Flight Simulator- Fighter Pilot Episode 2

Fighter pilot – the second installment.

For those of you who have watched the first episode of the BBC show Fighter Pilot here is the second episode. You can totally understand their desire to fly and you know that most are destined for failure. See if you can pick out who will make it at the beginning. What a shame that there are such highs and lows in life, especially when it is your dream to fly. I have no doubt that I would have been chopped; come to think of it I probably would not have been selected for officer training in the first place. But this is where the joy of flight simulator comes into play. You can fly anywhere in the world in any aircraft you like and you can make as may mistakes as you like. Flight simulator has come a long way in the two years that I have been away and I am very excited about getting my sim experiences as real as I can.

I must say that training as a military pilot and being accurate and critical on performance will help you flying skills no end. At present I am flying the jet provost “jp5” which is freeware, and I am using the Linton On Ouse scenery which is also freeware. My first sorties are just circuits at 1000 feet above runway, climbout and circuit speed 150 kts with gear down and firat stage of flaps at 115 kts by the end of the downwind leg. Form the end of the downwind leg I turn and descend at 115 kts all the way to about 300 ft above runway where I apply landing flap to land on the numbers at about 90kts, not as easy as it sounds.

I am also thinking about using FRAPS which is a screen capture for FSX but more on this soon

Happy flying.Here is the second installment of Fighter Pilot " Officers and Gentlemen" 

Flight Simulator - BBC Fighter Pilot

Just a quick shot of me turning onto final with the JP5 …. Freeware by the way and a excellent model. As you can see by the PAPI the lights are all white indicating that I am high. This is being done fighter pilot style with a with a gentle turn and decent all the way from the end of the downwind leg of the circuit.. The airfield is Linton On Ouse also freeware and I am landing on runway 04 with alight crosswind from the North East. I have found that by flying this circuit and flying it accurately improves piloting skills no end. I will give a detailed description of what I am doing here in a later post. I highly recommend this little exercise to all training pilots. I still have a massive amount of improvement to do myself, but to think that these guys who were training in the RAF were doing this solo after only seven hours is just a frightening learning curve. And  another thing ! They had no flight simulators for this aircraft at this time so if you’re not a fast learner you are out or “chopped” as the RAF say.

I on the other hand have the luxury of flying this over and over again at no cost…… and I still can’t get it right.

Once I learn how to YouTube video my sorties, I will make a few short videos so you can see exactly what I am doing.

Flight Simulator - The return

Since my couple of years away from flight simulator there have been a few advances. The biggest one I would say is the PMDG 737 NGX. I was blown away with this aircraft and being a 737 fan it was a most welcome addition. Line flying I found can be a bit boring If there are no challenges, but here are additions that I am looking at to make the whole experience more real. VATSIM is on of them I think that interaction with a live atc whether vfr or ifr keeps you in the game and gets you flying a liitle tighter.I am also a big fan of fighter jets and I like to do a few carrier landings and missions on jet fighters.

While I had a few minutes of an evening I started watching a tv series friom the eighties called “ Fighter Pilot “ . It followed the student pilots that were lucky enough to be selected through the course at Linton on Ouse and RAF Brawdy, starting out at Biggin Hill where I learned to fly the Cessna 152 in the nineties. This is a fantastic series if not a little dated. So I have started by training on the Jet Provost JP5 which theses pilots trained on. Most of these pilots only took seven hours to go solo wich is in my opinion very quick indeed. Just at the moment I am learning the ciruit at Linton on Ouse and the power seting for the JP5. This is a great way to hone your skills for flying as in the RAF accuracy is everything.

Oh and by the way..............welcome to my flight simulator blog

This is the first epidode of fighter pilot called dreams.............Enjoy