My 7-year-old son and I used to compete frequently for use of the one gaming PC in the house. I’d want to fly some DCS World or Elite Dangerous and he’d want to play Portal or Train Simulator. I broke down over Thanksgiving, and bought myself a brand new rig so that I could “hand down” my old gaming rig to my son. What a great father I am, right? 
In any event, now we have two hardware set ups and frequently game next to each other. Good times!
Naturally, I’m pushing encouraging my son to try out flight simulators, so I was overjoyed when he asked to fly DCS together.
Hoping onto Mudspike TS3 and server isn’t the most conducive learning environment for a 7 year-old – at least, he won’t learn the things I want him to learn – so I took an old Su-25T MP training mission I created for DCS introductions and set off for some training.
Start-up training was pretty straight-forward. It’s always fun to introduce people to the “right” shift, control, and alt keys.
Taxi training is tough. It’s hard enough getting my son to sit through dinner, but having him maintain centerline without bashing into the back of my aircraft was a real chore.
Our first major challenge. For whatever reason, my front tire exploded while gently braking for a turn. Luckily, the ground crew was on the spot and had it replaced in 3 minutes.
Take offs are always special. I first made LilEinsteinJR watch my takeoff roll as I called out my actions: “full throttle”, “maintain centerline”, “rotate at 280 KPH”, “gear up by hitting ‘g’”, “flaps up one notch”, etc. The activity paid off as he repeated the exercise flawlessly, no craters.
Formation flying was a bit trickier, but I attribute that to not having TrackIR. Maybe Daddy needs an upgrade to a TIR5, so I can “hand down” my TIR4? Hmm…
The rest of the flight included talking him through a Vikhr delivery procedure and proceeding to attack and strafe various buildings around Krasnodar. He fared well, although I don’t think he’s ready to be a section lead just yet!
