Lukasz

You're correct, real Mentor doesn't have steerable front wheel. Pilots use differential braking.

Veni, vidi... I was deeply engaged in some work, when I felt tired and thought of looking to x-pilot forums as a relief. Awww, fly-in details are posted! Quick glance at my second watch, set to GMT - I have 5 minutes to go! A little bit late, but it'll do. Quick connection, got all messed up in Katmandu, finally all was set up with engine running. But... there was no one else. Quick look on vRoute - no one even inbound to Katmandu. After some 15 minutes of idling on a ramp and pretending I'm filing a flight plan, I took off to Lukla. It turned out, that you need to really hurry only, when chased by a bear or anything similar. Direct to GPS at some reasonable FL may be good for flatlands, here I had to change altitude 3 times and course 2 times, to avoid peaks and clouds. There were beautiful cumulus all over the sky, really outstanding thanks to REX textures. The only problem was what was hiding behind them, so I preferred to avoid them and mountains altogether. The wind was playing tricks too, with occassional up- and downdrafts. Finding an airfield in the middle of Himalayas is actually more... entertaining than it looks like at first. Last time I was there, was in FS9 few years ago. After a 360 with one eye on the GPS map I've entered a valley and soon found Lukla hidden on one of its sides. When I got closer, it became apparent, that the runway is totally overgrown with trees! Darn, should have installed that scenery - if I had a time to do so, that is. Nevermind, I'm pretending that there are no trees. There is no spoon, afterall... I've set up for a perfect approach and just when I was going to scratch the runway with wheels, A BUS comes out of nowhere and hits me like a baseball bat. Why, of course! There is a highway going right through the runway, how nice. I really should have installed that scenery... I've reloaded aircraft (no, no "hard crash" - only engine separation, not bad for an encounter with a bus) and taxiied to the ramp. Aww, even in a simulator the view was outstanding! I guess that's why all of these people are magnetically atracted to this place and these mountains. In reality it must be absolutely breathtaking! I wonder, how would that it be in X-Plane 10? I mean, the Trans-Himalayan Highway

You could buy a secondary notebook or other minilaptop on Windows, just to run additional software like Simplates. I got mine dirt cheap on eBay and having second screen and all the data at hand during flights is a real blessing. Before that, I had to either task-switch during flight or painfully note everything on paper, before takeoff. I also use the notebook to save backups my payware planes and other important stuff, instead of recording them on CDs. The notebook is also great for reading all of these pdfs Almost like a book - I don't have to print them anymore or be stuck to my desktop while reading.

It will be done, when it will be done. I can wait a little bit longer, as I believe it will be worth it. No need to, ekhm, *rush* things up ;D By the way, the Saab has rather detailed overhead panel. Goran, are you going to reproduce that also? http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/saab/images/Saab340_3.jpg

Lukla! And make carbureted planes as fly-in theme 8)

But which Christmas? Every year has one and without a specific year, we're still in darkness of ignorance ;D

How was at the fly-in? I regret I couldn't come, because of insane amount of work :-\

Try using differential braking + a little bit of throttle. This way I can follow taxiways' turns even with decent speed and no trouble.

Yesterday I've managed to read all of the pilot resources center and now I'm setting up the stuff Look for BE76 SP-KTL, that is if I ever get all of this up and running on time

I believe we would have received much more info on progress, on any project - not just the CRJ, if only such information would be treated accordingly by the community - that is not creating instant wild "I want it now" and "when it will be done?" hype. The developers are under enough pression, with overcoming software and technology limitations, as well as slow but constant ticking of time flowing by. There is a very thin line between enthusiasm, encouragement and pushing on the devs, watching on their hands.

Nah, more likely incompatible scenery or he just forgot to click off "runways follow terrain contour" ;D

It's OK with me. Also a more specific hour would be good, to have everyone in the air at once. I have all Sunday free and I'm in GMT+1.

Wanna fly with her? http://x-plane.aq.pl/Hawaiian_Princess.zip

Ah, excellent! ;D One less app to hog on my OS resources So I'm good to go, as soon as I get that SquawkBox running!

By "virtual radio" I mean any software, that enables its users to communicate by speech. There are some different programs which do that and I've asked, which one to use in order to be compatible on VATSIM - in other words what to use to be able to speak with pilots and ATC, as flying and typing at the same time kinda spoils the whole fun and purpose of ATC for me (1.5 keyboards were hurt during testing that!).

Can this Joker act as a "virtual radio"? There are TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, RogerWilco and probably more - which one should I get? Another thing is, I remember an utility for FS9 that allowed to change radio channels from the sim itself, by tuning COM1 radio to the frequency of TS channel, without the need for clicking it in TS itself. Unfortunately I forgot the utility's name, but is there anything similar for X-Plane?

http://www.avweb.com/blogs/insider/AVWebInsider_SimTraining_203240-1.html A follow up commentary with resulting interesting discussion and more insight into professional simulator training vs. real operations.

I would also like to take part in the fly-in. Unfortunately I'm limited to 1700Z-2200Z from monday to friday, saturdays and sundays are all free to go I've never flown multiplayer on X-Plane. From what I've read, I'll need Squawkbox v4. Anything else, like Teamspeak or other "radio" software? I ask in order to avoid and reduce any possible compatibility issues.

From that perspective they resemble a pair of P-51D's on a dawn patrol

C208 only with Alaska RealScenery

From PHUP to HI23, through POA NDB. A lovely flight

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Report_SimulatorTrainingFlawed_203211-1.html "Problems stemming from simulator training have been cited as contributing factors in airline accidents that caused more than half of the 522 fatalities over the last decade, according to a USA Today analysis published on Tuesday. Most recently, the NTSB cited deficient simulator training as a contributing factor in its final report on a December 2008 accident in Denver, in which six people were severely hurt when a Continental 737 ran off a Denver runway. Simulated crosswind training in the airline industry is "inadequate," the NTSB reported, due to "deficient simulator wind gust modeling" that fails to provide pilots with "realistic gusty crosswind training." USA Today noted that simulators also were cited in the NTSB reports on last year's fatal Colgan Air crash and the November 2001 crash of an American Airlines A300 in which 265 people died. In its report on the Colgan Air crash, the NTSB said airline simulators needed to do a better job of helping train pilots to handle icing emergencies. In the A300 crash, the NTSB found that a simulator exercise had given pilots a false sense of how the rudder would respond to inputs. The investigators found that the rudder pedal motion in the simulator and the airplane produced by normal and high pilot input forces resulted in different pedal displacements. The differences were attributed to the software representation of the elastic cable stretch in the simulator, which was less stiff than the cable stretch on the A300-600 airplane. The NTSB voted earlier this year to urge federal regulators to create higher standards for simulator performance, USA Today said." If such problems are being encountered with professional and very expensive simulators, then I'd say we're doing pretty good in our own "world"! Another thought is that, still nothing can beat real flight experience, despite obvious and huge advances in computer graphics and fluid mechanics modelling.

A formation flight would be even more interesting The controllers are frustrated with your double-oh-seven call sign, jealousy is a horrible thing

I've been thinking about this statement and I've come to an idea, that it could be tied to X-Plane's way of handling the aircraft inertia. We know, that the default radii of gyration is not good, most of the well developed aircraft (if not all of them) have custom values set in Plane Maker, in order to avoid the terrible "paper plane syndrome". It is possible, that the turbulence and waves are well calculated - or at least not so bad as they seem to be - and they exaggerated effect on aircraft comes from the lack of sufficient inertia modelling. Try to blow the same airstream on a bowling ball and on a paper one - you get the idea. As for the effects of turbulence, they can be truly annoying, but at the same time they provide an invaluable experience in handling the aircraft. Maintaining stable flight parameters during such weather is obviously much more harder, but when you get into calm air again, you'll be surprised by increase in flight control abilities and coordination.

Would it be a serious violation of Vatsim's rules to organise an x-pilot fly-in, over some generally empty and deserted location?