Flight simulator software for Cessna 172 question

[love2fly14]

Hi,
Do you guys know a good software preferable one I can download. I don't mind paying for it.
I would like to practice my checks on the Cessna, My goal is to get familiarize with my checks so when I'm practicing on the weekend things move a little faster..
Thank you

[Pop n Fresh]

Which checks? You might be better off sitting in a real cockpit with the POH. Sorry, I'm old. Like way more than twenty if you can believe it.

[love2fly14]

cabin checks, hasel checks.....
I know, but I do not have access to a real cockpit until the weekend. So When I'm doing my checks it takes longer. Even when I'm doing my flight lessons, I keep looking down trying to find where my instruments are and it makes me lose my attitude, so to get more practice, I can do this at home on my spare time.

[CpnCrunch]

There's Microsoft Flight Simulator X and X-Plane. X-Plane has a free demo which might suffice - I think it just has one airport.

Note however that the instruments in your plane might be different so I'm not sure how helpful it will be. Perhaps take a photograph inside the cockpit next time.

[Mark Rose]

http://www.flightgear.org/ is completely free. It has a Cessna 172 model in it, but I cannot vouch for its accuracy not being a pilot (yet).

[Pop n Fresh]

I think Microsoft flight sim is free now. Not sure how use full it's going to be for practicing a HASEL check. I think you're just going to have to develop them over time.

I know when I got married and did not fly often enough anymore, I decided to fly on the computer. In my case it helped develop some bad habits that I had to struggle with during landing. The other phases of flight were possibly improved.

I improved several things here via reading and asking "Painful" questions about things until they got worked through.

[cgzro]

Make a paper and pencil drawing, full scale, tape it to a piece of cardboard and sit in front of it.

Very recently I was at British Airways 747-400 training facility at Heathrow and they have exactly that for practice when you cant get in the sim.

You can even make a round fuel selector and put it on the floor

[mike123]

Make a paper and pencil drawing, full scale, tape it to a piece of cardboard and sit in front of it.

Very recently I was at British Airways 747-400 training facility at Heathrow and they have exactly that for practice when you cant get in the sim.

You can even make a round fuel selector and put it on the floor

What he said!

Perhaps you can use this:


Forget the sim, it's a waste of time.

[love2fly14]

Glad I asked, I was about to get one for 49USD.
Thanks the picture will help

[Pop n Fresh]

It's not that a sim even the home computer type are a complete a waste of time. You need to be careful and integrate them with real flying. I would suggest they are just limited.

For certain things they are excellent. Instrument procedure practice for example.

[ThatArmyGuy]

Next time you're at the airport, take a photo of the 172's cockpit that you're flying so you can study the cockpit to know where everything is so you can keep your eyes outside.

And also, you can practice your emergencies and HASEL check by using the photo. Very effective for procedures - again so you'll know where everything is so you can keep your eyes outside.

See the common theme here?

[Cessna driver]

Make a paper and pencil drawing, full scale, tape it to a piece of cardboard and sit in front of it.

Very recently I was at British Airways 747-400 training facility at Heathrow and they have exactly that for practice when you cant get in the sim.

You can even make a round fuel selector and put it on the floor

What he said!

Perhaps you can use this:


Forget the sim, it's a waste of time.

Agreed, theres a time and a place, and neither are in VFR flying,

It's frustrating when students stare at instruments...

It's worse when they get air sick after you just told them to look outside more and the air sick feeling diminishes

[Shiny Side Up]

cabin checks, hasel checks.....

Enlighten us on what sorts of cabin checks you're doing. The HASEL check isn't that much to memorize...

[B52]

I used microsoft for a while but went to X-Plane.com and X-Plane 10
version 2.30which is about to go to 2.50 in a few weeks or Beta version is out now.

If you have an older computer, get the older X-Plane 9 as you need
an Intel i7 3.5 ghz processor and 4 gb of DVD ram in addition to 8ghz of regular ram.
You also need a high end plus $400 video card as a minimum.

That beats 10 years old Microsoft and the graphics are incredible.

for a specific add on Cessna 172, check out http://www.carenado.com

All very nice stuff and it takes many many hours to get the hang of
X-Plane but worth learning.

It costs to set it up, with a decent computer etc but
the software is $59 for the Global version which I'd recommend rather
than the regional at x-plane.org or Ebay sold / store sold versions.


There are a large number of aircraft designers for X-plane 10 and many are for free.

I'm sure others with knowledge about the "add on Programs" that go with
X-plane 10 can tell us about those including ATC radio etc.


Lots of examples on You Tube.
For a Garmin 1000 on a Cessna 172 I found this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqc561djp2M

For the King Air 200 here is one of how the switches work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLe4Cd54zkE


Enjoy

[Docbrad]

Just go to the airport on a rain day. Sit in the airplane for an hour or two. Touch all the knobs. Find all the gauges.

[slam525i]

Home flight sims are good for learning how instrument navigation, not much else (and that is arguably getting less and less relevant with everything switching to GNSS RNAV. I'm thinking by the time I've saved enough money for an IFR, every approach will be RNAV, possibly with ILS). They are seriously different in "feel". As good as the Carenado X-plane add-ons are, they may not necessarily match your airplane, and muscle memory from being in the airplane is entirely different from mousing around the virtual cockpit.

Docbrad is right, and I would argue even a photo/drawing doesn't help that much. Go sit in the airplane on an IMC day.

[5x5]

cabin checks, hasel checks.....
I know, but I do not have access to a real cockpit until the weekend. So When I'm doing my checks it takes longer. Even when I'm doing my flight lessons, I keep looking down trying to find where my instruments are and it makes me lose my attitude, so to get more practice, I can do this at home on my spare time.

Please don't take this the wrong way. It sounds like you are quite new to flight training, especially the part I bolded. In the early stages of training, you should not be looking down at your instruments. You need, and your instructor should help you, to focus outside the airplane. That is what will help you not lose your attitude. It will also help you to learn a safe scanning for other airplanes process.

And remember, it may seem like a lot right now, but trying to learn everything all at once may appear like a time saving approach, but in the long run will almost always take more time and be less effective.

[Colonel Sanders]

A year or so ago, a nice young man (pre-PPL)
asked me to fly with him - his regular instructor
was out of town.

So, I showed up for the flight with my paperwork,
which consisted to 2 blank sheets of 8.5x11 paper,
which I proceeded to cover the entire left side of
the dashboard, by pushing the paper over the knobs
sticking out from the gauges.

He was a tad surprised, but managed to start, taxi
out, take off and climb out to the practice area with
no flight instruments. Didn't even need an airspeed
indicator or altimeter or heading indicator. Remember,

ATTITUDE + POWER = PERFORMANCE

If you put the nose of the aircraft where it usually is,
and the throttle where it usually goes, the aircraft is
going to do what it usually does.

We then did some slow flight in the practice area,
with no airspeed indicator. Didn't need it. The
horn in the 172 worked great.

Then, flew back home. Descended, joined the
circuit with no altimeter or heading indicator,
flew a base and final (slightly fast - I could tell
from the slightly nose-down attitude) and landed
and used a bit more runway than usual.

But it was no big deal, to fly visually with no
flight instruments. In fact, it was an incredibly
illuminating lesson for him. It forced him to

LOOK OUTSIDE

and visually orient the aircraft. And look for
traffic. Bonus.

I have a couple thousand hours in funny little
biplanes that have no gyroscopic flight instruments.
All they have is an airspeed indicator and an
altimeter. Not even a VSI, or even a ball.

Despite the lack of a "six pack" in the panel,
I have managed to fly them to and from
Central America, to fly airshows there.

This is the view, flying across the Gulf of
Mexico:



No flight instruments, apart from an airspeed
indicator and an altimeter.

I don't spend much time looking at them
when I am flying, but despite that, I am
able to visually fly the aircraft reasonably
precisely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcy4ZhGHHaE


I have nothing against instrument flying - I
used to teach IFR back in the 90's, and hold
both Canadian ATPL and FAA ATP - but that's
not what you're doing right now.

You're learning to fly visually. Try looking
outside.

Now, I probably don't know as much about
flying as your regular instructor, but I hold
class 1 instructor and class 1 aerobatic instructor
ratings, and I've been continuously instructing
(and a CFI at 3 different FTU's) for over 20
years now. Around 3,000 hours dual given.

I might suggest that you

LOOK OUTSIDE


Earlier this year, I checked out a couple of
new owners (licenced pilots, with hundreds
of hours) on their very nice new (to them)
RV-7A. They had a HUGE checklist, which
I gently took from them, and placed in the
back.

I told them that we would not be using a
checklist in this very simple aircraft. We
would spend nearly all of our time

LOOKING OUTSIDE

and we would accomplish our checks by using a
simple scan, from left to right, of the panel.

I really worry what they're teaching the kids
at flight schools, these days.

See "Cargo Cult":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Post-war

With the end of WWII in the Pacific, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use.

Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.

The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of aeroplanes out of straw and cut new military-style landing strips out of the jungle, hoping to attract more aeroplanes

[love2fly14]

Thanks guys for all the comments, I will not get the software, but will work with pictures and try to have access to the airplane on a rain day. * I'm very new, about 10 hrs in* I also will work harder on not focusing in my instruments when flying.

[Pop n Fresh]

You'll be fine. I remember one day early on I was feeling overwhelmed by the phonetic alphabet. Another time I wondered how I could possibly ever fly the plane while doing a pre landing flow check.

Everything will come along and fall into place with time. I read once, "Flying is learning to do a thousand simple tasks then being able to know how to do them at the same time." Quoted from memory, might not be exactly how it was written.

Where's that trey guy? He had a good point when he wrote, it is nice to read a thread like this written by someone who is still excited about learning to fly.

[Colonel Sanders]

Flying is learning to do a thousand simple tasks

And that's really the problem. You don't need to learn
to do a thousand things to solo a light trainer. You just
need to learn to do a few things well.

The perfect ab initio trainer would be a Piper Cub with
no electrical system. No vacuum system. No gyros.
No radios. No battery, no starter, no alternator, no
solenoids, no switches, no wires.

You don't need any of that crap, to learn to fly an
airplane. You need to learn to

LOOK OUTSIDE

and learn to control the stick, rudder and throttle,
to maneuver an aircraft through a circuit, from
takeoff to landing.

All else is distracting bureaucratic rubbish and
nonsense.

Throw that 100 page checklist in the garbage
where it belongs. Fly the aircraft, and

LOOK OUTSIDE

I just landed, after doing some aerobatic
instruction. We did vertical upline 1/4 rolls,
1/2 rolls, full rolls, humptys, hammerheads
and torque rolls. I spent the entire flight

LOOKING OUTSIDE

[Big Pistons Forever]

He was a tad surprised, but managed to start, taxi
out, take off and climb out to the practice area with
no flight instruments. Didn't even need an airspeed
indicator or altimeter or heading indicator. Remember,

ATTITUDE + POWER = PERFORMANCE

If you put the nose of the aircraft where it usually is,
and the throttle where it usually goes, the aircraft is
going to do what it usually does.

We then did some slow flight in the practice area,
with no airspeed indicator. Didn't need it. The
horn in the 172 worked great.

Then, flew back home. Descended, joined the
circuit with no altimeter or heading indicator,
flew a base and final (slightly fast - I could tell
from the slightly nose-down attitude) and landed
and used a bit more runway than usual.

But it was no big deal, to fly visually with no
flight instruments. In fact, it was an incredibly
illuminating lesson for him. It forced him to

LOOK OUTSIDE

and visually orient the aircraft. And look for
traffic. Bonus.

+ 1

Just did a flight with a newly licensed PPL who "was having trouble landing". First circuit I watched to see where they were looking. Not surprisingly it was not outside. So I covered up the airspeed and altimeter. By circuit 4 the climbs and descents where flown at a constant attitude and every time we peeked the airpseed was either right on or only 2 or 3 kts from desired. When we peeked at the altimeter on downwind we were within 50 feet of our desired altitude.

AND the landings were pretty good

It is amazing how easy an airplane is to fly if you just pay attention to the attitude and apply the appropriate amount of power.

[Pop n Fresh]

The perfect ab initio trainer would be a Piper Cub with
no electrical system. No vacuum system. No gyros.
No radios. No battery, no starter, no alternator, no
solenoids, no switches, no wires.

That's an old man plane. I finally came around to those this year after I quit flying. Back when I was a budding four bar wearing CPL in my twenties, I would have picked the glass paneled Cirrus myself, had they been invented.

Just this spring a gentleman I was working with asked me where I thought his Grandson should go for flight training. I told him, "I only have experience with xxxxx and xxxxxxxx. I like them both but... If he goes to the smaller airport there is only one runway. Instead of a cut off for crosswinds. He will have to learn to takeoff and land in them. He can still go to the other airport for circuits." The reply was, "Going to xxxxxxxx was never the plan."

And don't tell us about Sammy or someone else brought up around airplanes. They are anomalies. The young guys want to learn to fly in the fanciest plane available, "Just like I'll be flying at (X Airlines) in a couple of years.". They don't want sticks and rudder pedals.

[Colonel Sanders]

One can choose to be a pilot, like these guys:








Or one can choose to be a button pusher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueJeC2pxxbM

That's an old man plane

Flown with pride by this "old man":



I don't know as much about aviation as the
expert button pushers here, though. At least,
that's what they keep anonymously telling me.

don't tell us about Sammy

What a funny coincidence, that someone that
learned to fly "old man airplanes", flew his first
airshow in a Stearman in California, at age 17.

Not much of a stick compared to the self-proclaimed
anonymous experts here, who won't say who signed
off their SAC cards.

[Pop n Fresh]

don't tell us about Sammy

What a funny coincidence, that someone that
learned to fly "old man airplanes", flew his first
airshow in a Stearman in California, at age 17.

Some children can sit quietly and behave most of the time in a restaurant or entertain themselves outside without electronic devices.

Some people can go all the way to the corner or cross walk and wait for traffic to stop before stepping off the curb.

And some people know the best side to take a cross wind from.

I would suggest they are in the minority. The nice old planes are also kind of rare, exceedingly so in the flight training world. If you don't own one or at least know someone who does, where can a guy go to get dual on a Stearman or a Cub these days?

By the way I forget which side is better for a cross wind. I think it's left but I'm in the majority that is not keeping current at crosswind landings.