Yesterday I flew all the training missions (not that I need them, but I paid for the whole thing so I am playing the whole thing! ) and while they are entertaining and teach the absolute basics of how to fly an aircraft, I was slightly disappointed by a few glaring omissions and noticed a few quirks.
Examples:
1.They tell you how to fly turns, and the instructor even says something like “usually we keep bank angles below 30°” but they don’t actually tell you how to fly the recommended turns, in the traffic pattern for example. They tell you “turn heading 120” and if you whip the C152 around flying 30° turns you will end up in some very different spot than they suggest.
Related: they never explain what the turn coordinator is. They don’t even mention the instrument at all as far as I recall.
Related: they tell you nothing about coordinated turns either. Granted, not a huge problem in a C152 but it would have been nice to hear.
In fact the only times when they mention rudder pedals at all are on the ground, and during the first lesson where they say “push the pedal to go sideways”. People are in for a nasty surprise as soon as they try to land with wind.
Related: the only advice they give you concerning what you are supposed to do when finding yourself above glide slope is “cut throttle, extend flaps” and while that works in a C152 (those flaps are HUGE and have loads of drag. I actually wonder if they don’t maybe have too much drag.) I’d expect them to also tell you that it is OK to slip. Or to just go around and try again!
During the navigation flight they tell you to fly to Munds Park golf course, some 8 miles NE of Sedona.
IIRC immediately before that they tell you to climb to 5800ft which will fly you right into terrain, as Munds Park is above 6000ft ASL. When you notice that quite late (I admit that’s what happened to me) then you have to climb and thus the trip will take so long, you will wonder what is wrong with your clock.
Maybe they should pre-brief altitudes.
The training missions happen around Sedona and Flagstaff, which are located at pretty high altitudes. That has an impact on aircraft performance, especially since the C152 is not exactly a powerful aircraft to begin with.
But even worse is: They never tell you about mixture control at all! Flying at 8000ft (1000ft AGL near Flagstaff) and not leaning is… less than optimal.
OK, now it sounds like I hated those missions. I really don’t.
In fact I think they were pretty enjoyable. Especially since I am obviously not the target audience and you don’t want to scare people away with overly complex stuff.
I still hope they will later release advanced training missions for things like autopilot, radio navigation, ILS, or further basic airmanship, as I do think that people will be interested in that and it could be fun.
Maybe some misaions could be more similar to the stuff we are used from other simulations, especially DCSW (I recommend the DCS C-101EB training missions. The IFR one made me sweat profusely for example, and I am a rather experienced sim pilot).
Honestly the training missions in Dovetail Flight School / Flight Sim World were more comprehensive…
I hope they add more advanced training missions and some actual scenarios like in FSX. I had lot of fun with those. Many had multi paths so they were highly replayable.
Another thought:
The weirdest thing about training missions in simulations probably is that they teach you stuff during flight that a pilot in training in real life would be expected to know loooong before they climb into a pilot’s seat for the first time.
So I understand that they have to make concessions to “gameplay” here.
In military and commercial pilot training students would receive a long briefing on the lesson usually the day before the flight. About an hour in the classroom. This would be followed later by a pre-flight briefing immediately prior to the flight to revise what will be covered. This does not include extensive additional formal groundschool.
In the private flying world students are expected to study the lesson prior to flight. A pre flight briefing is also normally given.
I assume that even in the military the pilots would have studied aircraft instruments and the physics of flight and which motion of the yoke controls which axis of the plane, in some classroom lecture and/or some book before they brief for their first flight, or am I mistaken?
When I watched “Jet Stream” one of the things I noticed was that those guys had very little time to study a LOT of stuff. “Drinking from the fire hose”.
That’s done both because of monetary reasons and as a way to filter out only the toughest ones, since they have enough applicants.
It is probably a similar thing when airlines train pilots. The syllabus and schedule are fixed and they know that enough people can make it, so that’s what they do.
A guy studying for his PPL can take a lot more time, study books, and then fly the lessons with an instructor as soon as he is ready.
Yes, I would have been lost if I hadn’t completed the training in FSW when it was still a thing.
My observations exactly. But then again it looked so good! And the rest is game/mission design, which was probably not a high priority so far. More like an MVP.
I put myself through training. Of 12 in the class two of us made it, with me being the only one getting to an airline.
Regarding the study. Pull up a sandbag as a further aviation story that VictorK2 has not heard is coming.
Doing ground school for my CPL exams we were being taught instruments by a very elderly ex RAF pilot. He was the subject of a bit of banter because of his age and being a bit past lecturing. I liked him as he said nice things about the army, always wins over this ex Int Corps and infanteer. He was explaining the Automatic Direction Finder, which is of course neither automatic nor does it find your direction, especially with fixed card ADF’s. As the lecturer explained a technicality about position fixing with it he kind of drifted off into a distant place in his mind. He said quietly - “Of course we didn’t have these luxuries. We would pull up to fifty feet to try and get a bearing on the radio from BBC Malta for the navigator to get an idea of where we were going to approach the Italian coast.” I asked him more and found he flew Beaufighters from Malta. They were low enough to doge radar when the props disturbed the sea. I had a lot of time for the old guy. Sadly no longer with us. He said they practised leaving the aircraft frequently. It sank 30 seconds faster than the record for getting out.
While I found Rob Machado’s style a little wordy in some cases for the FSX tutorials, I really appreciated the comprhensiveness of them. I definitely hope MSFS has plans to add more of them.
About five years ago along with a few thousand others I became an active street protestor. Being supposedly a pillar of the community and a retired senior officer we marched in step behind ex army pipers from Horse Guards Parade (Trooping the Colour) to the seat of government protesting the repeat multiple prosecution of veterans for actions in war that they had already been fully exonerated for. Naturally we gave a smart eyes right at ‘The Cenotaph’ for our war dead. However, someone knew me and dropped me in it. “would you mind giving a pep talk to the boys sir?” I did. The media have wanted me ever since and the following week I was on live national TV with other worthies. I badly misspoke myself, it was about 0530 but the clip was repeated throughout the day.
Q. “Do you think serving personnel would support the veterans?”
A. " Yes. Both the armed forces, the navy and the army would support our veterans. Even the RAF would as well."
There is an excellent German Group “Black Angels” on Discord that delivers superb free training for helicopters in DCS. One to one and then as a formation. The servers are “Low Level Heaven”… They even give you a personalised skin for your Huey. A real QHI flies near the back of the formation and advises. I have been doing this a few weeks now and thanks to this and the excellent help from @Cib I am getting there. They are bi lingual. Its mostly in German but it is translated. Excellent supporting video and paperwork
) and while they are entertaining and teach the absolute basics of how to fly an aircraft, I was slightly disappointed by a few glaring omissions and noticed a few quirks.
