ELITE or ON TOP for IFR training?

My $.02-- FS2004 is good enough for procedures and scan. Don't bother
buying a yoke or pedals. Use a cheap "gamepad" type controller with
thumb-joystick (instead of a grip/wrist joystick). Go to "user
controlled weather, advanced" and turn turbulence to max, both on the
clouds panel and the winds panel. Give yourself a 30 knot crosswind
while you're at it.

I also used X-plane and On Top, but settled on FS2004... no experience
with Elite though.

--
Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas
N7NZ

John Clonts wrote:
My $.02-- FS2004 is good enough for procedures and scan. Don't bother
buying a yoke or pedals. Use a cheap "gamepad" type controller with
thumb-joystick (instead of a grip/wrist joystick). Go to "user
controlled weather, advanced" and turn turbulence to max, both on the
clouds panel and the winds panel. Give yourself a 30 knot crosswind
while you're at it.

agreed. If you already have MSFS, just stick with it. No need
to spend any more. I got a cheap joystick that I could
use with my left hand. Most are made fighter-pilot style using
your righthand. As for the turbulence and winds, save those
for later on. First get you scan going. My CFII had me
doing a clover leaf pattern (name?) at set airspeeds and
vertical speeds. This is what simulators are good for. The
one thing that MSFS is bad for is true power settings for a performance.
Generally, learn what power settings give you a performance and
then use it on the flight sim but not in the actual airplane. Doesn't
really matter in reality though on the simulator.

Gerald

Bruno,
We started with MS FS 2002/2004 then gave Xplane a try. After trying
out the Elite program when checking out a Flight school, we bought the
program along with the IFR training manual It was worth every penny and
more. We got our instrument ratings two weeks ago but still plan to
continue using it for practices before every instrument flight.
You can download the demo program (fully functional but with 5 minute
time limit) to give it a try. Aside from the IFR training syllabus,
Elite also offer Instrument approach scenarios which are also quite
helpful.
Regarding hardware, we started with a joystick and rudder pedals then
replaced the joystick with the CH flight yoke. The joystick worked OK
but the yoke seemed to be closer to flying our plane.
Hai Longworth

Bruno wrote:
Dear All,

I'm following an airline pilot course in Belgium, and I'm to begin with the
IFR training next week in a FNPT2 simulator.

Don't waste your money on On Top or IP Trainer like I did. The
products don't work on any of the PC's I've tried them on and ASA
tech support is non-existant.

What about the fact that Elite uses an old GPS box that is clunky,
difficult to use, and not even on the market any longer?

Also, as I recall, all user waypoints are lost when exiting the program.

Sure, I realize they have a Garmin interface if you have all their
expensive hardware, but no one at home would have that stuff.

I find Elite, at least for home use, stuck in the VOR/ILS/DME daze.

" wrote:

Bruno,
We started with MS FS 2002/2004 then gave Xplane a try. After trying
out the Elite program when checking out a Flight school, we bought the
program along with the IFR training manual It was worth every penny and
more. We got our instrument ratings two weeks ago but still plan to
continue using it for practices before every instrument flight.
You can download the demo program (fully functional but with 5 minute
time limit) to give it a try. Aside from the IFR training syllabus,
Elite also offer Instrument approach scenarios which are also quite
helpful.
Regarding hardware, we started with a joystick and rudder pedals then
replaced the joystick with the CH flight yoke. The joystick worked OK
but the yoke seemed to be closer to flying our plane.
Hai Longworth

Ron Natalie wrote:
Bruno wrote:

Dear All,

I'm following an airline pilot course in Belgium, and I'm to begin
with the IFR training next week in a FNPT2 simulator.


Don't waste your money on On Top or IP Trainer like I did. The
products don't work on any of the PC's I've tried them on and ASA
tech support is non-existant.
I continue to use IPTrainer and have bought several upgrades. Version
6.0c is more stable than earlier versions, especially the older ones
that actually used a DOS memory manager.

Flying the lessons with IPT is challenging because it doesn't allow even
momentary errors. If you slip up on a minor detail right at the end of
the lesson, you must redo the entire lesson from the beginning. That
leads to boredom and little training. I have never made it through
flying "Plan A". Has anyone gotten all the way through?

"Bruno" wrote in message
...
Dear All,

I'm following an airline pilot course in Belgium, and I'm to begin with
the
IFR training next week in a FNPT2 simulator. Therefore, I would like to
use
a computer based simulator to train the procedures at home, but I don't
really know what's the best of Flight Simulator 2004 that I own, On Top
8.0
that costs about 100 US dollars or Elite 8.0 that cost much more (about
250
dollars).

Could those of you who know those pc based simulators tell me if it's
worst
paying for it, or if the Flight Simulator 2004 will be enough?

Thank you for your help,

Bruno,
Brussels

I bought Elite many years ago. It works very well, I've never had any
complaints with it. It flies exactly like the airplanes I've flown. The
one complaint I remember someone else making is that it didn't model the
effect of fuel load on aircraft performance. Whether that is still true in
version 8, I don't know. I never noticed the lack of fuel load modeling in
my sim flying.

When I bought ELITE, it was far more expensive. I have always thought it
was worth every penny. I have no prospect of flying jets, but I'm tempted
to buy the Jet version to get closer to that sort of challenge.

I can't speak to the question if you need it or if you can get sufficient
training benefit from Flight Sim or the other programs. I was able to use
Flight Sim to visualize certain radio navigation elements. At the time I
was able to get some benefit without being able to competently hand fly the
flight sim by yoke. I thought watching the flight sim panel was invaluable
in learning my scan. Perhaps that's the primary benefit and nothing more
than flight sim is necessary for that.

One thing that I liked about ELITE was that while flying it I never found
myself blaming my clumsy technique as a student on the sim and thinking "if
only I had that better program." At the time, ELITE was the most accurate
flight model, perhaps with the fuel load exception, and there didn't seem to
be a clear better choice. I probably would have bought the Jepp product but
remember it seemed to be a bit more generic and less specific to the 172 in
some ways I can't now remember. I think it's since been bought or sold and
maybe vanished in the market.

--
Scott

Tim,
I do not believe that having a more modern GPS is essential for
IFR training. My husband started IFR training a year before me. He
used MS FS in conjunction with a traditional training program. In
witnessing his slow progress, I decided to spend time with a good
simulator program like Elite before starting mine. The structured
training syllabus was of tremendous help for me to get a feel of
instrument flying. After spending two weeks finishing up all the
lessons on the simulator, I resumed my book learning for the written
test. We then doing some hoodtime serving as each other's safety
pilot. When we took the accelerated IFR training course with Bill
Zaleski, very little time was spend on his PCATD. After 5 days, he
talked us into trying for the checkride. I believe that our practices
on the Elite, the many great books that we read (Gardner's, Dogan's,
Sollman's, Butcher's etc.) along with our own practices in our plane
had prepared us well for the actual training.
Our plane currently does not have a certified GPS, we plan to add
it in the near future. In the meantime, the basic VOR/ILS/localizer
etc. serve us well in our instrument flying.

Hai Longworth

I use On Top to do refresher work and find it helpful, but there are
some things I definitely don't like about it.
1. The Arrow power model has no relation to actual power settings in a
real Arrow.
2. The GPS is nearly useless. You have to put your own approach fixes
into the database, though it does remember them when you shut down.
3. The avionics panel has to be switched on and off. When it's on, it
covers the CDI. I rationalize this extra workload to compensate for
the fact that I'm not talking to ATC.

I do like the ability to "re-fly" the flight to review how well I did
holds and approaches.

Stubby wrote:

Flying the lessons with IPT is challenging because it doesn't allow even
momentary errors. If you slip up on a minor detail right at the end of
the lesson, you must redo the entire lesson from the beginning. That
leads to boredom and little training. I have never made it through
flying "Plan A". Has anyone gotten all the way through?

I wouldn't know. It has never operated long enough for me to get
through more than the first few lessons. It's a piece of crap and
a waste of over $300 for the pair.