Tired, Confused and a Citation Bravo

So what a night, yesterday.

I was tired from work. And had about 2 hours before sleep to tinker around with some of the planes I downloaded for Flightgear.  One of them is the Cessna Citation Bravo.

At first I tried the Saab JA-37 Viggen. It is a fighter jet that is in development, and honestly, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it to fly properly (with the keyboard). I will download an update and see if that fixes the problem.

Once that is out of the way, I tried the Cessna Citation Bravo. I think the jet flew rather nicely, very nicely modeled on the outside, and nice cockpit on the inside. Perhaps a combination of fatigue and distractions from reading more about the airplane in the FG wiki, but I wasn't able to land it properly at KSFO, had 2 go arounds. Also, having to chat with the ATC while all this is going on, makes it quite busy.

It wasn't today actually I realized that I should have used the spoilers. And again, the importance of checklists, I suppose..

On the second go around I noticed an F-14 coming up behind me so I aborted the landing and spent the rest of the time just watching what it was trying to do. Sure enough it looks like it was trying to get a shot of me, and at that point I was really tired and just went straight to bed.

Don't fly fatigued :)

What about the Citation Bravo? It's excellent. I feel that it's as good as the Citation X that came with Flightgear, and that it's FDM is slightly on the simpler side (but then again, I've never flown at Citation Bravo). Nicely done, would recommend.

Going Supersonic CitationX

Supersonic! Mach 1

Simulation freezes when I open Route Manager. Resizing the window fixed it, but this happened.

Ghostplane!

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.)

Dangerous Flights

I have been watching these shows lately. It shows the dangers of ferry-flying and the pilots who do this for a living, some having to fly small planes over the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Fascinating. Sure like most shows there are some dramatization but other than that as an airplane buff it got me hooked on all the peril flying.

Highly recommended.

AWESOME Approach

Check this video out.

In just under 4 minutes, the pilots of this Dornier went from cruise to taxiing on the ground. They even beat the skydivers to the ground. The moment the last skydiver jumped out the pilots put the plane into an inverted dive straight downwards, flew just above treetop level, and did a really FAST APPROACH, SWEEPING TURN at nearly 90degree and set the plane down onto the runway without missing a beat (or overshoot, or crashing).

THAT IS AMAZING. And also, very dangerous. BUT AMAZING.

They dove straight after the last skydiver jumped but I found it scary that it looked like they were diving straight into those sky divers.



Another angle:

It's been a while... but a new computer coming!

It's been a while. Over 2 years in fact. I finally am getting a new computer to run FlightGear! I know it is loooooooooong overdue, but due to circumstances I am not able to get my hands on a computer powerful enough to run FlightGear, instead using my old 2003 computer just barely getting onto the Internet and running basic stuff, let alone run FlightGear after my computer broke.... (see previous posts)

But now, the wait is over! I am getting a new computer, I just ordered it yesterday, and will be shipped to me in about a week! Very pleased with myself about this. It outputs directly to HDMI and all.

Looking forward to running the new version of FlightGear (smoothly, I hope) and logging more flight time! Hopefully, it would be powerful enough to both run FlightGear and then do some video recording of my flights!

Some of the screenshots I am looking forward to seeing on my computer screen..

Red Bull Air Race Incredible Recovery

Incredible Recovery from hitting water at Red Bull Air Race.




It's amazing the plane has enough energy to not only pull out of the stall in such short time, but also enough to overcome the drag from the water!

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.

_______________________________
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.

A Scenic Flight Ends with Overrun

I was practicing my flying in FlightGear last night and just circling the airport and it was getting late - so, instead of exiting the flightsim I do what any hardcore simhead would do; turn back to the airport, and land.

Land I did. In my hurry to land and go back to sleep, I made multiple mistakes - approaching the airport too high, and as a result I had to basically dive the plane into approach; this came in way too fast to the airport, and made a series of careless turns to align with the runway.

The end result? I went onto the runway with idle engines, but the airspeed still going at 170-180 kias, floated above the runway for a while while the speed bled off, hit the runway unevenly past the midway point, and realizing the brakes were not doing the job I used the parking brakes - and I still went off the runway for quite a distance before I stopped.

Needless to say the CitationX I was flying got stuck in the ground. That was when I exited FlightGear.

If this were real life I would've not only gone off the runway, but hit various obstacles like trees people and buildings. Not good.

Lesson? Don't rush the landings. It would be OK in sims but certainly not OK in real life.