corrections until the plane heads the right way. Now you're airborne! Press "G" to stow the landing gear, climb to a safe altitude (6000 feet would be nice) and get a feel of the aircraft in the air!


Things to remember:

PgUp = Throttle up
PgDwn = Throttle down
Up key = Nose down
Down key = Nose up
Left = aileron turn left
Right = aileron turn right
0 = Rudder turn left
Enter = Rudder turn right

To view your own plane, press the "V" key.

Tap the left/right keys to turn left or right sparingly. Tapping it once or twice to the left, watch the plane make a bank, and centering it, rather than turning it left all the way in a hurry and you don't have enough time to center it until you're tumbling out of control.

Watch the HUD for information regarding your aircraft. It gives you quick information on altitude, speed and various other information that you can't quickly grasp by looking at the instruments.

This tutorial also more or less the same for propeller planes, but be warned, the prop planes may be slower, but they have torque effect that really turns the aircraft into a bank (in midair) or yaw left on the runway! You will need to counter with some skillful rudder action (on ground) or aileron (in air).

Check out this page for more tutorials