Lukasz

I'm more than satisfied with such overhead

I'm guilty of half-voting That's because I really prefer fly-ins to be scheduled on Saturdays. At the same time each of the posted hours suits me well, so no point in voting for any of them.

Hmmm, I wonder if it could be OS specific, as you're on Mac and I run Win XP.

Interesting, as I've never encountered such behaviour. I'll keep an eye on it, just in case.

You mean the one directly under attitude indicator? It has to be turned ON in order to work. Look on the right console, there is a panel labelled --------AVIONICS-------- (with 4 switches and a yellow light). The right-most switch is clickable and it turns heading indicator ON/OFF. It's labelled RMI on top.

But there are CSL libraries for helicopters I have three packages (among others): Heli_CSL, Heli_Civ_CSL and Heli_Mil_CSL, all downloaded from the .org. Each of the first two contain JetRanger, but with different ICAO codes (BH06 and proper B06, respectively). http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=108 http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=5671 http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=5672 So, as long as you're not attempting to hover your B737 upside down, I won't say a word

Night freight hauling around Hawaii. ATC asked three times "say aircraft type" In case any of you was wondering, 98% of these are clickable and actually perform some more or less critical duty during some or all phases of flight. Even air conditioning fans can be turned on. Yes, I know I'm not precisely over the centerline Flying manually 18 tons of aluminium, kerosene, hula skirts and surfing boards, at night in gusty and variable moderate winds isn't a walk in a park, you know At least I got the glideslope right!

I was thinking about the optimum fly-in start time, and I have come to the following conclusions: - We have participants from America, Europe and Australia and it's impossible to satisfy everyone at once. Someone has to wake up early and someone else has to stay awake well past sunset. 1200Z or 1300Z seems to be the most reasonable hour, though it's not the perfect. - Another idea is to poll (not again... ) pilots as to what time would they prefer, according to their time zones, and set the hour that would suit the most people. - Yet another idea is to dedicate each fly-in to a specific group out of the three I've mentioned above. So in every three weeks, anyone could have one perfectly suited fly-in, one so-so and one absolutely out of ordinary ;D See for yourselves, be like Chronos and command the time! http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20101010T120000 May I also suggest, that the next fly-in be dedicated to helicopters? You know, the short runway and else Anyone not familiar with eggbeaters, could use GA aircraft that cruise at around 100KIAS.

Real Mentor's POH calls for +4 (nose up) pitch trim and zero (neutral) trim for both ailerons and rudder at takeoff. You have to manually maintain direction of flight during takoff run and the first phase of climb. After you're high enough and have the situation more or less organised, you should trim for a climb. The plane has adjustable, in flight from cockpit, trim tabs on all three axis. Another tip is not to takeoff with full throttle. This is a turbine engine, which was derated from like 715hp to 425hp sea level, so for takeoff you have only 59% of "full" power available. Observe torque gauge and don't exceed the limits. This 59% is more than enough to take the bird into air even from short fields, at max gross. Real Mentor has a torque limiter, so the students doesn't have problems with excesive propeller forces at takeoff. Or engine disintegration due to over-whatever-limit

When I've asked what people would like to have in their hangars, one of the bottom lines was a question, do you want a simulation or a game (a pseudo-simulation, if you like)? I hadn't assumed if X-Plane is to be regarded as a simulator, because that's one of the questions, I was asking here. The results are clear and actually very meaningful, so far. Take a note, that a simulation covers various aspects, so yes - various skills are needed and various areas of an aircraft have to be polished. Visible and invisible alike In FS9 I had a bus. You know, just like the X-Plane cars. To carry passengers between terminal and planes, on the more archaic airports. The only problem was that, after accelerating enough, bus was getting airborne! Without any apparent wings nor rotors nor anything else. It flew quite good by the way, just like a Piper Cub. Does that prove that FS9 is a simulator or a game? Neither. The bus proves only that it's creator had a sense of humour I love the first sentence in your last paragraph "You have to at least start with "under the hood", otherwise we're not talking about a simulator." It's spilling honey on my soul, really I also like to see good looking planes, with cockpits simulating real ones, but at the same time I very much like planes flying like they should. Agreed, it's not a question of either/or - that's why I've provided the "pretty and accurate" option. The one, I've also voted for, by the way.

I've checked how things are going in Nepal at 1300Z and there was only one pilot at Lukla. It took me some time to find out by his callsign, that it was in fact Airace. Once I got online in Katmandu, Scubajuan was just taking off and heading east. He was so nice that he waited in holding while I was getting organised, warming up the engines and finally pushing Duchess to get to altitude We were flying direct to Lukla, with nice descend into the valley at the end of route. I've set up to rather good approach, flaps down, low and slow, in order to make the most of the short runway, without the ability to go-around. I had installed custom scenery, so there were no trees, alright. Now you can imagine my reaction, when just after touchdown the plane was booted into the sky in a milisecond and brutally trashed aside the runway. Darn the runway hump! So much for the custom scenery... Had I come to landing even a little bit faster, there would be hard crash for sure. While I was reloading the plane, Scubajuan got offline and Airace was flying back to Katmandu. I've joined him there and we have a short chat, after which he also left. So I took MU-2, filed a flightplan from Katmandu to Lhasa and took off. It was very nice and uneventful flight. No ATC, no other planes, no clouds, no turbulence, nothing. Only steady wind at altitude, but that wasn't any problem for double Garrett engines Once I got to my destination, I've set up for a VOR approach and proceeded to the runway. When I got to about 3 miles from it, X-Plane happily loaded whole jungle all over the place. Hmmm, let's just pretend it's a green shallow fog layer from nearby water bodies. But just as I was about to touchdown, I saw between the tree... I mean patches of fog, a step. Yup, it was there. A sudden and almost vertical rise in terrain, for the height of the whole plane or even slightly more. I've punched throttles, engines whined almost in pain and plane lazily jumped up, just enough to make something like a come-low carrier landing. Good I was carrying a little bit of extra speed on this one! I pulled the power back to idle and engaged reversers, to save on brakes. When the plane slowed down to about half of the approach speed, came another runway step, this time down... I wonder how the landing gear was able to withstand that slam into asphalt below? Good I was at low gross weight. One more minor jump and finally I was shutting down at a ramp. "Life is like an airfield in X-Plane - you'll never know what you get"

Added to vRoute account!

True and valid observations However, I wasn't making a difference between outside shell and 3D cockpit on purpose. This poll is about pretty art (in general) vs. accurate engineering and adding too much sub-options would more or less cloud the basic goal of the poll. It would be interesting to measure the ratio of attention divided between the quality of outer and inner modelling, but I'm sure you had enough polls lately and also this topic was discussed on the forums, in one way or another. Besides such research also enters the territory of personal preferences. Helicopter pilots would vote for accurate 3D cockpits, while airliners captains could be as much, if not more, happy with detailed 2D panel, full of controls, popups and displays. Online and combat flyers would highly value 3D cockpit, that enables them spotting boogeys or traffic, while people enjoying solo flights would probably more care about outer model, to have some great screenshots and sightseeing from external view.

Now I'm confused. Summer and daylight saving times around the world give me a headache. May I suggest posting time in Zulu/GMT/UTC format, like in real aviation? This way we would have only one single hour to stick to and I'm sure that everyone could figure on their own, which timezone they're in and how much time offset to add or subtract. If not, there is an excellent timezone calculator: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?year=2007&month=2&day=11&hour=16&min=0&sec=0&p1=224&p2=176

Last weekend I did it with the Mentor. Easy one, once I've found the place and didn't bother with trees Besides, I'm helicopter qualified 8)

Flight booked, SP-KTL as always I have yet to decide what to fly and how to get to Katmandu, maybe an orbital drop would do?

The "both option" is for people, who values eyecandy and flight modelling at the same level. Hadn't I place it, someone would be forced to choose one or another, when in fact he's not so much inclined in either side. It still is a valid trend marker, which indicates, that planes should be as good as possible in both areas, without sacrificing one for the other. The poll on the .org has one substantial flaw: it's type specific. No wonder that airliner got the most votes, when there are so few of them, especially well done airliners and the X-Plane market is dying for every one of them. I've asked about general quality trend, regardless of personal preferences as to the type of the aircraft.

Ok, sorry for the confusion Join Vatsim through XSquawkbox plugin - that you have done. To join voice room, you have to: 1) set sound options in XSquawkbox. You can find it within X-Plane's [plugins] menu. 2) tune your COM1 radio to appropriate frequency. And that's it You join rooms by tuning the radio. http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xsb/faq How do I use voice-over-IP with XSquawkBox For VATSIM, configure your microphone and speakers using the Audio Setup dialog box. Voice features will work automatically as you tune your Com1 radio to controllers that are using voice.

I highly recommend downloading freeware software vRoute (Download Standard): http://www.vroute.net/content/view/79/52/ It's a combination of community platform, server info, traffic radar and flight planner. I like it so much, that I'm going to buy the premium version.

VATSIM stands for Virtual Air Traffic SIMulation. It's a kind of multiplayer platform that allows users to fly together. You can read everything you need to know on their website, especially in the following sections: What exactly is Vatsim: http://www.vatsim.net/about-vatsim/ How to join: http://www.vatsim.net/about-vatsim/members/joinvatsim/ What to do and how to do it after you've joined: http://www.vatsim.net/pilots/ Rules and regulations, also lessons: http://www.vatsim.net/prc/ It looks like a lot of reading, but if you're a fast reader and have previous knowledge of real world operations and ATC, you can get the hang of it in one day. The rest you'll learn as you do The fly-ins are basically for that, to introduce new Vatsim pilots (like myself) to the joy of online flying. We join on a remote and less used airfield and then try our best not to antagonise any of the controllers ;D The most important is to make an account and download XSquawkbox: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/ The account is totally free and the XSquawkbox is a freeware X-Plane plugin needed to communicate with server your plane's position, as well as receiving positions of other pilots. Also I highly recommend downloading freeware software vRoute (Download Standard): http://www.vroute.net/content/view/79/52/ It's a combination of community platform, server info, traffic radar and flight planner. I like it so much, that I'm going to buy the premium version.

Recently I've read some interesting materials, as well as I had equally enlightening conversations with various individuals, more or less linked to aviation. The three polls I've started are direct results of these events and some thinking about it from my part. I'm really interested in these matters, so I ask for as much votes as possible Thanks in advance. This poll is not only about X-Plane. Think of the enchancements as adding carrier hook to F-16, JATOs to C172, G1000 avionics to Tiger Moth or steerable front wheel to Mentor, just to name some either minor or extreme "addons".

Recently I've read some interesting materials, as well as I had equally enlightening conversations with various individuals, more or less linked to aviation. The three polls I've started are direct results of these events and some thinking about it from my part. I'm really interested in these matters, so I ask for as much votes as possible Thanks in advance.

Recently I've read some interesting materials, as well as I had equally enlightening conversations with various individuals, more or less linked to aviation. The three polls I've started are direct results of these events and some thinking about it from my part. I'm really interested in these matters, so I ask for as much votes as possible Thanks in advance.

I wish you to have the same amount of takeoffs and landings! Please do not forget about us, humble "ground rats"

One thing, I like in Simplates, is the user interface coupled with search engine. You type in ICAO code or name and after brief pause you get a complete description of the airport, along with list of available charts. Then you can open needed charts in separate windows, so you have all of them easily accessible at once. No more panic, when approach sets you up on a different STAR, than you've originally planned. Often, for small airfields (like private ranch the ones used by cropdusters) there are no charts at all, but still you get basic info like elevation, runway direction and length, remarks on the surrounding terrain hazards and the like. This information is also present on the Internet, but do you really have the time to look for it? You could be flying already In the pre-Simplates era I had a wealthy collection of pdf charts. The problem was that in order to have it accessible and searchable on a similar level, I had to painfully rename and catalogue every file I've downloaded. This renaming and moving to desired folders took too much time. So Simplates aren't just a collection of pdfs, they bring a lot of additional data, as well as huge time saving. I wish someone would develop VFR and IFR enroute charts collections like this.