GA is priceless

Jay Honeck wrote:
The most important thing is to =stay= in the roundabout until you
=know=, with sufficient lead time, where you get out.

No, the most important thing is for taxpayers (AKA: "Users") to lynch
traffic "engineers" who insist on foisting such silliness as
"roundabouts", "left turn only" arrows, and other "traffic calming
devices" on the rest of us.

A couple of years ago, right here in Iowa City, a bunch of these
so-called "engineers" installed (without warning or local input)
"chicanes" on a straight length of residential street, in an effort to
slow traffic. (Apparently one of the neighbors had repeatedly
complained about speeders.)

Was down in southern Mexico last fall. Along the highways out into the
rural areas were small settlements of a few houses. In these areas
citizens get together and construct their own speed bumps. Did a great
job of speed control without a policeman in sight. Quite cost
effective.
--
Gene Seibel
Gene & Sue's Flying Machine - http://pad39a.com/gene/
Because we fly, we envy no one.

Jay Honeck wrote:

These chicanes were asphalt blockades, essentially, put in every couple
of hundred yards, forcing traffic to make a sharp swerve to the left or
right, in an effort to slow people down.

I just purchased a newly built house, and while it was being finalized,
asked the builder why they made the road a one lane road right in front
of my house (not in front of the driveway portion, but the house
portion). His reply was the same, the city made him put it in to slow
traffic down the street. (This is in the middle of a long dead-end
street).

It give my house a nice sweeping curve for the front lawn, but I know
I'll be replacing mailboxes, when someone coming home late at night
doesnt decide to slow down and runs over my mailbox.

So far (7 months) no issues. But I know its only a matter of time.
The chicanes would have just been nuts though. I can imagine someone
plowing into one at high speed and that would be all she wrote.

Brian

On 3 Jan 2007 05:04:43 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote
in . com:

I used to play with the PC based flight simulator before taking lessons
and found it to be a very poor representation of the reality of flying.
There are far too many ways to fudge things in the simulator that just
don't work in real life.

Doug, you need to come fly the Kiwi before you can make a blanket
statement like that.

You're not a commercial pilot nor instrument rated, and you disagree
with one who holds an ATP? Please.

[...]


The 747 pilot had similar remarks. The B-26 check-pilot before him
pronounced it superior to the Link trainers that were used to train
WWII pilots. The accolades continue to pile up.

Have you ever seen a Link Trainer
http://www.starksravings.com/linktrainer/linktrainer.htm? It's a
wholly mechanical device like a player piano or pinball machine. I
would hope 21st century technology would be superior.

Larry Dighera writes:

You're not a commercial pilot nor instrument rated, and you disagree
with one who holds an ATP? Please.

He has already had IR commercial pilots say the same thing after
trying the simulator, so his disagreement has a sound basis.

Have you ever seen a Link Trainer
http://www.starksravings.com/linktrainer/linktrainer.htm? It's a
wholly mechanical device like a player piano or pinball machine. I
would hope 21st century technology would be superior.

It is, more so than many people here seem to believe.

--
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Nomen Nescio writes:

Totally different. An ultralight is stick & rudder (real flying). A hang glider
is controlled by wieght shifting.

Neither incorporates dual FMCs or autopilots, weather radar, or TCAS.

Because I can!

It's not very realistic.

Maybe the only noticable difference would be the fireball, torn metal,
and a few dead bodies scattered around.

Or a flawless autoland and a taxi to the gate.

Not at all. It's kind of a Zen thing with me. There's me, there's an opponent
(sometimes several opponents), and everything else starts to disappear.

That doesn't sound very Zen. Sharks are like that, too.

I'd bet that if you measured my heart rate and blood pressure in the heat of
battle, it would be lower than normal.

Just like Hannibal Lecter.

Sensations are a much larger factor in real flying that you seem to
think.

I think they are being overrated here in order to rationalize the
claim that time in a real cockpit is a sine qua non of flying.

But I will say that the most unreal, and annoying, thing about flying
a computer sim is that I actually have to look at the screen to know
what's going on.

Like flying on instruments, you mean?

I can fly a real plane fairly accurately for maybe a half
minute without looking at anything for attitude and position information.

I take it you don't fly IFR very much.

After that, small errors in perception start to compound and then I'm in
trouble without any references. But a half minute of flying by "feel" alone
can be quite useful at times. I'd bet, though, that there a LOT of other
pilots that can say the same thing.

Interesting, but I don't see any advantage to this.

Now you've got me wondering what my current G tolerance is at age 50.

As I recall, G tolerance is not necessarily correlated with age.
Women are better at it, though.

--
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Mxsmanic wrote:
True, but for many types of aviation, this is irrelevant. Instrument
flying doesn't require it; indeed, you're supposed to be _independent_
of motion when flying on instruments (so to some extent a lack of
motion can be useful).

Useful to keeping the dirty side down, but that just hilights one of
the ways simulation is different than real flying, right? The MSFS
simulation doesn't provide the (misleading) physical cues that ARE
there in instrument flight. The fluid in your ears isn't tumbling, you
instinctively "know" which side is right side up, etc.

I flew simulators from the very first sim on the Apple and pretty much
every version to MSFS 9 today. I new some of the developers from that
company (name escapes me) in hampaign that used to make the product
before MS bought them (An aside, one of my fraternity brothers had a
job in QA. His entire job was to slew to various airports and verify
that the radio frequencies worked at that location....) I'ts amazing
how much of the real world we've been able to compress into off the
shelf consumer class hardware.

I used to love it. I did the vatsim thing etc. I twondered how pilots
such as Kennedy could "lose it" on a night flight. I intellectually
knew about spatial disorientation, and that the cure was to just "be"
on the gagues. But it wasn't until I actually DID it, in a real
airplane, with real mass/inertia, real turbulence, etc, that I found
out it was nothing like my imagination or my experience in the sims.

I remember reading an article within the last couple of years on IMC
flying about a instructor and a student pilot with respect to control
forces. I believe it was called something like "the unseen hand of
god". it was a good article that mentioned the control forces we as
pilots will exert on control wheels simply by gripping the yoke too
hard. And we won't even REALIZE that we're putting those forces into
the system. The plane will feel like someone ELSE is flying it. I.e.,
the unseen hand of god.

The solution of course is to simply relax. But our eyes giving us
different cues than our bodies make that hard to do. We have instincts
built into us. Feeling like your falling (less than 1 g) causes you to
try to "hold on".

I've never been able to recreate that feeling in a sim. I have a hard
time recreating it in the airplane with a hood on. It's not the same
as being able to see the clouds whizzing past your windscreen.

The best I've been able to explain entering IMC is like when you first
dive into a pool. The world you were in changes. The rules of gravity
seem to change, your senses change, etc. It's funny, I find myself
holding my breath when I do it in my real airplane in real clouds.

As a computer engineer, I've often sketched out in my mind an add on to
MSFS or otherwise that would change the flight models to recreate that
"unseen hand of god". Something akin to random control inputs forcing
the pilot to concentrate and disregard his physical cues of sitting
straight and level.

I, like Jay, do not belittle your questions on the group. I don't
consider you to be a troll. Just someone that wants more information
about the real world of aviation. I do think its strange when you ask
questions, and when the answer doesn't seem orrespond to your simulated
worldview you seem to take issue with reality instead of the
simulation.

And while the whole "simming vs. reality" superiority argument is
subjective anyway, it is also simply silly. If you want to represent
yourself as an experienced pilot because you have thousands of hours on
simulated barons or boeing business jets, then great, have at it.

I'm going to be one of the rare ones on here and say DON'T go get a
real flight. I'm not sure how you'd react to an actual comparison.

Brian

Recently, Nomen Nescio posted:

Falcon 4.0 Allied Force has a 716 page manual. There are some radar
modes that I still haven't figured out a practical use for.
It's no "load & play" game, for sure. You actually have to LEARN
something and I think that's what puts a lot of people off.

I haven't looked into the status of this sim for quite some time. I knew
that it was being updated periodically by enthusiasts after Microprose
dumped it, but ISTR that there was some legal action that forced them to
abandon their work. Have things changed?

Neil

Nomen Nescio writes:

You don't really exist, pal. You are just a simulation of a human being.

And here you are, talking to me. Hmm.

--
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bdl writes:

Useful to keeping the dirty side down, but that just hilights one of
the ways simulation is different than real flying, right?

It is one way in which some simulations are different. But this
difference can be good rather than bad, if you are trying to learn
instrument flight.

I used to love it. I did the vatsim thing etc. I twondered how pilots
such as Kennedy could "lose it" on a night flight. I intellectually
knew about spatial disorientation, and that the cure was to just "be"
on the gagues. But it wasn't until I actually DID it, in a real
airplane, with real mass/inertia, real turbulence, etc, that I found
out it was nothing like my imagination or my experience in the sims.

We all have our personalities to deal with. But we don't all react in
the same ways.

As a computer engineer, I've often sketched out in my mind an add on to
MSFS or otherwise that would change the flight models to recreate that
"unseen hand of god". Something akin to random control inputs forcing
the pilot to concentrate and disregard his physical cues of sitting
straight and level.

But that would not be like real life. If a pilot is unconsciously
moving the controls, he'll do that on the sim, too.

I do think its strange when you ask
questions, and when the answer doesn't seem orrespond to your simulated
worldview you seem to take issue with reality instead of the
simulation.

I've been burned innumerable times throughout my life by posturing
airheads who claimed to be experts but weren't. I don't make that
mistake any more. Trust, but verify, as a politician once said. Or
better still, don't trust at all.

And one way to find out if someone is blowing smoke or actually knows
what he is talking about is to ask more questions.

And while the whole "simming vs. reality" superiority argument is
subjective anyway, it is also simply silly. If you want to represent
yourself as an experienced pilot because you have thousands of hours on
simulated barons or boeing business jets, then great, have at it.

I don't think it's in the thousands, but I'm not sure.

I'm going to be one of the rare ones on here and say DON'T go get a
real flight. I'm not sure how you'd react to an actual comparison.

There's a good chance that I wouldn't like the real thing.

--
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"bdl" wrote in message :

....
: As a computer engineer, I've often sketched out in my mind an add on to
: MSFS or otherwise that would change the flight models to recreate that
: "unseen hand of god". Something akin to random control inputs forcing
: the pilot to concentrate and disregard his physical cues of sitting
: straight and level.
:

Some sort of flashing light thing off in your peripheral vision, moving up and down slowly and out of phase with
simulated aircraft orientation. Maybe not a flashing light, just varying in intensity, maybe like one of those old
special effects you would see on the Twilight Zone, with the spiral line slowly turning....