Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to reenact the first flight of the world’s very first airplane, the 1903 Wright Flyer.

At first glance, the boxy Wright Flyer doesn’t look much like our modern notion of an airplane. However, it possesses all the key features that still define an airplane to this day. 

As every pilot knows, there are four forces that account for how and why an airplane is able to fly: lift, weight, thrust, and drag. These four forces were first outlined 100 years before the Wright brothers flew by the Englishman Sir George Cayley, who also invented the seat belt, the wire-spoked bicycle wheel, and the tank tread.

So the basic thesis of flight was reasonably well understood by the time the two young Wrights, Wilbur and Orville, stepped onto the stage. There were several people already hard at work on the problem of controlled flight, including the well-known and well-funded head of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Langley. But success continued to elude them. The brothers, in contrast, were the obscure sons of a Protestant bishop in Ohio who had started a workshop catering to the latest high-tech fad, bicycles—kind of like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak tinkering in their garage on a homemade Apple II computer.

The first of Cayley’s four forces, weight, seems fairly self-evident: It’s the force anyone needs to overcome to fly. To counter weight, you need lift. One solution is to fill a balloon full of gasses that are lighter than air and therefore want to rise. As early as 1783, the French had learned how to fly in balloons. Giant bags full of gas have a number of drawbacks, though, and for millennia people had observed that birds are able to fly by using wings—often by flapping them, but just as often by simply gliding on them.

In the 1890s, the German aviator Otto Lilienthal experimented extensively with gliders, based on his close study of birds. Lilienthal carefully noted his successes and failures until breaking his spine and dying in a crash in 1896. As amateurs, the Wright brothers constructed their own large-scale kites and compared the lift they were able to achieve with Lilienthal’s results. The results were not what they hoped, so back home in Ohio they cobbled together a primitive wind tunnel that they used to systematically conduct tests on wings of different shapes.

The way a wing works is by creating a difference in pressure as the air flows across it. The differential between the lower pressure above and higher pressure below generates a force (lift) that pushes the wing up. Both the shape and position of the wing determine the amount of lift created. What the Wright brothers discovered was that many of Lilienthal’s calculations, which were guiding everyone else’s efforts, were wrong. Their experiments led them to a better wing design that produced more lift relative to its weight.

OK, that’s one problem solved. But to generate lift, air needs to be flowing across the wing. Wind is one way to achieve this, which is why the Wrights picked the wind-swept sand dunes of North Carolina’s coast to test their designs. Another way to achieve forward motion is by using the potential energy induced by gravity. Lilienthal jumped off a tall hill,  translating downward pull into forward motion, like sliding down a long slope of air.

Ultimately, though, for sustained flight you need a source of propulsion to generate consistent thrust. People realized this from Cayley’s time, but the problem was that steam engines were too heavy and inefficient to produce enough thrust relative to their additional weight.

Fortunately for the Wright brothers, the internal combustion engines that were just being developed for cars and motorcycles combined lighter weight with greater power—perhaps enough to power an airplane. Once they felt confident with their glider design, the Wrights turned to a local engineer in Ohio to build them a custom, lightweight engine, with four in-line pistons, capable of producing 12 hp.

This engine was linked, via bicycle chains, to two 8 ½-foot-long propellers. A propeller is basically a rotating wing that produces thrust in the same way a wing creates lift. The Wrights spent a lot of time experimenting in their wind tunnel to get the shape of the propellers just right.

The thrust provided by these propellers is offset by drag. All the wooden wires and struts holding the Wright Flyer together, along with the friction of its canvas surfaces, create a lot of air resistance—and parasite drag—that will slow the aircraft’s movement through the air.

Will 12 hp be enough? The answer is: probably not enough to take off. That’s why the Wrights set up a catapult (below at right). Dropping a weight will pull the aircraft forward at sufficient speed for a good head start. Along with a strong headwind, this might be just enough.

All of the improvements I’ve described up to this point were critical to success. They might have sufficed to get them off the ground and into the record books,  butthey weren’t the basis for the patent the Wrights filed in claiming rights over a truly unique invention. What the Wrights invented—and understood as their real breakthrough—was their method of controlling the aircraft in flight along three axes.

First there is roll, raising one wing and lowering the other, by rotating the airplane around its longitudinal axis running from nose to tail. The Wrights controlled roll by having the pilot swing his hips within a wooden cradle, left or right. This motion pulled wires that twisted or “warped” the outer shape of the wings to create more lift on one side and less on the other.

Today, wing warping has been replaced by ailerons, little hinged surfaces that do the exact same thing. And the hip cradle has been replaced by a stick or yoke that looks something like a steering wheel.

Next there is pitch, rotating the nose and tail vertically up or down around the lateral axis running from wingtip to wingtip. The pilot of the Wright Flyer controlled pitch by manipulating a wooden handle that operated two smaller wings to the front of the aircraft. These “elevators” caused the nose to point up or down.

These days, the elevators have usually been relocated to the tail of the airplane, instead of the front, but perform the exact same task.

Last but not least, there is yaw, the rotation of the nose left or right around the vertical axis running through the aircraft from top to bottom. Control over yaw is important to prevent an airplane—especially one that’s not very streamlined, like the Wright Flyer—from starting to fly sideways. In their glider experiments without a rudder, the Wrights found this to be a major problem.

So starting with their 1902 Glider, they installed an upright rudder to the pilot’s rear. It was linked to the same wires that controlled wing warping, via the cradle, to coordinate the two. This helped keep the airplane flying straight. Today, the rudder (or rudders) remains a standard on most airplanes, beside the elevator(s) on the tail.

Control in three axes was the secret sauce. While the Wright Flyer may not look like a modern airplane, it was the same as one in its essential operation. Let’s see whether it does the job!

This was a particularly fun sim thread to recreate because, a little more than a year ago, I took my family to Kitty Hawk and we saw this exact site. We saw the wooden workshops where the Wright brothers stored, assembled, and repaired their Flyers, and the markers showing the distances achieved on their first four powered flights. From the photos I’ve seen, it looks like at that time there were just sand dunes in the area, which is now filled in with grass and trees.

On December 17, 1903, all the pieces were finally in place. With a headwind gusting up to 27 mph and the catapult charged, the Wright brothers were ready to attempt a powered flight. Next to the pilot were just two instruments: a stopwatch (below middle) and a gauge (below bottom) attached to a little windmill (below top) to show distance covered.

I did several flights and the key is to avoid pitching up too fast, otherwise you’ll lose what little airspeed you have and stall. Keep it low and just a few feet above the ground.

The Wright Flyer was not very stable, requiring attentive control inputs just to remain steady. Weight also becomes a complicating factor when you bank to turn, placing additional load on the wings and raising the stall speed. All I could consistently do with the 1903 Flyer was fly straight ahead.

That’s OK, because that’s all the Wright brothers could do on that first day—just fly straight ahead for as long as they could remain aloft. Their first and second flights lasted 12 seconds each and covered 120 feet and 175 feet, respectively. Their third flight lasted 15 seconds for 200 feet, and their fourth went 59 seconds for 852 feet. It looks like I’m going to beat their record here.

I made the tree line just past the 852-foot marker. I tried repeatedly to fly over the tree line and no can do. The 12 hp engine just isn’t powerful enough to sustain flight past 1,000 feet, much less climb. The same was true for the 1903 Wright Flyer.

Now what happened immediately after the Wrights’ first successful flight is an interesting story. The brothers sent a telegram home to their father, confirming their achievement. But only one local newspaper in Ohio picked up the story, based on their press release. Concerned about securing their patent, the brothers continued their work in secrecy and avoided any public demonstration of what they had accomplished. For many years, people doubted their claim that they had flown at all.

During that time, they upgraded their motor to 15 hp, then 20 hp, and eventually 35 hp, giving them the power they originally lacked to remain in the air longer and maneuver. But in the process, they lost ground to other aviation pioneers, like Glenn Curtiss, who followed the trail and quickly adapted and improved many of the Wright brothers’ innovations. It was Curtiss who performed the first public flight on July 4, 1908, to widespread acclaim. Only afterward, when they toured Europe and demonstrated their Flyer there, did the Wright brothers earn widespread recognition for inventing the flying machine before Curtiss.

The Wrights tried to enforce their patent against Curtiss, claiming rights to any aircraft that used the system of controlling along three axes, which Curtiss argued was too broad to allow for improvements. It was a long and bitter fight, only resolved when the U.S. government forced them to share their patent rights during World War I.

Our family experienced a very enjoyable trip to Kitty Hawk as well, and I took them all hang gliding on the dunes to give them a feel for what the Wright brothers actually experienced there.

I hope you enjoyed this story on the Wright Flyer and that it has shed some light on what makes an airplane an airplane and the true nature of the Wright brothers’ historic accomplishment.

If you’re interested in an enjoyable but informative read about the Wright brothers and the race to be first to fly, I highly recommend Dawn Over Kitty Hawk, a historical novel by Walter Boyne, the former director of the National Air and Space Museum.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post.

The post Reenacting the First Airplane Flight via Simulator appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In all the years I have been flight simming, testing, and evaluating big jets for the love of the hobby, a special criteria exists to grade the flight model of any particular subject. The Precision Manuals Development Group (PMDG) lineup of Boeing 747s, 777s, and 737NGs have always passed the test on quality flight modeling, pretty much taking the top spot for the very best. The competition is usually far below PMDG’s level of quality, at least on the Boeing lineup.

Now with the advent of the “still kinda new” Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), the default airliners seemed pretty good to me over the past few years, but not great. They are loved for their good looks and ability to travel to and from great expanses of the sim globe, but not much more. The default sounds were horrendous—and still are. Luckily, that was solved by a little company called FTSounds, which has redone many of the default aircraft sound sets to something far closer to the real thing. Now in addition to that, the default jetliners recently got a makeover in terms of systems modeling and avionics updates by the Working Title company. These free upgrades got pushed automatically by recent in-sim, mandatory updates, so by the time you see this, you’ll already have the newly enhanced heavy jets. 

• READ MORE: Your First Sim

I was thrilled to find out all this was integrated seamlessly and works so well. The newly done avionics fidelity didn’t cause any performance or dreaded frame rate reduction either. Now our default jets are looking and performing as they should, like a costly add-on. Until PMDG releases the upcoming 777 and 747, the default 747 and Boeing 787 complement the realism and fidelity of the currently available PMDG 737NG and BBJ lineups for MSFS2020.

To initiate an autoland in the airliners, you’ll need to make sure your FMS is properly set as in any flight, with the destination, runway selection, ILS chosen, speed performances, etc. Be sure to have spoilers armed and auto brake set to whatever you want. On a long runway like Denver International Airport (KDEN), where I did this example, I had auto brakes off completely and used full reverse to stop the jet (or at least to 60 kts per usual real-life stuff ). The FMS on the Boeing 747 and 787 auto select the frequencies, so you’ll not need to calculate or hunt those down. Once the airplane is on the initial approach, it will look similar to any ILS.

Once a certain distance is hit, it will proceed to LAND 3 or LAND 2 modes. LAND 3 will utilize all three autopilots and perform the entire event all the way to rollout with self steering and runway tracking to a stop. In this example, the autothrottle is on, holding a target landing approach or V_REF of 151 kts. It’s wild to see the throttles moving on their own, but they do. No matter the weather and wind, this thing works.

On short final, you may see a FLARE annunciation, but you’ll not need to do anything, as it will do that maneuver all by itself too. It will round out, hold the nose up, and allow a gentle sink rate onto the pavement. If you watch it closely, it’s almost a lesson on how to land a heavy jet with perfection each step of the way. As in real life, if you do this in zero-zero, you may never even see the runway at all. Maybe at night you’ll see the centerline lights, but the only indication you’ve landed is the spoiler snatch back, or touchdown sounds.

The slowdown and rollout with the gentle wobbling back and forth to keep the centerline was fabulous as I had not expected all this detail. In some autoland sim models, you’ll have to kick off the autopilot yourself since it’s not going to steer precisely. Now, I only fly a bizjet in real life, so I haven’t experienced real autolands or equipment at different runways—maybe they don’t all allow precision to a stop.

I have been practicing autolands in both Microsoft Flight Sim and X-Plane products over the years, and it’s especially rewarding in zero-zero. When I recorded these screenshots, I was using live weather and wasn’t sure how precise it would be or even if it would work correctly, so I was happy to have great weather. I now have no doubts that if you’re flying a default 747 or 787, it will perform just as perfectly when unable to see. Just remember the centerline may be easier to see at night in zero-zero than during the day. Autoland on jetliners has been around far longer than I ever knew, going way back to the 1970s when most airliners had that functionality built in. The great trijets, such as Lockheed L1011s and McDonnell Douglas DC-10s, used this technology just like the 747s and the Boeing 757s and 767s in the 1980s. 

For the real die-hards, I would recommend the plethora of YouTube videos or other online resources available on the subject. It’s amazing how much great material is available for the inquiring mind on real-world operation. 

The best website to totally geek out on is run by a friend of mine, Steve Giordano. 

Speedtapefilms.com and its associated YouTube videos present great HQ cockpit action from all around the globe as Giordano and his team ferry jetliners around for banks and various new owners.

The post Amazing Autolands appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), I’m going to be flying and telling the story of one of the most important airplanes in the history of aviation: the Piper J-3 Cub.

The Piper Cub was designed in 1930 by Clarence G. Taylor. He and his brother Gordon formed Taylor Brothers Aircraft Corp. with the financial backing of local Pennsylvania industrialist William T. Piper. Taylor’s idea was to build a simple, affordable airplane that would encourage more people to learn to fly.

The Cub sported a 35-foot wingspan and was 22 feet long. The fuselage was made of tubular steel covered in fabric, and the wings were fabric-covered wood. It weighed a total of about 800 pounds empty, 1,200 pounds fully loaded.

Originally the Cub was powered by a 20 hp engine, but this proved to be underpowered, so it was upgraded to 40 hp. This particular version, the J3C-65, has a 4-cylinder 85 hp engine. The name of the first engine was the Brownback “Tiger Kitten,” from which the airplane’s name, the Cub, playfully derives.

The Cub’s landing gear are fixed and cushioned by bungee cords covered in leather.

The two pilots sit in tandem, one behind the other, which made the Cub ideal for training with a student in front and instructor behind. When flying solo, the pilot sits in the rear seat. You have to look over the seat in front of you to see the instruments, though you do have your own stick, throttle, and rudder pedals.

Here’s a closer look at the Cub instrument panel from the front seat. Just a tachometer (rpm), airspeed indicator, compass, altimeter, and oil pressure/temperature gauges. No artificial horizon or turn coordinator, so this is strictly for VFR.

The throttle is the black knob on the left. Not only is it a fixed-pitch propeller, you don’t have a fuel/air mixture control, because presumably you won’t be flying high enough to need one. You control the throttle with your left hand and the stick with your right.

Sadly, the Taylor brothers went bankrupt during the Great Depression. Piper, a businessman with no previous experience in aviation, bought a controlling stake in the company for $761 to keep it going. That’s why I’m here at the William T. Piper Memorial Airport (KLHV) in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, where Piper relocated the factory.

Piper supported Taylor’s vision of popular aviation. Piper built a flight school next to the factory and included lessons in the price of the airplane. Piper himself learned to fly at the age of 50.

The Cub’s standard, factory paint job was chrome yellow, which came to be known as “Cub yellow” or “Lock Haven yellow.”

Piper and Taylor eventually quarreled and parted ways. Taylor formed his own company, and Piper renamed the existing company after himself. Hence, the Piper Cub. Piper steadily made incremental improvements to the design. With a maximum cruise speed of 78 knots, it had a range of 191 nm and a ceiling of 11,500 feet. In 1938, a Piper Cub sold for $1,000.

What really changed things, however, was the approach of World War II. In 1938, the U.S.  established the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) to instruct pilots for potential wartime needs. The CPTP operated through flight schools and universities. Students received 72 hours of ground school followed by 35 to 50 hours of flying. This curriculum established the foundation for private flight training as we know it. The program required these schools to have one airplane for every 10 students, which meant buying a lot of new aircraft—most of them Piper Cubs.

By the time CPTP was phased out in 1944, the program had trained 435,000 new pilots. Seventy-five percent of them—and 80 percent of all military pilots in WWII—performed their initial flight training in a Piper Cub. CPTP-trained pilots included African-Americans who went on to fight as part of the Tuskegee Airmen, and women who, as members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), served as ferry pilots to deliver and reposition aircraft.

As the war approached, privately owned Piper Cubs were being conscripted by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to search offshore for German U-boats, like this one I’m flying off Cape May, New Jersey. By the end of WWII, CAP pilots had flown more than 500,000 mission hours, 90 aircraft were lost, and  64 pilots were killed, including 26 lost on coastal patrol.

The Piper Cub truly came into its own, however, as an artillery spotter and staff airplane near the front lines in Europe, where it was designated the L-4 Grasshopper. This one, dubbed the Elizabeth, operated from the aircraft carrier USS Ranger during Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa.

The Elizabeth was flown by Lieutenant William Butler with observer Captain Brenton Devol, and it operated along the coast of Morocco during the invasion near Casablanca and Rabat.

In 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower inspected the battlefield in an L-4 Grasshopper. But the most famous L-4 of all was flown by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Carpenter, who was a 29-year-old high school history teacher when he signed up to go to war.

In autumn 1944 after the D-Day invasion, General George S. Patton’s Third Army was driving hard into eastern France, crossing the Moselle River here at Nancy in Lorraine. In Normandy, Carpenter had outfitted his L-4 with six bazookas, three on each wing strut, so he could fire on German vehicles below. He dubbed his airplane Rosie the Rocketer—a play on “Rosie the Riveter.” His single-handed attacks on German units in his Piper Cub earned Carpenter the nickname “The Mad Major” from troops and “Bazooka Charlie” from the media.

On September 18, German heavy Panzer divisions, led by large masses of Panther tanks, counterattacked against Patton’s troops here in the countryside east of Nancy. On the morning of September 20, the Germans moved in on the Fourth Armored Division’s HQ unit at the town of Arracourt (below). The fog initially protected them from Allied air attack.

As soon as the fog began to clear, however, Carpenter jumped into his L-4 and joined the battle. His favorite strategy was to climb above the Germans then corkscrew down on them, firing his bazookas at the tops of the tanks, where their armor was lightest.

Carpenter was credited with destroying four German tanks and an armored car during the Battle of Arracourt, which was one of the largest tank battles on the Western Front. Another famous figure to come out of the Battle of Arracourt—although on the ground—was Lieutenant  Colonel Creighton Abrams, who helped rally the defenders and went on to become the Army’s top tank ace of WWII.The M1 Abrams tank is named after him.

In 1945, Carpenter was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and received an honorable discharge. He was given two years to live but ended up living (and teaching high school history) until 1966, when he died at 53.

As the L-4 Grasshopper, the Piper Cub served as an ideal artillery spotter because it could take off and land close to the front lines. Even without bazookas strapped to it, a single pilot flying one could direct more explosives at a target in the form of artillery fire than a B-29.

At its peak during WWII, the Piper Aircraft Co. produced one Cub every 20 minutes. Overall, it produced more than 20,000 J-3 Cubs before halting production in 1947. After the war, the government sold thousands of Piper Cubs to private owners, many of whom had been trained in them. Until the mid-1950s, when all-metal airplanes like the Cessna 172 and Beechcraft Bonanza emerged, Piper Cubs were the mainstay of private aviation in the U.S.

Piper Aircraft eventually moved to Oklahoma and then to Florida, where it continues to produce small single- and multiengine airplanes. William T. Piper, who died in 1970 at 89, has been called the “Henry Ford of Aviation.” Clarence G. Taylor, the designer of the Cub who lived until 1988, founded Taylorcraft, whose DCO-65 looked a heck of a lot like a Cub and served beside it as the L-2 in WWII.

I’m coming in for a landing here back at William T. Piper Memorial Airport. When you take off and land the Piper Cub, because it’s a taildragger, you can’t see directly ahead while on the ground. You have to judge the centerline from the edges of the runway in your peripheral vision.

Many kitplanes take their basic design from the Piper Cub, even if they aren’t manufactured by Piper anymore. If you want to learn a whole lot more about the Piper Cub, consider reading Flight of Passage: A Memoir by Rinker Buck, which describes how he and his brother flew a Cub across America as teenagers in 1966. It’s a wonderful book.

The Piper Cub has been referred to as “the airplane that taught America to fly.” And now you know why.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post: https://www.patrickchovanec.com/aviation/piper-j-3-cub-1938.

This story was told utilizing the Piper J-3 Cub add-on by BT Studio, along with liveries and sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flightsim.to for free.

The post A Virtual History of the Piper Cub appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

For this session in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), I’m going to be flying the semifictional Darkstar scramjet flown by Tom Cruise at the beginning of the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick. 

The flight I’ll be taking will be from Miramar (KNKX), the former location of the Top Gun academy outside San Diego, to Joint Base Andrews (KADW) outside of Washington, D.C. If I do everything right, the 2,000-mile trip should take just 25 minutes.

The airplane in the movie was roughly based on the Lockheed SR-72, which is supposedly in development, though all the details about it—including whether it truly exists or not—are top secret. According to reports, at least, the SR-72 is meant to be the replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird, which was retired in 1998 and was the fastest operational airplane in the world.

• READ MORE: Crossing the English Channel in a Blériot XI

Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” actually worked with the filmmakers of Top Gun: Maverick to ensure the full-scale mock-up they constructed looked like a realistic hypersonic airplane, similar but not identical to the SR-72. There is a story—perhaps true, perhaps not— that when the filmmakers produced their version of the Darkstar, China repositioned a satellite to fly over and take a closer look, believing it was real.

Because of the wind, I’m taking off to the west and will need to turn around to head east. That will add some time to my flight. Rotating from Miramar’s runway at 180 knots, with afterburners on, I pitch up 10 degrees and raise my landing gear, accelerating toward Mach 0.9.

Once I reach Mach 0.9, I stay below the speed of sound by raising pitch to 20 degrees, while turning to the east. That’s San Diego Harbor below me.

To break the sound barrier and accelerate quickly, I invert the airplane to go into a dive. The reason I invert is to avoid excessive negative G-forces by pulling back instead of pushing forward on the stick to nose down. I’ve just broken Mach 1.0.

Now that I’m supersonic, I quickly roll back upright and resume my 10-degree climb, gradually accelerating to Mach 3.0. I’m already over the California desert, nearing the Salton Sea ahead. Until I reach Mach 3.0, I’m still using my conventional jets with afterburners.

A normal jet engine works by compressing air through a series of spinning blades then adding fuel to burn it and make it expand rapidly out the back. Before it exits, the hot air turns a turbine that powers the compressor in front. At extremely high speeds, a compressor isn’t needed because the ramming force of the oncoming air itself is sufficient to compress it. A ramjet dispenses with both the compressor and the turbine to drive it.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

In a ramjet, however, the air is slowed inside the engine to below the speed of sound. In a scramjet—or supersonic ramjet—the air flowing through it remains at supersonic speed and can produce much higher speeds as a result. A scramjet, however, needs to be already moving at a very high speed to work. So once I reach Mach 3.0 (I’m at 2.81 and rising), I can flip the switch and ignite the scramjets.

The exhaust ports for my red-colored afterburners close, replaced by the white-hot heat of my scramjets. The airplane accelerates very rapidly now.

I’ve also climbed very rapidly. I level off at 135,000 feet, a little higher than I planned, but no matter. I’m nearing Mach 6.5 now, over 4,800 mph.  I think I’m over Arizona, but to tell you the truth, I’m not 100 percent sure. I’m just following the magenta navigation line on my screen. You can see the nose and edges of the airplane heating up from the friction of moving so fast.

I’ve leveled off again at 127,000 feet and reached Mach 9.1, my cruising altitude. It’s possible to reach Mach 10 by going higher, but I’ve got enough on my hands already.

The flight is going very quickly. I’m already over the Great Plains. You can easily see the curvature of the Earth.

The mission of the SR-72, like the SR-71 and the U-2 before it, would be to conduct reconnaissance at an altitude too high and speed too fast for anyone to catch or shoot down. While these missions are now mostly performed by satellites orbiting the Earth—or, more experimentally, by high-altitude balloons—some argue that a high-altitude, high-speed “spy plane” is still needed to fill gaps in coverage at a moment’s notice.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

I haven’t been able to recognize very much along the way, but I’m pretty sure St. Louis is about 24 miles below me.

How hot does the airplane get? That’s classified. But the skin of the SR-71, traveling at a mere Mach 3.0, reached an average of 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The cockpit window of the SR-71 was made of quartz and 1.25 inches thick to survive these temperatures.

About 200 miles from my destination, I turn off the scramjet, pull the throttle back to idle, and begin my slowdown and descent. I’m dropping through 75,000 feet here and slowing to Mach 4.4, basically just gliding down with minimal power.

The first time I flew the Darkstar, I waited too long to begin decelerating. As I descended into the thicker atmosphere, I was going too fast and the airplane broke up from the stress (oops, sorry taxpayers). This time I overcompensated in the other direction and began my deceleration a bit too early. So I ended up skimming over the Appalachians at a slower speed, adding about 15 minutes to my flight time. Better than disintegrating, I suppose.

My approach speed should be between 150 and 200 knots. To fly level at these low speeds, the Darkstar has to keep its nose pitched up about 10 degrees. As I cross the Potomac River with Washington, D.C,. in the background, just to my north, I’ve lowered my wheels for landing at Andrews Air Force Base.

This is a little tricky. I have no forward view and can barely see out my side windows. I have to rely entirely on the digital image on my screen to land on the runway. The little airplane marker on the screen shows my current trajectory. I need to keep it pointed near the start of the runway, while keeping my speed around a steady 150 knots.

It wasn’t the softest landing, but I ended up safe and sound. My total time across the country by scramjet was about 50 minutes. Taking off to the west added about 10 minutes, and beginning my slowdown and descent too early cost me another 15. Still not bad from coast to coast.

Some hope that scramjets can someday be used for passenger transport, putting any destination in the world within a 90-minute flight. But for now the applications remain purely military. Hope you enjoyed the flight.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the official Top Gun Maverick Expansion Pack for MSFS2020, along with airports and sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flightsim.to for free.

The post Taking a Transcontinental Flight in the Hypersonic Darkstar, Virtually appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Ever since I can recall, way back as a teenager staring at sectional charts, I dreamed of the day I could actually see those places in person. Telluride, Colorado, was always a mysterious, mythical place that I wasn’t sure I would actually visit in real life. That was until this month when I had a flying assignment to Telluride Regional Airport (KTEX). Weeks of mental planning, and some sim time in and out of this incredible place paid off. 

The restrictions to this airport are many—and for obviously good reasons. No night ops, no tailwind arrivals over 10 knots, which is standard for most jets. You land on Runway 9 and depart Runway 27. The box canyon at the end of 9 makes the departure path pretty scary at best. And landing on 27 would be equally risky. 

During my trip, my hotel balcony was perched at Mountain Village, high up, overlooking the valley and runway. I was on the approach path to 27, and I watched Pilatus PC-12s and Citation CJ3s or -4s going onto 27. In fact, the day we arrived, we couldn’t land, as a Gulfstream GIV in front of me went missed because of the tailwinds on its final approach to 9. We followed his diversion to the alternate—Montrose Regional Airport (KMTJ).

I wanted to showcase this neat place in both X-Plane 12 (XP12) and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020). They both accurately replicate the excitement and experience along with the terrain. The runway dip and odd slope are also recreated well in both sims. Coming in for a landing the normal way on 9, you’ll be riding down an open canyon with high terrain on either side. The steep valley below is home to the main highway to Telluride. The airport sits on a bluff on a dramatic 1,000-foot cliff above the road below. This is stunning and hard to not stare at while piloting. 

Coming in over the sudden rise to the runway can cause some ground proximity warning systems to go crazy, or in our case in the real jet, suddenly go from “500” to 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 like that in a flash. The floating sensation is real, as you’re above a downhill runway at first, then if you don’t get it on soon enough, it’ll turn into an uphill run on the far end. 

I fly a Bombardier Challenger 300 in real life—sadly none exist currently for XP12—but the HotStart CL650 is the greatest corporate jet ever modeled for any flight simulator platform, in my opinion. Its was great fun operating this airplane in and out of KTEX. You can get the amazing add-on here.

The density altitude is well replicated in both sims. As long as you’re flying a quality add-on that simulates good engine realism in props or jets, you’ll be able to notice the lack of air compression in a prop, weak acceleration, etc. In the jets, takeoff numbers will grow and the FADEC-controlled engine settings will reflect the performance limitations, plus the more sluggish reactions. 

Even in the default Longitude in MSFS2020, there was a “cabin high” warning as we had in real life. Most bizjets don’t like cabin altitudes greater than about 9,000 feet msl. Certainly our Challenger 300 didn’t, and this is simulated on both the aircraft I tried in XP12 and MSFS2020. I even tried a Boeing 737-800 to see how it handled into KTEX and, performance wise, it had no problem. KTEX is not necessarily too short for an airliner—it’s mostly the altitude that affects everyone, and high terrain makes maneuverability an issue in the box canyon to the east, preventing landing on 27. 

Squeezing a 737-800 into KTEX was not overly difficult at all. The parking area was only a little small. It had just rained a bit, with the XP12 puddling and water shine looking amazing. 

XP12’s blowing dust simulation was great, powering up the CFMs to takeoff thrust on Runway 27. The box canyon towering over the town to the east has walls of rock that rise to above 12,000 feet in the distance. A go-around off of 9 could be deadly, as well as an approach to 27. Density altitude is a factor for any aircraft at this high starting point. 

The MSFS2020 Longitude sitting in the same position to compare sim versus real in these pictures taken together.

A real NetJets Longitude showed up as well, adding to the comparison fun in this photo with the MSFS2020 Longitude shown above. 

The XP12 CL650 looks realistic too in the same parking perspective. 

As you can see, the scenery in both sims does a great job in giving you the feel of reality and what the actual airport has in store if you fly there. If an engine should fail on a turbojet on the way out of 27, we would basically follow the canyon and highway out without much worry. It’s a visual maneuver and not one you can do legally IFR, unless the aircraft manufacturer allows it or you have a predetermined “escape path” on a chart or performance-based document that is legal for your operation. Common sense throws out any IFR operation to and from here. Flying a light twin, you would probably lose some altitude on takeoff before feasibly climbing out of the canyon below on the departure corridor of 27. It’s definitely a place to set up unpredictable emergencies into either sim for some fun and fright. 

I could easily spend most of the day doing multiple takeoffs and landings in and out of KTEX. It is so much fun—and what a challenge. I am only showcasing bizjets and a 737, and can only imagine how different this would be in a piston single. 

Recently, a fatal accident occurred in a Beechcraft Bonanza from a summer sightseeing trip. The airplane went down near the town over the box canyon to the east in an accelerated panic stall, spin. The density altitude was high, a result of the summer temperatures combined with the high field elevation. It’s something to consider re-creating in either sim and testing yourself on the outcome or factors leading up to the unfortunate ending. 

The post Navigating Telluride’s Box Canyon Runway, Virtually appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Embraer and FlightSafety International have announced the opening of a new full-flight simulator in Orlando, Florida, to train pilots of the Brazilian company’s Praetor jets.

The companies said the FAA has qualified the simulator, and initial training for customers is available this month. Recurrent training is scheduled to begin in October.

Embraer and FlightSafety also said another Praetor simulator, the fourth to be fielded, will be based in Europe at a location to be announced later. The companies plan to begin operating that simulator by the end of 2024.

“Offering additional training capacity is important for supporting our customers,” said Carlos Naufel, president and CEO of Embraer services and support. “These two new full-flight simulators bring us even closer to Praetor family pilots and operators in the United States and Europe and will provide us with the opportunity to share our latest technological updates and best-in-class support.,” said Carlos Naufel, president and CEO of Embraer services and support.

Said Nate Speiser, executive vice president of FlightSafety sales and marketing: “FlightSafety is committed to addressing the increasing demand for Embraer Praetor training. ,” said Nate Speiser, executive vice president of FlightSafety sales and marketing. “As Embraer’s training partner, we are proud to announce consecutive simulator deployments in two regions to support the worldwide training demand for this quickly growing fleet.”

The post Embraer, FlightSafety Announce New Praetor Simulators in Florida, Europe appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

For this session in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m flying the Mitsubishi A6M2, Japan’s main fighter of World War II, famously known as the “Zero.”

Introduced in 1940, the A6M was dubbed the Navy Type 0 carrier fighter or Reisen (零戦, “Zero Fighter”) for short, in reference to the Imperial Year 2600.

To set the scene here, I’ll be taking off from the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi and flying over Midway Island, recreating the first wave attack in the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942.

The paint scheme on this particular airplane shows it belongs to a fighter squadron on the Akagi, as it would have looked during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and—very likely—during the Battle of Midway just six months later. While it may look white or light gray from a distance, the color is actually a kind of greenish-cream color. It’s not for naval camouflage—it just happens to be the color of the special coating used to protect the aluminum from corrosion, especially at sea.

• READ MORE: Channel James Bond, Fly the World’s Smallest Jet

Later in the war, camouflage from U.S. air attacks became more important and many land-based Zeros were painted green on top. The paint tended to flake off, however, and left the airplanes more vulnerable to corrosion. But that wasn’t their main priority anymore.

Inside the cockpit, the main instrument panel is topped by the breech and charging handles of twin 7.7 millimeter machine guns that fire over the nose. I’ve tried to find out, but I’m not sure what the characters, which seem to be numbers (736 and 245), signify and would love to know.

On the left side of the instrument panel, from left to right, are the heading indicator, clock, and airspeed indicator on top, and the vertical speed indicator, magneto switch, and altimeter on the bottom. On the right side of the panel are the engine gauges. The top left is rpm, and the bottom left is manifold pressure. (The Zero has an adjustable-pitch, constant-speed propeller). 

Typical of most World War II-era fighters, the power controls are to the pilot’s left-hand side. The black metal lever on the wooden throttle fires the airplane’s guns. The two red-knob levers below them are bomb releases.

On the pilot’s right-hand side are levers for the flaps and landing gear, operated by hydraulics. Unlike the American F3F and F4F fighters, the gear didn’t have to be cranked by hand, but the pilot did need to switch hands on the stick to operate them. The cockpit is a tight fit, designed for smaller-stature Japanese pilots, who at this early stage of the war were extremely well trained.

• READ MORE: Crossing the English Channel in a Blériot XI

Japanese aircraft carriers didn’t have catapults, so it’s just a straight run down the deck at max throttle to pick up enough speed.

The A6M Zero was designed in 1937 as a replacement for the A5M. Contrary to many movie portrayals, it was the A5M (aka Type 96) that participated in Japan’s initial invasion of China. It also was an all-metal monoplane but had fixed landing gear and an open cockpit.

When the design competition was announced, Japan’s navy set such high standards for climb, speed, size, and range that manufacturer Nakajima considered the task impossible and dropped out, leaving only Mitsubishi’s team.

Mitsubishi’s lead aircraft designer, Jiro Horikoshi, believed it was possible to meet the demanding performance specifications and set out to prove it. The key was to reduce weight to the absolute minimum. To do this, the Zero was constructed from a top-secret aluminum alloy, which was very strong but very thin.

As a result, the Zero had a range of more than 1,900 miles with a single drop tank, the longest range of any single-engine fighter of WWII and ideal for a carrier-based striker. It also had an astounding climb rate and was extremely maneuverable. This lightweight design also came with vulnerabilities: The Zero had no armor. In fact, that red square on its wings, above the flaps, is actually a no-stand zone because the skin is so thin that it can’t support the weight of a person.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

Check out the Akagi below me. Originally designed as a battlecruiser, it was converted to an aircraft carrier after the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 with the help of Japan’s then naval allies, the British.

Akagi means “Red Castle” and was named after a mountain in Japan. Modernized in the 1930s, it could carry 66 airplanes, including 18 to 21 Zero fighters. The decks are slanted to a peak to slow aircraft on landing and help accelerate them on takeoff.

Nearby, I fly over the Kaga, the Akagi’s companion carrier at both Pearl Harbor and Midway.

The Kaga will be sunk by sundown, and my own carrier, the Akagi, will succumb to damage and slide beneath the waves the next morning. The attack fleet’s other two carriers, the Soryu and Hiryu, will also be sunk in this battle. But I get ahead of myself.

It’s time for me to head to Midway. The Japanese strike on Midway in June 1942 was an attempt to lure the U.S. carriers not destroyed at Pearl Harbor into a fight. However, the Americans were able to decode Japan messages that gave them prior warning of the plan, enabling them to position their three available carriers (USS Hornet, USS Enterprise, and USS Yorktown) for a surprise counterattack.

The Japanese opened with a carrier-based air attack on Midway itself, believing any U.S. aircraft carriers must still be far away. Time for me to drop my drop tank.

Midway consists of two islands. The larger Sand Island to the west hosted a naval base, seaplane harbor, and fuel depot.

The smaller East Island hosted an airfield with fighters and long-range bombers.

The Zero was armed with two 7.7 mm (approximately 30 caliber) machine guns in the nose, plus two 20 mm cannons in the wings. That was some pretty strong firepower, compared to comparable Allied fighters early in the war.

Now here’s an interesting tidbit: The Zero’s engine is basically a copy of the Wright Cyclone and Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engines. The Japanese had licenses to produce the Douglas DC-3, including engines, before the war, and reengineered those R-1820/R-1830 engines for the A6M.  They produced 950 hp and were basically identical to the versions of those engines used in the B-17—so much so that restored Zeros that fly today typically use the Pratt & Whitney engine, which fits perfectly.

In early dogfights with the Zero, Allied aircraft were completely outclassed. In China, Zeros boasted a kill ratio of 12-to-1. However, in July 1942—a month after Midway—a Zero crashed in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and was recovered and brought to San Diego for study, revealing some of the airplane’s hidden vulnerabilities.

For one thing, to save weight, the Zero eschewed the heavy rubber, self-sealing fuel tanks that were becoming common in other fighters. This led to a tendency for it to catch fire and explode when hit. For another, the large ailerons that made the Zero extremely maneuverable at low speeds made it harder to turn at high speeds because of the airflow it had to deflect.

Engineers also learned the Zero had a poorly designed carburetor that caused the engine to sputter in a dive.

All of these secrets helped the Americans design tactics to exploit the Zero’s weaknesses (diving, high-speed turns, no armor) and overcome its strengths (climbing, low-speed maneuvers).

In another sense, the Zero was a victim of its own success. Because its designers had so creatively pushed it to its limits, there was little room for improvement in future models to keep pace with new developments. It was as good as it would ever be. While U.S. aircraft—notably the P-38 Lightning, F6F Hellcat, and P-51 Mustang—either made or represented major improvements on previous designs, the Zero remained unchanged and continued in production through 1945.

The initial Japanese attack on Midway was largely successful, seriously damaging the U.S. facilities on the two islands and setting the oil depot ablaze. However, it wasn’t enough. The raid leader reported back that a second wave would be needed to finish the job.

This news led to a series of delays at the Japanese carriers that made them easy prey for the surprise counterattack that was coming from the American carriers quietly lurking nearby. While all but one of the U.S. torpedo bombers were shot down, and every one of them missed their targets, the Americans’  dive bombers caught the Japanese carriers with fully fueled and loaded aircraft on their decks, setting off a chain of devastating explosions. By the next day, all four Japanese carriers had been sunk.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

Right now, I’m ready to land back at the Akagi, not knowing what fate has in store.

The destruction of the Akagi and three other Japanese carriers dealt a severe blow to the Japanese Imperial Navy, mainly because so many experienced pilots were lost. It’s one of the reasons that many consider the Battle of Midway to be the turning point in the Pacific war.

Here I am coming in at around 70 to 80 knots to hit the arresting wires on the Akagi.

Even though it was outclassed by later U.S. airplanes, the Zero could hold its own in a dogfight—so long as it was flown by a capable pilot. The problem was most of those pilots had been killed at Midway. By war’s end, the mighty Zero was relegated to serving as a flying bomb in the hands of relatively untrained pilots, as kamikazes on a one-way trip to take out U.S. ships. Out of the nearly 11,000 Zeros produced, only two are still flying, along with a handful of airframes on display in various museums.

Thanks for joining me on this flight. If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the A6M5 Zero add-on to MSFS2020 from Romantic Wings, along with sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flightsim.to for free.

The post Flying Over the Pacific in a Japanese ‘Zero’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

For this session in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m flying the Bede BD-5J, the world’s smallest jet, famous for being flown by Roger Moore as James Bond in Octopussy.

The BD-5J is very popular at airshows, so I’m flying it today out of Oshkosh (Whitman Regional Airport, KOSH) in Wisconsin.

The BD-5 was designed in the late 1960s by Jim Bede, an ambitious thinker remembered (when he died in 2019) as someone who “made lots of promises, convincingly, if you ask around, and even delivered on a few of them.”

The BD-5 was a kit plane to be sold for about $3,000 (then the price of a Volkswagen) and assembled by enthusiasts at home. It’s 4 feet, 2 inches tall, and less than 14 feet long, with a wingspan of 22.5 feet. The lightest weighs in at just 358 pounds.

Some versions had a push propeller engine in the back, but the BD-5J had a jet. But after thousands of people putting down a $200 deposit and receiving partial kits, Bede could not find a suitable jet engine.

• READ MORE: Crossing the English Channel in a Blériot XI

After several years of struggling, the company went bankrupt in 1979, stranding customers with half-built planes.

But the BD-5J’s popularity got a huge boost in 1983 when it was featured in the opening sequence of the James Bond movie Octopussy. (The plane does NOT have fold-up wings, as portrayed in the movie).

As a result, many people completed their BD-5Js with whatever engine they could get their hands on, and they became very popular doing aerobatic stunts at airshows.

The problem is that a lot of these engines tended to either flame out or melt or set the BD-5J on fire, leading to a horrific accident rate. It is estimated that 15 percent of all flights in a BD-5J have ended in fatalities. Yeah, there’s no decimal point there. 15 out of 100 flights. I’m sort of hoping that today I’ll be in the lucky 85 percent.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

In the sim, the BD-5J is incredibly agile. It rolls on a dime and recovers immediately. You can roll, roll, roll, and then stop when you want.  Based on interviews I’ve seen with pilots, it sounds like that’s fairly accurate. They describe it as stable yet maneuverable.

At first, though, I did find it difficult to do a loop. Despite starting with a dive to maximum speed, it would stall out at the top, and I’d end up doing a hammerhead or an Immelmann at best. Love the smoke showing your trail.

Despite this, it was always easily recoverable, though the stall horn went off a lot.

Pilots report that they’ve reached 320 mph in the BD-5J, and the original aircraft was approved for aerobatics up to six Gs. Whoosh! That’s a wild ride.

I finally figured out, though, that the key to a successful loop was turning on the fuel pump. That way you barely made it over the top.

In the sim, it’s one hell of a fun airplane, and many pilots who’ve flown it agree. But the fact is that a lot of very experienced airshow pilots have been killed flying in it.

Besides air-show displays, the BD-J5 has been put to one practical use. The U.S. military has used the fast but tiny plane as a stand-in for cruise missiles in training exercises for its identical radar signature.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

Time to come home and enter the pattern to land back at Oshkosh. The BD-5J burns fuel at about 50 gallons per hour, giving it only about 45 minutes of flying time.

In the sim, at least, the BD-5J gains speed easily when the nose is down and descending. The first time, I came in too high and too hot and had to go around.

The next time, I was right on the money: about 85 knots. I’ve heard pilots say the hardest part about flying the BD-5J is landing it because you’re so low to the ground, almost like driving a go-cart. If you try to flare at the same height and sight picture as a Cessna, for instance, you’ll stall out and land hard. Instead, you basically have to fly it onto the runway.

One of the lead developers of the BD-5J, Burt Rutan, later went on to form his own company and design such ground-breaking aircraft as the Long-EZ, Voyager, SpaceShipOne, and the Stratolaunch–the last of these the world’s largest airplane by wingspan.

Hope you enjoyed a fun ride in the Bede BD-5J, the world’s smallest jet.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing AzurPoly’s Bede BD-5J add-on to MSFS2020, along with sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post Channel James Bond, Fly the World’s Smallest Jet appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Since writing about the world of home flight simulators for FLYING, I have largely focused on the “new” Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020). There are many reasons for this as this latest entry into the most famous flight sim of all time looks and feels incredible. The visuals are certainly the stuff imaginations are made of, especially for those of us over 40 who began our sim careers flying a Cessna 182RG where advanced scenery was a few sticks and lines to look like Chicago. 

Now that we have become accustomed to the visuals and feel of MSFS2020 and comfortable with all the available add-ons and updates to improve the experience, it could be easy to forget the “other” sim, X-Plane.

I have been an X-Plane customer and user since it was invented and have had phone calls and even met with Austin Meyer at a sim conference years ago. X-Plane 11 (XP11) was the only sim I used a few years back after the original MSFS X was discontinued and further development seemed over. 

• READ MORE: A Better Virtual Flight Deck

My love of XP11 didn’t transfer easily to XP12. Graphical glitches, texture shimmers, performance issues, incompatibility of add-on aircraft previously purchased, etc., made for a frustrating time. 

Up until just two weeks ago, I resigned to sticking with XP11. Then, suddenly, a new update to XP12 beta was released. The sky coloring, lighting, cloudscapes, and weather modeling all came together. 

Previously purchased XP11 aircraft all started getting updates to make them fully XP12 compliant. The performance issues I had in earlier updates in XP12 seemed to have gone away as well. Even the most complex jetliners now performed as well in XP12 as in XP11, all the while looking superior in the new lighting and weather. On my modest laptop with most detail sliders three-fourths of the way up and running in 2K native resolution, I often see frame rates over 50 frames per second. The in-game weather has not affected this, which is a real shock.

I recently started experimenting with live weather as it was occurring near my home. Flying various aircraft in XP12 at that exact moment has given me an appreciation of how accurate the live weather is, along with its stunning graphic depiction.

Flying the Toliss A319 from New York to southern New England provided some excitement as I headed toward a squall line approaching my home, Worcester Regional Airport (KORH) in Massachusetts. The clouds were bubbling up in the right places. 

Trying to beat an advancing line of heavy convection, you can see the lower buildups over 10,000 feet here, but much higher in the distance, corresponding with the bigger storms and tops. The accuracy and feeling of blasting through these tops is fabulous and is accompanied by clouds, bursts of loud rain, or ice, depending on the temperature. 

I could not get to my destination of KORH because it was below minimums, and I made a missed approach. As I proceeded eastward to my alternate airport—Laurence G. Hanscom Field Airport (KBED) in Bedford, Massachusetts—I broke out of the advancing weather to see the overhang of thunderstorms advancing my way. I used a ForeFlight app on an iPad to accompany my XP flights. 

Here, we see the overhanging anvil clouds coming out of the top of the lower convection zone. This is a realistic meteorological phenomenon that pilots see up high. Some lower-level haze and fogging is also seen. This effect is incredible and very accurate. It is probably the best depiction of weather I have ever seen in a sim. 

Using the same Airbus Corporate Jet ACJ319 in the Caribbean with convective weather produced visuals such as soaked runways, engine blowback, mist, tire spray, and reflectivity. It is all amazing.

The sim showed heavy rain being wiped away. The runway water model features performance degradation, as well as visuals. The rain impact, and especially the sound of the heavy rain, is better than the MSFS2020 version, which is quiet and weak.

The default heavy A330 circumnavigates around a big cumulonimbus cloud at altitude. 

Runway reverser action in the sim includes moisture fogging on the engine inlet. 

Flying across the U.S. and approaching the monsoon convection over New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, I can parallel and see the entire event 100 miles away. This visual candy is so true to real life, as I often see at FL400 in the bizjet I fly for work. 

The fictional Columbia Airlines Flight 409 heavy makes her way westward. Look at that gorgeous shine on metallic surfaces and sunlight reflection with the new XP12 lighting effects.

Gazing southwards, you can see the weather systems with cirrus clouds now included. The far-away depiction of weather is my favorite new effect for realism and a sense of upcoming trouble. It looks no different than in real life.

Columbia 409, after a squall as the sunshine evaporates the puddles that formed during the rain. 

While X-Plane 12 makes weather enticing to fly in, I find the active, or live thermals are still not up to snuff compared to MSFS2020. Their new thermal model really knocks you around, and operates using live weather and time of day. 

I hope X-Plane will improve the thermal simulation, as currently, sunny days with live weather don’t bounce you around. However, as always, you can simulate this stuff easily by manually editing the live weather downloaded, introducing turbulence up to cloud lines, and playing with the thermal values in the weather menu. This helps the choppiness in GA aircraft down low. But as for the convection-related clouds and weather, X-Plane is superior. If you’re not careful, bad things will happen to you in and around thunderstorms. It’s enough to tempt even the most safety-minded sim pilots to act like fools just to see how scary it can get.

The post Weather Wonders of X-Plane 12 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I picked up my first copy of FLYING at the Concord Aviation Services FBO in the late 1990s, where I worked part-time to help pay for my flight training. My mom would dutifully drive me to work on the weekends since I began my employment there before I got my driver’s license. Concord Municipal Airport (KCON) in New Hampshire was an exciting airport in the summer, busy with general aviation activities, weekend flyers, and the occasional World War II aircraft.

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The FBO hosted a good amount of business jet traffic from two NASCAR races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in nearby Loudon—the highlight each summer. The races brought in the latest Gulfstreams, Challengers, Learjets, and Beechcraft King Airs, with enough aircraft parked wing to wing to fill the runway closed for the occasion.

I quickly learned to love the smell of jet fuel in the morning, working the flight line, cleaning the restrooms, washing the hangar floors, and making the coffee. I had no idea how to make coffee back then, soI can only imagine what the FBO guests thought when they enjoyed a complimentary cup.

With my boss’s approval, I would pick up a spare copy of FLYING off the coffee table and take it home to read at night. On those pages, I connected with the aspirational world of aviation: sleek business jets, general aviation adventures, and flying wisdom from Collins, Abend, Garrison, Karl, and Lunken. The magazine helped keep my aviation dream alive as I pursued my private pilot certificate.

Many years before my first flight lesson, my grandfather took me to the airport. He flew the F4U Corsair for the U.S. Navy during WWII, and financially supported part of my flight training if I got good grades and wrote him a summary of every flight lesson. I was so fortunate to have his support. I soloed at 16 and planned to finish my private certificate during college, as the one I would attend had a flying club.

Starting my freshman year in September 2001, my world was full of opportunity and optimism. Unfortunately, after 9/11, the college flying club shuttered as CFIs at the nearby airport got laid off—and college life took me in new directions.

Finishing—Finding a Way

Like many of us, the itch to fly never abated, and I completed my private certificate in March 2011, 10 years after my first solo. Having been married the year before, I was grateful that my wife supported my dream-chasing ambition to go back to flying again—this time to finish what I started.

In 2012, I took my 88-year-old grandfather for a flight around Concord to celebrate the completion of my certificate. We spent the flight mostly in blissful silence. After some sightseeing, he flew some straight-and-level, made a few smooth and coordinated turns, then handed the controls back to me for a late summer afternoon landing on Runway 35. It was our first and last flight together, but remains a sublime memory I’ll hold onto forever.

In 2014, my wife and I started a family and—anticipating that this new phase of life may be disruptive to real-world flying—I began building a modest home simulator paired with X-Plane 10 software. Over the next year, I acquired the basic equipment, including a gaming PC, a 10-year-old joystick I had in college, some used rudder pedals, and a 5-year-old monitor I had in the basement.

I had not used any flight sim software since using the mid-90s version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, so the fidelity of X-Plane 10 amazed me. It definitely lived up to the YouTube reviews.

One of my first sim flights was shooting a practice approach at dusk in VFR conditions at KASH, my home airport at that time. Using my mouse to tune the ILS frequency on the nav/com, the X-Plane 10 Cessna 172 SP was equipped identically to the one I rented in real life. The warm glow of the panel, the fading light of a digital sunset, and the hum of the engine in my headphones made the experience feel real. The needle movement in the gauges was smooth. The occasional slight flutter caused by the vacuum system faithfully resurfaced in the sim, adding to the feeling of immersion.

I exercised mental checklists, scanned the instruments, and made pitch and power changes to establish and hold a stabilized approach through touchdown. After experiencing the airplane response to my inputs and nailing that first approach, I was swiftly bitten by this particular variant of the flying bug.

Return to MSFS?

In September 2020, in the midst of the first long year of COVID, Microsoft launched the much-anticipated return of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 when most of the world quarantined at home. I felt an overwhelming need to reconnect to aviation, and I eagerly unpacked the components of my sim that had been sitting dormant while my family and I relocated to neighboring Massachusetts.

My gaming PC was now six years old, but I could run the minimum settings for MSFS 2020 and try many of the fun landing activities, which generated a score based on your speed at touchdown, runway location compared to the target and the rollout distance. The gorgeous simulation features nearly photo-realistic scenery.

In early 2022, I set a goal of bringing my rusty radio work and airspace knowledge back up to speed. To accomplish this, I paired my updated X-Plane 11 flight sim software with the live air traffic control service called PilotEdge. PilotEdge staffs the service with real trained air traffic controllers who don’t suffer fools—or sim pilots who don’t prepare for their flights. As will be covered in future articles, the service also provides a series of challenging scenario-based activities called Communications and Airspace Training (CAT) flights that focus on VFR flying. Being a rusty pilot, I found that I needed to study to pass these flights—and I enjoyed the preparation required.

Often I would begin prepping a few nights before the flight, reviewing the accompanying YouTube video, and writing a flight plan, all in a very similar manner to how I prepared for a real-world flight.

Into the Bravo

The 11th and final flight in the CAT series was a ClassBravo departure from Los Angeles InternationalAirport (KLAX) and a Class B arrival at San Diego International Airport (KSAN). Having never departed or landed at a Class B airport in real life, and conducting the sim flight in an airspace occupied by other real sim pilots, watched over by real live air traffic controllers, I knew this flight would take my full mental effort.

After a busy and tense departure from KLAX and some not-so-perfect radio work, I landed rubber side down at KSAN and made my “clear of Runway 27” call. Within a few moments, the PilotEdge controller told me I had passed the CAT 11. I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. Taxiing to Signature Flight Support in the simulation, I watched as a virtual airline Boeing 737, piloted by another real-world flight sim pilot, received his takeoff clearance and thundered down the runway.

Flying with other live aircraft and the accompanying radio chatter was an experience like no other. Sure, my feet never left terra firma, but my mind was really flying. The prep work to pass the final CAT flight was real, and using the correct phraseology on the radios and working through the three-dimensional problem-solving in real time to navigate the complex airspace of KSAN required my complete attention. The effort was real, even though the flight was virtual.

This is the value proposition provided by having a flight sim in your own home: You can focus on nearly any element of flying that you want to learn or practice and, by doing so, carve back some quality aviation time in your life. My goal has been to fly in my sim once or twice a week, usually starting at 10 p.m. to best minimize distractions. 

I enjoy scenario-based training flights paired with live air traffic control, but a flight sim can be used simply for fun, exploration, and virtual sightseeing. You can visit almost any airport or enter any airspace in the world, in nearly any weather conditions, and do so in faithfully-recreated versions of hundreds of different airplanes made by enthusiasts or programmers who care about getting the details right. And just like the real airport environment, I’ve found the people involved in the flight sim community are passionate, welcoming, and genuinely want to help new sim pilots get started.

In future articles, the FLYING team will cover some flight sim “watch-outs” to help you avoid developing any bad habits. However, I believe that the upsides to flight simulation far outweigh the potential downsides. I am neither a high-time professional pilot nor particularly tech-savvy, but I believe that my sim will help me become a better pilot when I go back to real-world flying. In the meantime, it helps me keep the dream alive.

If this interests you, I encourage you to go explore the amazing digital world of flight simulation. Perhaps it will grow into a new hobby that helps to keep your own dreams of flying alight. There’s never been a better time to get started.

This article was originally published in the April 2023, Issue 936 of  FLYING.

The post Gaming to Keep the Dream Alive appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

For this session in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), I’m reenacting French aviator Louis Blériot’s historic 1909 crossing of the English Channel.

Louis Blériot was a French engineer who invented the first practical headlight for automobiles. After building a successful headlight business, he turned his attention to the experimental field of aviation.

The Blériot XI, built in 1909, was the result of several years of experiments, encouraged further by the public demonstration of the Wright Flyer flown by Wilbur Wright in Paris the previous year to great acclaim.

As you can see, there are no instruments. No airspeed indicator, no altimeter, not even a fuel gauge. But it was the first airplane to adopt the “stick” along with a footboard for controlling the rudder.

• READ MORE: Taking a Flight in the Bell 47

The Blériot XI is powered by a 25 hp engine, designed by Italian-born motorcycle racer Alessandro Anzani, with three piston cylinders arranged in a semi-radial design.

Before tackling the channel, I take some practice flights. The first thing I learn is you cannot taxi this machine. It has to be manhandled into position for takeoff on the runway.

On getting airborne, the very first thing I notice is the torque from the propeller will always make you turn to the left, even while in flight, unless you constantly apply some right rudder. After making an involuntary circle to the left, pulled by the torque, I put it down on the runway where I started. I guess that’s one way to do it.

But I soon get aloft again, better prepared to control the aircraft the second time around. Like the Wright Flyer, the Blériot XI uses “wing warping” to control roll. Instead of ailerons (a later adoption), wires pull the flexible wood-and-fabric wing and alter its shape.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

As I’ve read about the Wright Flyer, the wing warping really exists more to control the wings and keep them level. To turn, you mostly use the rudder. The control responses lag. Once you get started on a turn, in either direction, it takes some time to work your way out of it. Everything is slow and steady. No abrupt movements, no overcorrections.

So on my second flight, I’m actually able to maneuver the Blériot XI around a typical (in this case right) traffic pattern. Once on base, I pretty much just cut the power at this point and glide in. If you’re flying, you’re pretty much full throttle. If you’re landing, you’re pretty much power off.

All right, so I didn’t kill myself—twice—-so like Blériot must have, I’m feeling pretty confident about tackling the English Channel.

On the morning of July 25, 1909, Blériot took off from a beach near Calais, France. The big question I have is how much fuel I’m going to burn going across the channel. I presume he had enough, but what his cushion was, I have no idea. And there’s no fuel gauge to tell me. Well, you know, there’s only one way to find out. I’m off.

Blériot flew at an altitude of about 250 feet, but—not necessarily by intent—I’m already a bit higher than that, probably around 1,000 feet. It seems to work, so I’ll try to hold it here.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

There’s Calais, off to my right. Did I mention the Blériot XI doesn’t have a compass? So like Blériot, I need to just point myself in the general direction of where I think England must be.

I’m using the clouds to keep my heading straight. With the torque, it would be easy to drift either left (too little rudder) or right (too much) without realizing it. Blériot himself followed a ship across the channel, though he quickly overtook it and had to manage on his own.

Putt, putt, putt, putt. That’s the sound that the engine is making, alone over the channel. Blériot flew at about 45 mph, or 39 knots. I can’t tell right now—I don’t have an airspeed indicator—but my time will eventually show that I’m doing about the same at full throttle.

Soon after passing the ship, Blériot could see the English coast on the horizon ahead. There it is. Glad it’s a clear day. 

Looking back at my tail (and toward France), you can see the right rudder I have to keep in just to stay straight.

Blériot didn’t have quite the same visibility I do: “For more than 10 minutes, I was alone, isolated, lost in the midst of the immense sea, and I did not see anything on the horizon or a single ship.” But he couldn’t wait for ideal weather because there were several rival French aviators prepared to take off and compete for the 1,000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail for the first to cross the channel.

During his crossing, Blériot found himself getting pushed east by the wind and had to double back a bit toward Dover, England. Unlike him, it looks like I’m roughly on course. In fact, I’m dead on target. That’s the port of Dover to my left, with Dover Castle overlooking it.

As Blériot approached the English coast, he had someone positioned atop the White Cliffs of Dover waving a French flag to help show him where to land. With no one waving a flag to help me, I need to pick out a nice field for a landing.

Blériot actually landed right next to Dover Castle, just ahead to the left, and there’s a little monument to indicate where. But there’s a copse of trees there now, so I need to find a different spot. That nice, long, open green field to the right will do. I’ve cut the power and am gliding in.

My wheels touch down fine, but at these low speeds the rudder has barely any control, so I start to ground loop and end up gently on my right wing.

But I don’t feel too bad. When Blériot touched down in 1909, he made a hard “pancake” landing, damaging his gear and propeller. Obviously, nobody cared. He had just completed the first cross-channel flight in history.

Blériot’s flight took 36 minutes and 30 seconds. Mine took just over 38 minutes, but I started a bit further inland than he did and didn’t need to jog back west (to counter being blown off course) or circle before landing.

Blériot built about 900 aircraft for the French Army before World War I, mostly on the Blériot XI model. He later headed SPAD, which produced more advanced biplanes as the war progressed.  Blériot died in 1936 but not before personally welcoming Charles Lindbergh to Paris after his similar landmark flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the Wing42 Beriot XI add-on to MSFS2020.

The post Crossing the English Channel in a Blériot XI appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Ever since I was a small child, my eyes and imagination were filled with one airplane: the Boeing 747. I believe it all started when I saw Airport 1975 on the big screen. That movie forever made a permanent impression on me and was responsible for my daydreaming, doodling, and not doing very well in school. 

A real American Airlines 747-100 was used for the movie. Many of the flying scenes were real as well. After watching the movie, I knew I wanted to be an airline pilot when I grew up. That was the era of actually being able to go to any airport and see big, loud, powerful airliners up close and personal. My dad would often take me to Ontario, California (KONT), east of the San Fernando Valley where I grew up, to gawk, listen, and even climb onto jetliners in between flights. 

Back in the 1970s, if a kid wanted to see a jetliner’s flight deck in person, all you had to do was ask. Today, kids aren’t even allowed to look at transport category jets up close, unless they’re a ticketed passenger. Even then, the design of today’s airline terminals, with more emphasis on shopping than watching, make this task difficult. I think airline terminals have been designed with the goal of preventing you from seeing anything outside. This result is that nobody cares anymore, there’s no excitement at hand, and the awe and privilege have all vanished into the past. Since 9/11, kids are not given the chance to enjoy aviation and, for the most part, are actually discouraged because of “security.”

I got my first ride on a 747 in 1976 on an all-charter 747-200 going to London from San Francisco. I recall the outside boarding experience, climbing up the massive stairway and gazing at the huge engine pods and fan blades up close. The graceful-yet-pudgy body of the jet was huge and massive. I imagined the noise, wind, and violence just outside the doorway where I stood that would soon be happening at 600 mph. 

More than 40 years later, I am still in awe but frustrated at never having been lucky enough to have flown on a 747 since then. I never became a 747 pilot but am fortunate to have gone into corporate jets as a captain on a Bombardier Challenger 300. So now my joys turn to those replications on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 or X-Plane. Let’s take a look at the current offerings and what might be the best.

MSFS2020 Default 747-8i

Microsoft has certainly knocked it out of the park with the visuals. All aircraft in MSFS2020 are photorealistic and accurately modeled with size and scale of individual parts and pieces. 

The almost 3-year-old “new sim” has gone through some major updates. Just this summer the 747 has received a major realism upgrade to systems, avionics, and handling. This 747-8i Intercontinental has gone from a lightweight, simple aircraft that was mostly a visual model with not much else behind it to a quite sophisticated version. 

Very close to detailed payware versions, this one is now complete with FMS that actually works the way it should. This is a hard thing for even commercial add-on companies to do, and Microsoft got some great programming by the folks at Working Title Aero to enhance the flagship Boeings (the default 787 has been redone as well to great standards). The performance loading, automatic V-speed, and N1 calculation is all done for you like the real thing. Approaches load automatically as well without having to tune radios. The avionics appearance, colors, and fonts have all been redone as well. Up-close viewing, the precision and quality is apparent. I am still dumbfounded at the visuals that can run at such high frame rates and smoothness. 

The flight model is good, better than previous MSFS2020 offerings, yet still feeling far too lightweight, with less momentum, less drag, and less resistance than what a real 747 should be when converted to a desktop sim—perhaps too “sporty.” However, you can absolutely notice the difference between this and the default 787 or a 320. It’s enjoyable to hand fly and is the heaviest feeling of the other airliners. Since I like to grade things, I’d give it a solid “B” on flight dynamics and believability. Visuals gets an “A-plus.” 

In a private session, I had the pleasure of flying a real 777 Level D sim at Boeing for many hours once, and I can only use that as my litmus test on a personal level, having not flown one myself in the real world. The autopilot on this model since the recent updates works great, is precise, and will perform a full autoland if set up properly. To me, this is a definite sign of an acceptable flight model. 

Sadly, the sound set that comes with it is terrible. I am a huge sound fanatic, and this disappointing fact has plagued it since MSFS2020 came out. Luckily, you can replace the sound set with FTSim+ Sounds for a much better experience for the 747-8 that is also updated often. 

X-Plane SSG 747-8i

The 747-8i offered by add-on company SSG has been around for years now and updated often. It is now a definite favorite of mine for the X-Plane 11 and 12 platforms. However, because of my affection for XP11 now and not 12 yet, I use it in XP11 as the older sim version is more refined and stable and performs far greater than the newest XP12, which is still in its infancy. 

This 747 flies very well in this program in comparison to the MSFS2020 version and has a lot of systems modeling behind it. The sound set is pretty good. The hand flying is great, feeling much heavier at all weights than the Microsoft version. Momentum, rolling friction, drag, and weather effects all seem to play a bit more of a part in the feeling and observing the realistic performance of this beast. 

The 747-8i is the most beautiful of all the 747 models in my opinion. Because of the limitations in X-Plane, it is not photorealistic nor textured as well as the Microsoft counterpart. Some shadowing errors occur as well, with a blocky and not smooth appearance caused more by an X-Plane limitation. 

The SSG 747-8i flight deck is a bit oddly scaled with some difficulty in obtaining that proper captain view, as the MSFS2020 version has a larger-scaled window with somewhat better panel and view over the glareshield. But thanks to SSG and many updates, the frame rates are high and smooth with close-up views precise and well done. This jetliner is a keeper, and I would give it a solid “B-plus” for flight characteristics. Visuals less so—a solid “B.” 

X-Plane 747-200 Classic 

This 747 Classic came out a few years ago for the XP11 community and was made by a small group of mostly military enthusiasts making add-ons. It blew away the 747 fan community when it was launched. I never spent much time with it, because of my own love of the more modern versions. However, just a week ago I decided to revisit this newly updated gem. After spending some hours flying this rendition, I feel as if I flew a real 747. 

Seriously noticeable flight characteristics and hand-flying qualities make me wonder how good the other two are I just spoke about, unless the more modern versions are more maneuverable and lighter to the touch. Maybe they are? Fans of X-Plane know the “blade element theory” is the reason behind this sim heralding higher praise from aeronautical engineers and pilots. I’d say this is the injection that probably pushes this model over the top of flight dynamics. You can feel and see it under all flight regimes.

I got to see the real prototype 747 at the Boeing museum at Seattle’s King County International Airport (KBFI) recently, so I was excited to test-fly the same thing here. Using my Honeycomb flight controls and Bravo throttle quadrant (available at Sporty’s) on this hulking behemoth was a joy. Pushing up those four throttles together and hearing the spool up of the four early turbofans was an audible gem. Just the taxiing procedure alone was a blast, feeling and dealing with the momentum and physics at hand. She dips, sways, and tilts on the drive to the runway—heavy, precise, and accurate the whole time. 

The most noticeable thing this 747 offers is the feeling at rotation. You actually have to tug firmly on the yoke to get the “Queen of the Skies” to let her nose unplant. Then the mains will give up their grip, allowing her to fly. You can feel this on each and every takeoff, varying the effect naturally on the weight you’re at. I don’t feel this on the other sim models at all. This Felis 747 seems so alive, so dynamic, and more realistic than any 747 on any sim I have ever used. It gets an “A-plus” for both flight physics and visuals as well. Despite the inability of having photorealistic aircraft in XP, this is as close as it gets, with my discerning eye saying I can see nothing out of scale or placement. The sound set is very well done tool, not requiring any add-on company to replace it.

I will say in regard to the advanced systems at play here, in XP11 on my 3070 GeForce-based laptop, I did have to turn down a few graphics options to get a high frame rate. Mostly the complexity of objects taken down a notch to only high, instead of dense, brought up performance about 20 percent when using this model. I get 35 to 45 frames per second on cockpit view in most locations. Before fiddling, the fps was in the 20s, which is not fast enough for smoothness and flight quality. 

There’s not much to not love on the Felis 747. It will bring you back to a day when hand-flying skills were dominant, and autopilots were just getting sophisticated but had to be watched. Nowadays, the pilots have to be watched, as autopilots have the upper hand. 

For anyone loving Airport 1975 as I did, you’ll be happy to know the entire passenger cabin is modeled—even the spiral stairway. I’ve not yet taken long trips on this as I was having just too much fun on tight, lightweight patterns banging out takeoffs and landings in preparation for this piece. The 747 with only a few hours of fuel, about 60,000 pounds, and not much payload only requires 5,000 feet of runway to take off and land easily. V_REFs can be in the 125- to 135-knot range as well. As mentioned, all speed functions are easily obtained on the EFB, depending on weight and takeoff configuration.

For anyone wanting to precisely pilot these beauties on long haul journeys, many videos and written publications exist. The Felis 747 will be hard to beat for a long time, as it’s the only sim 747 model I’m confident saying is totally real for either X-Plane or MSFS2020. 

The post Replicating a Simulated ‘Queen of the Skies’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

If you’re beginning to entertain the idea of purchasing your first airplane, you likely have dozens of aircraft reviews and buyers guides bookmarked in your browser. You’ve probably learned how important it is to match an airplane’s capabilities to the sort of flying you expect to do most often. And if your daydreaming has evolved into analysis, you might have already begun to narrow your choices down to a handful of potential candidates.

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So you decided to get into a flight sim and may not know where to begin. Although an abundance of online guides and videos exist, I find them often overblown—too lengthy and filled with fluff. I would prefer to just give you the facts, introducing you to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and what is needed to run this program well enough to have you saying, “Wow,” “OMG,” and “I can’t believe it is this realistic.” If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be as addicted to it as I have been the last 20-plus years, nor as bullish in telling other pilots how beneficial it is to your chosen career, proficiency, and overall situational awareness.

MSFS 2020 needs a solid, powerful laptop or desktop to run well. The good news is most of these can be easily obtained for between $1,000 and $2,000 off the shelf today. Naturally, the more you spend, the more capable the PC you’ll have, but with the refinements, MSFS 2020 has gone through since its introduction more than 20 years ago, you’ll be able to run it well on most new, gaming-style PCs and laptops.

PC Requirements

Gaming PCs come with the proper video card and CPU combinations, hassle-free, and I highly recommend this approach. Most online and brick-and-mortar stores sell these. If it’s not called a “gaming PC,” don’t get it. I use an HP Omen laptop with a 17-inch display for all my virtual flying, as I travel as a pilot and need something portable. The laptop is strong enough to run MSFS 2020 on the highest detail settings at 50 FPS. Yes, a laptop can now run MSFS 2020 as well as any desktop setup.

Specifically, you want an Intel i7 or i9, or AMD RYZEN 7+ processor, plus a NVIDIA GeForce 3060 series or higher graphics card, a 1TB SSD drive, and 6 GB of RAM, or more. I find Intel CPUs superior in performance and reliability when it comes to any flight sim, as opposed to AMD, but others may disagree. Do not get anything less than these specs.

Controls & Hardware

This is the portable setup I use for travel. I highly recommend this as the best entry-level option with high performance for MSFS 2020. I use the HP laptop, Thrustmaster Airbus sidestick, Xbox Elite controller, mouse, and Thrustmaster Airbus throttle quadrant. You can get the Airbus controllers together for less than $200 at Sporty’s. The Xbox controller can easily be found online or in electronic stores.

For the grand setup for a home, one good choice is the Flight Sim Starter set for $599, also from Sporty’s dedicated flight sim store. The Honeycomb system is reconfigurable for any type of aircraft you want to fly. Once I started flying virtually with this, it became so much more enjoyable and realistic.

Whichever controls you decide to use, they can be set up easily by plugging them into the USB ports—Windows will configure them automatically, in seconds.

Installing the Simulator

The new MSFS 2020 can only be installed through a high-speed internet connection. If you do not have high-speed WiFi, Ethernet, or so forth, then you will not be able to run MSFS 2020 at all. Although this is a departure from the norm of years ago, the sim uses live-streaming photorealistic world graphics, terrain, airports, weather, and traffic. The disk space required for this would be enormous. The sim will push updates automatically for itself and any purchased add-ons, with less hassle than keeping track of all this yourself. However, I must stress that without high-speed internet you will not be able to run this sim—or if you try, you may have performance issues. Investing in a good internet is a must for this hobby.

My recommendation is to purchase and install this via the Steam gaming service online. It is safe, easy, and reliable. The Microsoft Store also offers it, but it seems the highest satisfaction comes from those who use Steam. It may take an hour or more to install the first time, depending on your connection. 

Preparing To Run MSFS 2020

Once the controls are plugged in and MSFS 2020 is installed, you’ll run it for the first time. Depending on your PC strength, the program will determine your graphics settings. In most cases, you can go into General Options/Graphics/Global Rendering Quality to see what is chosen for you. If you have a new gaming PC, go ahead and set this to “Ultra,” save, and exit.

Setting Up the Pilot Cameras and Views

This is one of my biggest things to emphasize. Trying to move and view with a mouse or joystick hat will lead to frustration. Using the function within the sim, find General Options/Controls Options/Keyboard/Translate Cockpit View Right, Left, View Forward, View Backward, and give each one of these a command you like. I have named each of those entries, [Right], [Left], [Up], and [Down], corresponding to the arrow keys. Then find Cockpit Camera/Increase Cockpit View Height, name it [Right Shift] + [Up], and then Cockpit Camera/Decrease Cockpit View Height, and name it [Right Shift] + [Dn]. Combining two commands works.

So now you can “move” easily around in the cockpit; the first step in setting cameras. Once you place your eyeball view in the virtual cockpit where you want it, you must lock it into place.

Next, set up your pilot views or cockpit cameras. There are nine views you can select by pre-positioning your favorite viewing spots, to recall instantly instead of using the mouse or joystick that switch to look around. This will take a bit of time, but will last forever on each aircraft. You can also customize the commands to save each view, 1–9. Go to Controls Options/Keyboard. Your controller will be listed here—take the time to go through each of these menus to customize what you like. “Saving Custom Camera” and “Load Custom Camera” can be accomplished now as well. It is not overly complex but takes some time. Once you do this, you’ll be able to keep these and rarely need to tinker again with them.

I have customized my setup to be CtrAlt+1 through 9 to save nine different viewpoints. Save Custom Camera is the entry in the sim. For instance, to save and lock in the pilot’s view, use Ctrl-Alt-1; then copilot, Ctrl-Alt-2; left view snap, Ctrl-Alt-3; right snap, Ctrl-Alt-4;etc.—however you like. Using your controller to “grab” these views, assign custom “Load Custom Camera” to a joystick or controller button, or keyboard option. I use buttons on my joystick or yoke to allow smooth viewing, snapping to import views, instruments, systems, etc. These will automatically save per aircraft.

I hope this quick course in initial PC setup and assigning camera commands helps get you started with MSFS 2020.There is much more to cover as we move forward in this series. In the meantime, if you conquer this, you’ll be able to start assigning key commands and functions throughout the sim, and deleting many of the defaults you’ll never use. The beauty is that all this is saved automatically. In the 2.5 years I have used MSFS 2020, nothing has been changed, deleted, or corrupted. It’s a game-changer.

This article was originally published in the May 2023, Issue 937 of  FLYING.

The post Your First Sim appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Learning to fly is not like learning to play a musical instrument, in that for most of us, it is impossible to practice at home—but wouldn’t it be great if we could? Austin Meyer, the inventor of X-Plane, had this idea in the 1990s after a particularly frustrating experience involving an instrument proficiency check. Today, X-Plane is one of the top aviation simulation games in the world. You can put yourself at virtually any airport in just about any airplane. The game continues to evolve—X-Plane 12 was released just before the 2022 holiday season. FLYING caught up with Meyer to get the skinny on the development of the popular pastime that has evolved from game to simulation experience.

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FLYING Magazine (FM): As the inventor of X-Plane, you hold a remarkable position in the industry. How long have you been in game design?

Austin Meyer (AM): Since 1993. [The first] X-Plane was the first computer program I ever wrote.

FM: What inspired you to create X-Plane?

AM: I was taking an instrument proficiency check. You can’t actually fail those—you have to keep going until you get the signoff. I had to go up on like four flights to get the signoff, and I found that very frustrating. I decided to never put myself in that situation again. I needed to practice at home, but I flew a Piper Archer II—and Microsoft Flight Sim didn’t have a Piper Archer II at the time—and I knew they wouldn’t put one in for me, so I wrote my own simulator. It was called Archer II IFR. I didn’t have all the performance data for the Piper Archer II, so I said, ‘let’s look at the geometry of this airplane and see how it must perform according to the laws of physics,’ and when I did that, I had an airplane that flew just like a Piper Archer II. Then I realized that if I had that math and looked at the geometry of an airplane and then [flew] it…I could apply it to any airplane you can imagine—so I renamed it to X-Plane.This was in 1995.

FM: I’ve heard that X-Plane allows users to add their own scenery to the program. Is that true?

AM: Yes. [For example,] there are about 30,000 hangars in the [current] X-Plane right now. A person can build it virtually, then load it onto the server.

FM: You mentioned one of the triumphs of X-Plane 12—which was released in December 2022—was getting the clouds to change during the duration of the virtual flight. How was that accomplished?

AM: We finally got the clouds to be honest-to-goodness volumetric. They are three-dimensional, and we had that volumetric matrix to get the elevation, then all you need to do is manipulate it over time—and there is your fourth dimension, time.

FM: Is the X-Plane software designed for a particular brand of simulator?

AM: Our customers buy X-Plane, and once they have their copy…can build a simulator out of it. Precision Flight Controls in particular has [become] very, very good at this. Many companies buy X-Plane and then present it to the FAA for certification, but I would say the percentage of the sims that are certified by the FAA are minute. The vast majority use X-Plane because they love using [it].

FM: You mentioned that users of the software can ‘build’ airports to add to the airport library in X-Plane. How is that done? Does it take a certain level of skill or sophistication to do this?

AM: [You can use] Google World Editor, for X-Plane…sometimes called WED [an animation tool for Google 3D imagery].

FM: For the person who is just beginning their experience with X-Plane, are there any tips for getting maximum enjoyment? Is there a scenario you recommend?

AM: For newcomers, my primary recommendation is that they purchase an inexpensive joystick from Amazon (one that costs $30 or so). That $30 really goes a long way to making the experience with X-Plane more authentic.

FM: If you could go back to 1995 and give the younger you advice about the development of X-Plane, what would you say?

AM: Really I would not need any big-picture advice…I don’t think I’ve ever made a major big-picture mistake with this simulator. If I could go back in time, I would just want to bring my computer back with me with all of the source code on it just to save myself time, that’s all.

FM: Are there any aircraft on your bucket list in X-Plane? If so, what are they?

AM: My bucket list airplane is the T-38. I have not released that in X-Plane yet for contractual reasons, but I [have] flown it in [the software] for many hours, and it is a great airplane in the simulator as well.

FM: You mentioned that sometimes people get a copy of X-Plane and build a physical simulator around it. Are we talking individuals looking for fun or professional pilots?

AM: Both. In 2023 we will be focusing on the profes-sional use application of X-Plane. There are already simulator manufacturers that use X-Plane in their products, such as Precision Flight Controls.

FM: You describe the scenery of X-Plane 12 as ‘pretty basic.’ Any plans to change that?

AM: Many pilots are clamoring for more of a Google Earth experience—you know, they want to fly over their house—but that’s not what X-Plane was made for. When I write a simulator I am looking at the airport environment. When the nose is down, I want to see the airport. I want to see the avionics, I want an accurate flight model, I want to see the weather, I want the engines and systems and air traffic control to be changing just like they do during a flight. I want all those things you do to manage a flight from startup to shutdown. That is the type of aviation I am experiencing all the time, and that is the simulation I want to bring to people.

FM: What’s the most important thing for our readers to know about X-Plane?

AM: X-Plane lets you enter the design of any airplane and then see how that airplane would fly if you were to build it in reality. With that mathematical foundation, X-Plane accurately simulates how existing airplanes fly as well. This gives the most accurate flight simulation you are going to find in a flight simulation system with three-dimensional, ever-changing real-weather, air traffic control, and other aircraft in the sky with you. It’s not a glorified scenery-viewer.

Quick 6

Who’s the one person living or dead you would most like to fly with? 

Orville or Wilbur Wright…in my Lancair!

If you could fly any aircraft you have not yet flown, what would that be? 

The T-38…with Orville or Wilbur Wright!

What is one airport you’ve always wanted to fly into? 

The airport is just the “door”…I get excited about the airplane and the destination.

What do you believe has been aviation’s biggest breakthrough event or innovation?

The modern, reliable, high-bypass turbofans that make modern jet travel possible.

What has been your favorite airplane to fly?

My Lancair Evolution…so far…

When I’m not flying, I’d rather be…

Coding

This article was originally published in the April 2023, Issue 936 of  FLYING.

The post A Better Virtual Flight Deck appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m in Korea to fly the Bell 47, the iconic chopper from the TV show M*A*S*H and the first helicopter to be certified for civilian use.

The Bell 47 was produced by Bell Aircraft, founded by Larry Bell in 1935. Bell was known for producing highly innovative if not necessarily successful airplanes during World War II, most notably the tricycle-gear P-39 Airacobra fighter.

But the story of the first Bell helicopter begins in 1927, when a man named Arthur Young graduated from Princeton University with a degree in mathematics. Drawn to philosophy, Young wanted to tie his more esoteric interests to the solution of elusive practical problems, and the one that intrigued him most was the helicopter. At that time, the development of helicopters was a field full of eccentrics, and Young fit the profile of the lone oddball genius.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

At his family’s farm outside of Philadelphia, Young spent 12 years conducting private experiments with model helicopters until he could reliably get them to fly. In 1941, he took his models to Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, New York, and the company agreed to work with him in developing full-size prototypes. Over the next few years, the small engineering team led by Young developed a helicopter, the Model 30, capable of controlled flight.

It was not the first helicopter to be developed. The Germans created a number of prototypes during the war. In 1943 Igor Sikorsky sold the R-4 helicopter to the U.S. Army, which saw limited search-and-rescue operations in the Burma Theater. However, improvements to Young’s Model 30 by late 1945 gave rise to the Model 47, a product Bell Aircraft viewed as marketable. One of the first customers was the U.S. Army, which designated it as the H-13 Sioux.

It’s the winter of 1952, and this H-13 is parked in the Haean Basin, an oval-shaped valley just south of today’s DMZ between North and South Korea—dubbed the “Punchbowl” by American troops. It was close to some of the toughest fighting late in the Korean War, including battles at Heartbreak Ridge and Bloody Ridge. As a result, it was home to the 8209th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH), one of several units on which the fictional “4077th MASH” of TV fame was based. The unit was equipped with Bell 47 (H-13) helicopters, which were famously featured in the opening credits of the long-running comedy-drama.

I’ll talk about MASH units, and the 8209th in particular, in a bit. First, let’s look at the tricky, bug-like aircraft that became their most recognizable symbol, the Bell 47. The fuselage of the Bell 47 is 31 feet, 7 inches from cockpit windshield to tail. The span of the main rotor is 37 feet, 2 inches. The helicopter’s height, to the top of its rotor mast, is 9 feet, 3 inches. The construction is bare bones, nothing fancy. The cockpit is made of sheet metal, with a plexiglass bubble windshield, and the tail is composed of exposed steel tubes. The Bell 47 has an empty weight of 1,893 pounds, about the same as a Volkswagen Beetle.

The Bell 47’s fuel tanks varied by model, but the two perched here each hold 30.5 gallons for a maximum range of 214 nm (246 sm or 396 kilometers). This is a Bell 47G, so the engine is a single Lycoming 6-cylinder, air-cooled piston producing 280 hp that is also used in some versions of the Beechcraft V-Tail Bonanza. Earlier Bell 47s used a less-powerful Franklin piston engine. The same engine drives both the main and tail rotor, via a cylinder-shaped transmission gearbox above the engine.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

To understand what both rotors do, I need to explain the controls in the cockpit. Unlike most later helicopters, the primary pilot of the Bell 47 sits on the left. To the pilot’s left is the collective. It looks like the lift-handle parking brake in some cars. Raising it increases the pitch of all the main rotor blades the entire way around, increasing lift. The collective also has a twist grip controlling the throttle. Increasing rotor pitch also increases drag, which must be compensated by increasing throttle to maintain a constant target rpm (the green area on the dual tachometer for engine and rotor revolutions, at the upper left). Note that on a helicopter, you do not alter lift by making the main rotor spin faster or slower. You alter lift by changing the pitch of the blades while making sure they turn at a constant, safe speed.

In front of each seat is a cyclic, which looks like the control stick in an airplane. Moving it adjusts the pitch of the main rotor blades through one part of their rotation, tilting the helicopter in that direction. Inputs from the collective and cyclic are conveyed through the silver-colored swashplate near the base of the main rotor.

In the Bell 47, changes to blade pitch (“feathering”) operate through a stabilizer bar, a device invented by Young. It consists of two shorter rods that extend just below and perpendicular to the main rotor blades. When the stabilizer bar rotates, it acts like a gyroscope that wants to keep spinning in its current plane. This tends to cushion any new tilt to either the rotor blades or fuselage, to maintain stable flight, and remained a feature on later Bell helicopters, including the “Huey.”

The rotor head itself is semi-rigid, meaning it can teeter to either side. This allows the rotor blades to automatically “flap” up or down as needed to provide even lift. If the blades couldn’t flap, when the helicopter moves forward, the advancing blade on the right would cut through the oncoming airflow faster than the retreating blade on the right, generating uneven lift and causing the helicopter to tumble. The main rotor blades themselves were originally made of wood covered in fabric and had an unlimited lifespan because they did not suffer the same strains and fatigue as metal rotors.

The rotation of the main rotor blades creates torque, which makes the fuselage want to rotate in the opposite direction (clockwise to the right). The tail rotor is needed to offset this. Foot pedals on the floor of the cockpit control the pitch of the tail rotor blades, altering their thrust in one direction or the other. This allows the pilot to keep the helicopter pointing forward or rotate it toward whatever direction he chooses.

In the tail, wires link the pedals to the tail rotor head alongside the shaft from the engine powering the tail rotor. When the wires reach the tail rotor head, they work a mechanism that changes the pitch of the blades, and therefore their thrust, in either direction.

Near the tail, there is also a piece of sheet metal that acts like a tailfin. When the helicopter is moving forward, it helps keep the nose pointed in the direction of travel with less pedal input. The Bell 47 also has small horizontal tailplanes, like tiny wings. The airflow over them also tends to keep the helicopter more stable (stopping it from pitching up or down) in forward flight.

In addition to its own weight, the Bell 47 can lift just more than 1,000 pounds. That’s just about enough for the pilot and copilot, fuel, and two stretchers to rescue wounded from the battlefield that are placed over the landing skids.

The magneto switch to start the engine is on the top right. The gauge to its left shows the temperature in the carburetor. The black knob adds carburetor heat to prevent the moisture in the fast-moving air entering the engine from freezing. The red knob adjusts fuel mixture for altitude. The radio is on top. On the right side are my flight instruments. From top to bottom, they are: horizontal airspeed indicator (top), altimeter (showing elevation of not quite 1,500 feet above sea level), and vertical speed indicator. My heading indicator is attached to the frame of my bubble windshield off to my left.

Now that I’ve started the engine, to the left you can see the tachometer showing both engine and rotor rpm in the narrow, green band. Below it, the manifold pressure indicator shows the throttle-controlled air pressure entering the engine. Around 15 inches of mercury is normal for idle speed. At the bottom are gauges showing oil pressure and temperature, as well as fuel. For what it’s worth, the fuel gauges were often unreliable, and pilots had to rely on visibly checking the tanks, plus time in the air.

With that, it’s time to lift the collective, adjust the throttle accordingly, and take off. At around 20 MP, the Bell 47 springs into a hover, just above the ground.

Hovering is considered the most difficult skill for a new helicopter pilot to acquire. I won’t lie. At first, I wobbled all over the place, but I gradually got better. The key is to anticipate a delayed response from every input. Wait for the helicopter’s response and you will have overadjusted and gone wobbling off in a new direction.

I’m starting to get the hang of it now, so I’m departing the Punchbowl, heading west toward Heartbreak Ridge on a mission to pick up and bring back some wounded. The famous battles of Bloody and Heartbreak ridges took place in summer and fall 1951. After being chased south by the Chinese, who entered the war the previous winter, U.S. troops launched a counterattack to solidify their positions along what would later become the DMZ. They won key ground, at a great cost in lives, but afterward the war bogged down in a stalemate with the 8209th MASH in the Punchbowl never being much farther than 20 miles from the front lines.

The job of the Bell 47 helicopters was to evacuate wounded from the battalion aid stations, where they were stabilized, and transport them to the MASH hospitals, where emergency surgery could be performed. For the first time, helicopters played a vital role in overcoming the difficult terrain that would previously have prevented a soldier from receiving treatment within the critical “golden hour”—the first hour after a wound was sustained. They proved to be a remarkable success. It is estimated that in Korea a seriously wounded soldier who reached a MASH unit alive stood a 97 percent chance of survival once he received treatment. But the ride there must have been a harrowing one, strapped precariously on a stretcher on the side of a helicopter.

According to the manual, the maximum forward airspeed of the Bell 47 is 105 mph. At that point, the retreating rotor blade can’t flap down enough to provide even lift without stalling. I found that the airspeed could creep up on you quickly, and it was better to keep forward momentum around 60 to 70 mph, though 84 mph is recorded as the standard cruise speed. I did have a retreating blade stall at one point but quickly recovered by lowering the collective (to reduce angle of attack) and pulling the nose up to reduce airspeed (the opposite of what you would do in a stalled airplane where you would push the nose down to increase airspeed).

Almost back to the MASH unit. That’s the Punchbowl just past the ridge up ahead.

I was a little overeager to get home at this point, with my airspeed creeping up to 85 mph. It was shortly after crossing the ridge that I had my retreating blade stall. But I managed to arrest it and make my way down into the Punchbowl.

I’m not sure where the 8209th MASH was located, and all signs of it are long gone. But I found some YouTube film footage of it in operation in winter 1952, including the Bell 47 helicopters arriving with wounded. Each MASH unit had 60 beds and was designed to support 10,000 to 20,000 troops in the field. The hospitals were called “mobile” for a reason: They could be set up at a new location in 24 hours. The operating room, recovery rooms, and doctors’ and nurses’ living quarters were all in tents.
Many doctors were drafted and didn’t necessarily enjoy the “discipline” of military life. One of them, H. Richard Hornberger, wrote a novel about the experience—under the pen name Richard Hooker—that was later adapted into the movie and TV show M*A*S*H.

And here I am, arriving back at the 8209th MASH’s location—or thereabouts—in the Punchbowl.

Approximately 2,400 of the military versions of the Bell 47 were produced. In addition to evacuating wounded soldiers, they were used to find and rescue downed pilots and recon enemy positions. They continued to be employed until the early stages of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, when they were replaced by Bell Aircraft’s new and improved helicopter, the UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the “Huey.” But the impact of the Bell 47 wasn’t limited to the military, nor did it end with the 1950s. In 1946, the Bell 47 was the first helicopter certified for civilian use by what later became the FAA.

In 1958, Los Angeles TV station KTLA made history by renting a Bell 47. Dubbed the “Telecopter,” it was the first television news copter, scouting out traffic for the city’s auto commuters. Apparently on the first flight, the station wasn’t receiving the signal, so the chief engineer climbed out on the landing skid at 1,500 feet to fix it. That’s dedicated journalism.

The Los Angeles Police Department also acquired a Bell 47 to help it leapfrog traffic and reach crime scenes more quickly. The growing use of helicopters by law enforcement helped inspire the TV series Highway Patrol, which ran from 1955 to 1959 and featured California’s finest chasing down criminals in their Bell 47.

The appeal of the Bell 47 to law enforcement wasn’t just fiction. As late as the 1970s, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office near Bakersfield, California, acquired and flew a Bell 47 until it crashed a few years later. The Pennsylvania State Police, the New York City Police Department, and the Los Angeles Fire Department were among several first responders who looked to the Bell 47 to accelerate their response times. Here I am practicing my stationary hover—and kicking up a lot of dust— in a field outside Bakersfield. I’m getting better.

NASA used the Bell 47 to train its Apollo astronauts, who were mainly fixed-wing pilots, to operate the lunar lander, which had controls like a helicopter.

How high could the Bell 47 climb? Well, in 1949 it set an altitude record of 18,550 feet, and in 1955, French pilot Jean Moine landed on the top of Mont Blanc in the Alps at 15,776 feet after lightening its normal load considerably.

The versatility of the Bell 47 was established in the public imagination by the TV series Whirlybirds, which aired from 1957 to 1960 and featured a helicopter charter company performing all kinds of daring rescues and stunts.

Bell continued manufacturing the Bell 47 until 1974. Approximately 5,600 civilian units—in addition to the 2,400 military versions I mentioned earlier—were produced. This one with floats, flown for Gulf Oil, was one of them.

Gulf Oil operated widely—in the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela, and Kuwait—so I’m not sure exactly where it flew. But I’m trying it out today at Beaumont, Texas, where the company got its start.

When helicopters operate at airports, they typically taxi (in a low hover) like other aircraft and take off and land using the runway. I’m getting better at controlling my hover, even in a stiff wind. I’m going to fly to the coast of Sabine Lake, near Port Arthur, and see if I can’t try some water landings. I’ve spotted a small oil tanker in the lake that looks like a fitting place to set down.

Most Bell 47s were produced in the U.S., but Bell also licensed production to Agusta in Italy, Kawasaki in Japan, and Westland Aircraft in the U.K. As of 2011, some 1,068 were still registered—and presumably flying—in the United States, as well as 15 in Great Britain. So somewhere out there, the Bell 47 continues to do a day’s work.

Whatever happened to Arthur Young? He quit Bell in 1947, once the Bell 47 was launched, and devoted the rest of his life to philosophy. He founded the Institute for the Study of Consciousness devoted to the “psychopter,” the helicopter as the “winged self,” a metaphor for the human spirit. In 1984, the Bell 47 helicopter was added to the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as “an object whose delicate beauty is inseparable from its efficiency.”

Thanks for joining me to learn the story of the Bell 47, a helicopter that saved countless lives in Korea and established the popular image of the endlessly versatile “whirlybird” in the minds of countless TV viewers.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here.

https://www.patrickchovanec.com/other/bell-47-1946/This story was told utilizing the FlyInside Bell 47 add-on to MSFS2020, along with liveries produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post Taking a Flight in the Bell 47 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m flying the DHC-2 Beaver, the closest thing Canada has to a national airplane.

DHC stands for de Havilland Canada. Starting in 1928, the British-owned de Havilland Aircraft Co. established a Canadian subsidiary to manufacture the Tiger Moth biplane for the overseas training of British airmen who fought in World War II. The company’s first homegrown airplane design, immediately after the war, was the DHC-1 Chipmunk, a more modern military trainer to replace the storied Tiger Moth. But de Havilland Canada realized that post-war, it could not rely on military demand to support the company, so it decided it needed to crack into the civilian aviation market.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

Two-thirds of Canadians live within 100 kilometers of its southern border with the U.S. The vast majority of the country’s territory is remote and sparsely inhabited, with few roads. So in 1946, de Havilland Canada sent a survey to the “bush pilots” providing transportation into these remote areas to ask them what they wanted in an airplane. The result was the DHC-2 Beaver.

To begin with, it was an all-metal design, rugged enough to withstand a beating from rough terrain and exposure to the elements. It could be equipped with wheels, floats, or skis to be able to land in a variety of places without paved runways and take advantage of the country’s many lakes and rivers. The wings (spanning 48 feet compared to the aircraft’s 30-foot length) were large enough to provide ample lift, allowing short takeoffs and landings (STOL).

The top bush pilot request was for “more power”. Originally, de Havilland planned to use its own 145 hp engine. Then it realized there were plenty of surplus Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior engines (the same as were used in the Grumman Goose and Beechcraft Staggerwing) left over from wartime production on sale for a low price. The 450 hp produced by the Wasp Junior made the Beaver significantly overpowered for its design, which gave it that much more STOL performance—and more than satisfied the bush pilots’ demand.

Since we are heading into the wilderness, I’ve decided to strap a canoe to our pontoons in case we need it once we reach our destination.

The cabin could be outfitted to carry up to six passengers and serve as a bus to remote settlements. Or the seats could be removed to carry up to 2,100 pounds of cargo, delivering vital supplies. Essentially, it was a flying truck.

To facilitate easy loading and unloading, the Beaver had wide doors on either side. Notice that the doors are cut diagonally at the top to avoid banging into the flaps when lowered. A lot of Beavers were later modified so their rear side windows bulged outward for greater passenger visibility forward and backward.

The first potential customer for the DHC-2 Beaver was the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, which had to oversee more than 1 million square kilometers of territory dotted with more than 250,000 lakes. The department conducted a competition that the Beaver won, hands down. This specific plane, CF-OBS, was the first production model delivered to the department in April 1948.

We’re at Sault Ste. Marie on the border between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Ontario. Before we take off for parts north, let’s take a look at the cockpit. As you can see, everything is metal, extremely durable, with good visibility. There is a single yoke, which can be shifted from the pilot’s side to the copilot’s as needed.

The throttle, prop handle (for the adjustable pitch propeller), and fuel mixture are all at the top center of the instrument panel. The manifold pressure gauge reads just shy of 30 when the engine is off because that is the outside air pressure. The engine gauges are below the throttle quadrant, and the radio stack is off to the right in front of the copilot’s seat. Directly in front of the pilots, there’s a standardized “six pack” of primary instruments—a great improvement over the hodgepodge of gauges typical of WWII airplanes. Note that the airspeed indicator is in miles per hour, not knots. Above the instruments is the flaps indicator.

• READ MORE: The Rugged, Sleek Legacy of the Beechcraft ‘Staggerwing’

On water, you take off into the wind, as normal. Full throttle, prop, and mixture for full power. The aircraft will lift itself off the ground (or water, in this case) at 55 to 65 mph, with light back pressure on the yoke. And we’re flying.

I pull the throttle back to 33.5 manifold pressure (MP) and the prop back to 2,200 rpm, and lift the flaps one level from “takeoff” to climb, as I begin to rise over the Soo Locks and the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge below. Leveling off at about 2,000 feet, I reduce the throttle further to 29.7, set the rpm to 2,000, and lift the flaps all the way to “cruise” as I get ready to turn north.

The cruise speed of the Beaver is about 110 mph, or 95 knots. The designers were concerned that it would be too slow because of all the drag from the large wings and pontoons. Bush pilots said never mind: “You only have to be faster than a dogsled to be a winner.” So 4.5 hours and 336 nautical miles later, I’m approaching Fort Hope in northern Ontario.

Fort Hope—now called Eabametoong by the Ojibwe First Nation that lives there—is typical of the kind of destination the Beaver was designed to reach. It was originally a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading post, set up in 1890. Some 300 km north of Thunder Bay, even today it is reachable only by gravel road—or airplane. Before the airport was built in 1942, the only place to land was on the adjoining lake. Today, the “airport” is still only a 3,500-foot gravel airstrip, so a water landing remains an attractive alternative.

I’m pulling the flaps down to “landing,” prop lever full, and throttle almost all the way out. My approach speed is on target at about 70 mph. The stall speed with flaps down, as indicated by the white arc on the airspeed indicator, is about 60 mph. Just above the water, I pulled back on the yoke to stall and set down on the surface. Just as the sun is setting, I taxi over the village along the shoreline to tie up.

CF-OBS, the first production unit of the Beaver, has flown more than 8,800 hours in its career since 1948 and is still in flying condition today—though it mostly resides on display at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste. Marie. During the 1950s, the airplane played a key role in developing early water-bombing techniques to put out forest fires. The 1983 film Never Cry Wolf portrays a Canadian government naturalist hitching a ride on a Beaver from a remote airstrip. It highlighted how steeply the DHC-2 is able to take off, owing to its overpowered engine.

The DHC-2 Beaver gave bush pilots exactly the tool they needed. If the railroad opened up the American West, the Beaver can be considered the airplane that opened up the Canadian North. Initial sales of the Beaver, however, were slow. What really turned things around was the U.S. Army’s decision in 1951 to acquire it as a utility aircraft—a huge coup for a Canadian manufacturer.

That’s why I’m here in South Korea, just outside of Seoul, where the U.S. Army bought 970 Beavers for use during the Korean War. I wasn’t able to find an Army livery, so this particular airplane is from the U.S. Air Force, which also used Beavers as utility and liaison aircraft in Korea to ferry senior officers.

Just like in the Canadian wilderness, the Beaver’s STOL capabilities and rugged construction made it ideal for reaching unimproved airstrips in the combat zone. The Beaver’s durability ensured these same aircraft continued to fly for many years and be used during the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, more than 30 countries adopted the Beaver for similar military use—one was France. If you look at the sign on the airport, you’ll see where we are: Dien Bien Phu. Today’s commercial airport is the site of the airstrip the French used when they were besieged here by Viet Minh forces in 1954.

More than 10,000 French troops were trapped at Dien Bien Phu, located in a valley in a remote part of northern Vietnam. They were surrounded by an enemy force that outnumbered them 5-to-1 and held the high ground. The airstrip served as a fragile lifeline, providing them with supplies and transporting out wounded.

This Beaver was one of those airplanes. The wide doors allow access to load wounded soldiers for evacuation as mortar and artillery shells rain in. Aircraft couldn’t afford to park or turn off their engines. They had to load and take off again or else risked being destroyed on the ground. We’re fortunate to be getting out now. While French forces refused to surrender, they were all ultimately wiped out or captured. The colossal defeat spelled the death knell for French colonial rule in Indochina.

As I’ve been saying, the durability of the Beaver has given these military aircraft a long life. The U.S. Navy still flies two Beavers, like this one, at its Test Pilot School at Patuxent River NAS in Maryland. The school’s two beloved Beavers are the oldest active aircraft in the U.S. military inventory, built in 1951 and 1952. They are now used mainly for instruction and glider towing.

With the wider adoption of helicopters, however, the vast majority of Beavers were eventually retired from military service and either put in storage or purchased by private owners. This Beaver, for instance, was built in 1962 and flown by the U.S. Army in Vietnam. It was later flown by the CIA’s covert airline Air America. In 1998, it was purchased and refurbished by actor Harrison Ford.

Ford was already a private pilot by 1998, when he starred in a film called Six Days, Seven Nights, where he played the pilot of a DHC-2 Beaver—as his character puts it, “one of the safest, most reliable aircraft ever built.” The role inspired him to buy a Beaver of his own. But don’t go looking for N28S on FlightTracker. Like Elon Musk’s jets, Ford’s flying information has been made private at his request to the FAA.

Similar to me, Ford learned to fly at age 53. “I didn’t really know if I could learn anything,” he later told an interviewer. “I hadn’t learned anything—other than lines—for a long time. I wanted to engage my brain in some process that would wake it up and resupply it with challenges.”

Ford has experienced a handful of mishaps and accidents in his airplanes over the years, but notably, none of them have involved his DHC-2 Beaver. He’s involved in the Young Eagles program, volunteering to take kids from all backgrounds for a ride to spark their interest in aviation. Heck, I’d like to go up with him, but so far this is the closest I’ve gotten. Ford has said the Beaver is his favorite among his entire fleet of private aircraft. Who knows, maybe he’ll see this post and invite me?

Instead of waiting around for that to happen, though, I’ve come up to Talkeetna Airport (PATK) in Alaska. This is where a real-life outfit called K2 Aviation flies these red DHC-2 Beavers (among other aircraft, such as the DHC-3 Otters in the background) on sightseeing and adventure trips around Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley.

Today we’re going to fly to the Denali Base Camp, situated on a glacier on the mountain’s shoulder, to see how these skis handle. This is definitely a trip I want to take in real life.

Before takeoff, I’ve entered our flight plan into the GPS, so I don’t get lost. The straight-line distance is just 48.7 nm. But the base camp is at 7,200 feet, and we’re starting out at just 358 feet above sea level, so we’ll be climbing much of the way.

• READ MORE: The Effective, Long-Lasting MiG-21

Talkeetna is a town of just more than 1,000 inhabitants that was founded in 1916 at the confluence of the Susitna, Chulitna, and Talkeetna rivers as a regional headquarters for the Alaska Railroad. I’ll be following the larger Susitna River due north, aiming straight for Denali. I’m cruising at an altitude of just over 10,000 feet msl. Denali is the highest peak in North America, with its summit at 20,310 feet, over twice as high.

Some Beavers have been upgraded with turbocharged engines, but this one (at least in the sim) has not. So as I go higher, I notice a falloff in the manifold pressure and have to compensate by putting the throttle to max. As I get closer to the mountains, I need to jot over to the west to join the glacier, which I will follow up to the base camp.

Here it is, the Kahiltna Glacier. The base camp is located near the top. The peak to the left is Mount Foraker. At 17,400 feet, it’s the second highest in the Alaska Range and the third highest in the United States.

The name Denali simply means “high” or “tall” in the language of the indigenous Koyukon Athabaskans. In 1896, a gold prospector named the mountain after William McKinley, who was elected president that year. In 2005, the Barack Obama administration officially made the name switch back to Denali.

Alright, I’m getting really close here. I can’t start to descend until I spot the base camp, or I’ll find myself in real trouble. Looking around… c’mon…I’m pretty sure it’s the patch of gray behind the second ridgeline. Well, I’m going in.

I’m high on approach, so I do a forward slip, and wrench my rudder full left while banking right to drop like a rock. You can just make out the forward edge of the runway straight below. I straighten out just above the runway to flare. I came in a little fast, but the upward slope of the landing strip slowed my momentum fast after touching down.

Welcome to the Denali Base Camp, a hub for climbers hoping to ascend the rest of the way on foot. It’s very slippery to taxi on skis, but I somehow managed to park.

But to end this thread, I really have to return to Canada to the place where I actually flew in a real Beaver for the first time. Harbour Air flies Beavers—along with a variety of other airplanes—from the seaplane base in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. This was several years before I even thought about becoming a pilot. But I happened to get put in the copilot’s seat, which was quite a thrill.

I still remember lining up in the harbor for takeoff, gaining speed, and then banking left to turn toward the west over the suspension bridge below.

De Havilland Canada produced 1,657 DHC-2 Beavers from 1948 to 1967, when the company shifted its focus to making larger airliners. That still makes it the largest production run of any Canadian aircraft in history. Because of its durability, the Beaver has enjoyed an influence way beyond its numbers. Hundreds continue to fly today, and the numbers are actually growing as more get refurbished. A company called Viking Air, based in Victoria just off the coast from Vancouver, purchased the type certificate and now produces spare parts to keep the Beavers flying.

I didn’t know any of this when I took my half-hour tourist flight on Harbour Air. But I definitely remember the view, looking toward Vancouver Island. We soon turned back toward the city.

In 1987, the Canadian Engineering Centennial Board named the DHC-2 one of the top 10 engineering achievements of the 20th century for the country. In 1999, it appeared on a special edition Canadian quarter. The Beaver has also been featured on postage stamps from several countries.

At the end of the flight, we made a broad circle over downtown Vancouver as we prepared to land back in the harbor. Looking back, I have to say this flight was one of the things that probably planted the seed for me to begin learning to fly several years later. 

Coming in to land on the Vancouver waterfront. It certainly makes for a memorable flying experience.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here. 

This story was told utilizing the Blackbird/Milviz DHC-2 Beaver and Northern Sky Studio PATK Talkeetna Airport add-ons to MSFS2020, along with liveries, sceneries, and airports produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free. Harbour Air and K2 Aviation are real companies, and their portrayal is entirely fictional and does not constitute their endorsement or participation in any way.

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The incredible, beautiful world brought to us in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020) allows for some pretty realistic backcountry experiences. I decided to test these great spots firsthand while being fairly close to them myself on a recent working trip to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport (KBZN) in Montana. 

I stayed at the Yellowstone Valley Lodge, which sits along the Yellowstone River. Even though I haven’t landed an airplane at the hotel property in real life, I did in the sim. In the world of bush flying, there are no rules, so any place where you can safely land a short takeoff and landing (STOL) type of aircraft becomes an airport.

The aircraft is a Kitfox STOL model version “low ’n’ slow,” available in the MSFS Marketplace within the sim (or directly from the developers here) that makes landing off-road, off-airport, or anywhere very easy. 

For this MSFS2020 flying adventure, you’ll first need to purchase the Idaho mountain bush pilot strips available on the MSFS Marketplace right within the sim itself. Get Soldier Bar USFS Airport (85U), Mahoney Creek USFS Airport (0U3), and Thomas Creek Airport (2U8) to get you started. The Mountain Flying Bible provides some insight to the real-life locations, and some low-resolution photos and videos of the real places. They install seamlessly, and it takes only a few minutes on a good internet connection. I would strongly recommend grabbing some freeware bush planes widely available on websites such as www.flightsim.to or some commercially produced ones. And as always, consider FSRealistic add-on for sounds and head motions, and a great set of Honeycomb controls flight sim starter set, available at Sporty’s Pilot Shop. 

I flew from my hotel in Montana in real time about an hour or so southwest to 85U, Soldier Bar. The terrain is rugged, and the day I had chosen was filled with frequent updrafts and downdrafts, with a nausea-inducing thermal or two thrown in for good measure. 

The rugged backcountry of Idaho has some of the most challenging flying anywhere on earth. This inhospitable place has an unusually large number of unimproved, dirt or grass strips. The route we will use is 85U to 0U3 to 2U8. All close by but by no means easy.

Starting from 85U was surreal. I could virtually smell a campfire as well as the nearby pine trees in the refreshing air. With so many bush planes to choose from, I first tried using the freeware “Bagalu” Cessna 172 bush version with large-diameter tires—a great enhancement to the default 172 series, with added features, such as bush kits, and paint jobs. This version is boosted with a 210 hp engine, which makes all the difference in the world.

The realism of these hand-decorated fields was almost overwhelming. This is the most challenging, off-road style airport I have ever witnessed. I am not sure how in real life they can come and go from here. The trees are tight and the runway narrow. No room for error, plus it slopes way downhill, all while curving! This is only a logging road used for a makeshift runway it seemed.

Starting off with mixture leaned out a bit for altitude, with the brakes held, flaps 20 for soft field technique—and fingers crossed. This is not an ordinary runway as it is really a curving dirt road with a hard turn to the left as you plummet downhill with about only a wingspan distance between huge pines. There’s zero room for error. Crosswinds are not allowed.

I barely made it out of the forest, scraping paint off a wingtip. I decided to attempt an immediate landing back at the field. This was a tight canyon to turn, and my first attempt was too close and high for landing. Back around the tight canyon with some heavy sink rates on terrain down flows. It was nerve wracking with some steep banks, lots of power required and at one time. I added too much flap and had the stall horn peeping. Between the thermals, turbulence and tight canyon walls, I really felt I was taking some risks.

The result of being an amateur, fool, and attempting this in something with huge rubber tires. I bounced myself right over. After this, I gave up. 

Next up, the “WBsim” late model but all steam gauge Cessna 172 ($20 from Just Flight). This again takes the default version and turns it into a machine where wear and tear, proper technique, and normal care must be employed. I really enjoyed this one, although I dinged up the wheel pants in the making of this story. Luckily, a no-pants version is a keystroke away.

On the final second attempt to Soldier Bar, it was too high. Almost 2,000 fpm down, and look at this crazy, bent, narrow ‘road’ entangled within the trees.

Closer in, I realize I’ll not be able to land on the beginning as it all slopes downhill. Several attempts all failed because of my poor technique to the narrowing runway, trees, and slope. I couldn’t slow down enough and descend fast enough simultaneously. Then the go-around was met with rapid negative VSI off the end. The local wind-flow pattern can be dangerous. On about eight attempts, I made it in on one landing only, uphill, only hitting trees slightly—powering up to the campsite. Time to move on.

Up next was the run down to 0U3 Mahoney Creek. You’ll get two airports included in this pack. Right below it is Cougar Ranch in the river bottom, several hundred feet down.

Next up is the Savage Grravel STOL, a marvelous freeware aircraft from “got friends.” This thing cruises fast and lands slow. This may actually be my preferred bush plane for its ease and performance ability. Again, giant bouncy tires.

Pro tip: Don’t use the brakes like that. 

Along the way to Mahoney, it was irresistible to take the Grravel to some bald-headed mountain peaks. With almost helicopter-like landing speed, you can truly take this anywhere. Any mountain top could suffice as an airport along the way. 

On the downwind abeam the field at U03 Mahoney, checking out the layout and terrain. There’s another detailed field right next to it lower down the canyon called Cougar Ranch. 

Kitfox Speedster Series Bush Wheel (marketplace too)—Circling high overhead Mahoney and seeing it’s nice and flat on that ridge. But the other dirt strip (Cougar Ranch), seen below in this picture, is still down deep in the canyon. 

Mahoney was easy compared to all the others. Bald, no trees, just short and windy. 

Trying the Cessna once again, down the valley river floor, Cougar Ranch as seen on short final. Swinging left and right down the river, abeam the walls, shadows, thermals, updraft and downdrafts—WOW. No time to even take in the beauty of it all! Short and flanked by trees, this was definitely a par 3 (about three attempts to get it right for me and land safely).

In close finally, Cougar Ranch was green and lush. Mahoney up above was drier and browner looking than this. Holding the speed on the edge of MCA, because of the altitude, temps, and airflow over terrain and trees. Stall horn made an occasional peeping. This was a fun place to try a touch and go, and climb back up around on the edge of a stall, into landing at Mahoney. These could be the closest two individual airports on earth.

Finally for the grand finale, I enjoyed flying a classic Stearman biplane from Carendo (www.carenado.com). Another marvel of historic beauty, sounds, and realistic cockpit instrumentation, etc. 

Bush flying is well done in MSFS2020 as my photos show. This is really just the beginning as more and more folks are making customized bush scenery, either for free or as payware via the sim marketplace. There seems to be no performance hit by getting this stuff, and it blends seamlessly with the default scenery nearby. 

Until now, I had the thought that small backwoods strips didn’t need to have add-on scenery as it was good enough. Well, that’s no longer the case because just the little details make a world of difference, and fun local knowledge is brought to life. I am almost seeing these individual bush strips as complete simulators, with the aircraft available, weather conditions, and terrain—equaling endless combinations of realism and scenarios to imitate real life. It’s easy to spend many hours doing this. Happy ‘bush’ flying!

The post There Are No Rules in Bush Flying appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

At AirVenture 2001, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 premiered. The company had a large presence at the show—they had a kiosk in an exhibit hangar and had rented a large trailer with an awning where they set up computers so that members of the media could test-fly the game.

The audience for the virtual aviation experience—I hesitate to call it a ‘game,’ and more on that later—was both aviation enthusiasts and certified pilots, as MSFS 2002 had been developed to be “as realistic as possible.” I promptly tested this assertion by rolling a virtual Cessna 172 inverted and keeping it there. As the fuel tanks on the 172 are in the wings and the aircraft has a gravity-fed system, going upside down means the fuel doesn’t reach the engine. In real life, you expect it to stop—and quickly. I silently counted alligators as I held the aircraft inverted—there was the sputter and cough as the engine quit approximately 15 seconds into the maneuver.

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The MSFS representative looked awfully proud as he told me that the development team included pilots who took great pride in crafting this realistic virtual aviation experience.

Kit Warfield was one of these pilots. It is Kit’s voice you heard on your virtual check ride. Now a retired commercial seaplane pilot from the Seattle area, Warfield was the content lead on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, 2002, 2004, Flight Sim X, and all three versions of Combat Flight Simulator.

“The tagline at the time was ‘as real as it gets,’ and we took great pride in trying to replicate the aircraft aerodynamics, the weather, and the scenery and so forth,” she says. “To call it a game seemed to trivialize that, but officially and formally, the category that Microsoft Flight Simulator fits into is a game, as it is entertainment software.”

The Fun and Fantasy Factor

Simulation games allow you to fly anywhere in the world in a variety of airframes—from gliders to commercial jets—and you can do silly things that you would never, ever do IRL, such as landing a 172 on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

According to Warfield, the MSFS developers went looking for ‘fun’ approaches to build into the experiences.

One of these is the approach into Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport (VHHX), known as the Checkerboard Approach or Hong Kong Turn, created by a retired Northwest Airlines captain turned programmer who had flown the approach in real life. The approach put aircraft very close to high-rise buildings.

“He knew the [Boeing ] 747, and he knew that approach, and he knew it in enough detail that he would take off and fly the Checkerboard Approach inverted,” says Warfield. “I’ve heard the airport is closed now, but from people who have been in there, I asked, ‘How close did they get to the buildings?’ And I was told, ‘You could see people cooking in their kitchens.’”

Go Anywhere

With aviation simulation, you can virtually fly an aircraft any place in the world—feeling homesick for NewYork? You can take off from LaGuardia. Have a hankering to fly up the Vegas strip at night? Or around the pyramids of Egypt? That can be done.

There are some areas where game designers won’t cross the line into absolute fantasy, says Warfield, “You’ll never be able to take your general aviation aircraft into space.” Also, there will be no dramatic and frighteningly realistic crashes in MSFS because, for all the attention paid to making sure the virtual aircraft fly as close to the real thing as possible, the developers have agreements with aircraft manufacturers if the virtual aircraft crashes, the simulation simply ends or the aircraft bounces back into the air.

Getting Started

There doesn’t have to be a steep learning curve with the games, says Michael E. Puochi, a game developer who has been tinkering in virtual aviation since 1987 when he played Maverick in Nintendo’s Entertainment Systems Top Gun. He’s also a student pilot IRL.“Most modern sims will let you fly in a few different modes from a ‘simple’ flight model that may have things like auto trim, auto rudder, self-righting, unlimited fuel, so the non-pilot can just experience flight with very little instruction or understanding of flight dynamics and basic pilot instruction. You can also go full realistic or ‘advanced’ where the aircraft will not fly itself and requires full input from the virtual pilot. The games are made to be accommodating to all skill levels.”

Puochi notes the sim creators use the pilot’s operating handbook for the aircraft and rely on the guidance of subject matter experts (SMEs) such as pilots, aircraft designers, and mechanics to get the most accurate information for the aircraft’s performance. They use laser scans of the cockpit and thousands of photos, videos, and recordings of various operating envelopes to get the virtual aircraft as close as they can to the real thing.

The Cost of the (Virtual) Cockpit

The price of virtual flight depends on how elaborate as setup the pilot wants. There are some who are content with a small control device and a laptop screen, while others will spend thousands of dollars on building a cockpit with rudder pedals, a yoke or stick, and even a VR panel.

“The more modern sims on the market you can spend upwards of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Some people have full motion flight platforms, scale pits that are fairly accurate to the actual aircraft in real life,” says Puochi.

The interest can start young.

“About one-third of my students have a flight simulation set-up at home,” says Robert Prosch, aeronautical lead instructor at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The museum offers a Pathway Program for highschool students, several who developed their interest in aviation through games. The Pathway program uses light simulation to reinforce classroom concepts, such as basic flight and aircraft handling and instrument interpretation, and helps students develop hand-eye coordination and aviation communication skills.

Prosch and his students assert that middle school is a good age for students to be exposed to flight sims, as this is the time in their life when they develop interests in things that often carry into adulthood.

“Start out with simple ‘sandbox’ type games, many of which are free or relatively inexpensive,” suggests Prosch.

Top Gun for Fun

Would you like to be a Top Gun? There are virtual scenarios where each player is part of a squadron. Puochi, call sign ‘Puffin,’ is a regular participant in Virtual Naval Air Operations (VNAO), which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.

According to Puochi, the premise of the group is emulating procedures used by the U.S.Navy, which means using the same methods as Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization. Participants become members of a squadron.

The group includes formally-trained military and civilian pilots who impart their extensive training and wealth of knowledge to the participants who are looking to learn as much as they can from the mentorships. The virtual pilots learn how to fly in formation, do inflight refueling, navigate, and practice launch and recovery off a virtual aircraft carrier.

“Taxi instructions, launch orders, and handoffs are done to the best of the ability of those involved in as realistic fashion as possible,” says Puochi, who also has logged several hours as a private pilot candidate. “The mission commences, and then the recovery phase proceeds, probably one of the most fun parts because we have trained live LSOs (landing signal officers) in the sim on the LSO platform waving in recovering aircraft. It’s really stressful and very fun at the same time, especially when you snag that third wire.”

It can get complicated quickly, says Puochi, as the mission requirements of a multiplayer game often do. The virtual pilots need to understand procedures and their role in the mission. The pilots choose their own level of training and involvement, says Puochi, “from the casual pilot that just wants to know what it is like to do recovery and launch operations aboard the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers, to the extreme enthusiast that wants to learn everything about how to fly and strategically use these study-level aircraft.”

SIMS as an Aviation Gateway

At CalPoly Humboldt in Arcata, California, a homebuilt simulator is a favorite of library patrons. Humboldt is the northernmost campus in the state university system, located on the rugged north coast.

In 2019 the PC gaming club built and installed the simulator, which consists of a non-moving platform, a gaming chair, and a console with toggle and rocker switches and appropriately colored knobs for throttle, propeller, and mixture. The aviation club took over operation of the simulator in 2022.

The simulator runs X-Plane. The sky and airplane are projected on a curved wall of video screens. The instrument panel is digital and correct. When the simulator was built, professor David Marshall, who holds both remote pilot (drone) and private pilot certificates, was the advisor to the club. Today, the aviation club, also advised by Marshall, takes care of and oversees the simulator, which is located on the second floor of the library in the area designated for collaboration. The space has whiteboards, desks, a VR setup, and a classroom-sized manual E6B.

Because the simulator is out in the open, posters are mounted over the screens providing instructions for its use.

At this time, the university doesn’t have an aviation program per se, but the simulator is proving to be popular with students looking for a way to have some fun and explore aviation without making a big investment of time or money. They are learning that flight sims can be just as enjoyable as flying IRL, and as it is much less expensive, is an activity in reach of many.

This article was originally published in the April 2023, Issue 936 of  FLYING.

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For this session in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’ll be flying the Russian Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, a Cold War icon that was produced in larger numbers than any other supersonic jet fighter in the world.

The MiG-21 was produced by the Soviet state design bureau led by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. Founded in 1939, the bureau achieved modest success during World War II, but broke through as a leading designer of jet fighters with the swept-wing MiG-15, which contended with U.S. aircraft for control of the skies during the Korean War.

However, by the mid-1950s the U.S. was introducing a new, second generation of jet fighters—exemplified by the F-104 Starfighter, capable of exceeding speeds of Mach 2. The MiG-21, introduced in 1959, was the Soviet response. Like the F-104, it was essentially a big jet engine with a cockpit strapped on top. The powerplant, in this case, was a single Tumansky R-25, capable of producing more than 9,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle, and up to 21,825 pounds with afterburner. The protrusion over the engine nozzle contains the parachute that can be deployed to slow the MiG-21 on landing.

The most recognizable feature of the MiG-21 was the engine air intake on the nose, covered by a “shock cone.” The shock cone’s purpose was to slow the air entering the intake to maximize efficiency, and it could be extended out at higher speeds or retracted at lower speeds. The spear-like boom projecting from the nose carries the atmospheric sensors for air pressure, airspeed, and angle of attack out in front, before the airflow is disrupted by the airplane itself.

To reduce drag and increase speed, the MiG-21 had a triangular-shaped delta wing, which earned it the Russian nickname “balalaika”, after the stringed folk instrument. The Poles called it the “pencil” because of its long, thin fuselage.

The MiG-21 was intended primarily as an aerial interceptor, so I’ve loaded it for this session with K-13 air-to-air heat seeking missiles, two under each wing. The story behind them is an interesting one.

In 1958, a Taiwanese F-86 Sabre fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile at a Red Chinese MiG-17 over the Taiwan Straits. It failed to explode, and was handed over to the Russians, who reversed engineered it. The K-13, dubbed “Atoll” by NATO, was a direct knockoff. The missiles were not yet available when the MiG-21 was first unveiled, so it was equipped with a 23mm cannon attached to its belly. As we shall see, this gun proved critical to its success.

• READ MORE: The Rugged, Sleek Legacy of the Beechcraft ‘Staggerwing’

Next to the gun, on either side, are speed brakes, panels that can be lowered to slow the airplane down quickly when needed. The wheel wells also serve as a maintenance hatch for accessing many of the MiG-21s critical systems. A little white bottle contains compressed air for operating the landing gear brakes. Pilots had to use it sparingly; once it ran out, no brakes.

To give the smallish flaps greater lift, compressed air from the engines is released over their upper surface. Faster airflow equals lower pressure equals greater lift. “Blown flaps” like these, also used on the F-104, are a rarity because they are complex to maintain and were useless in an engine failure.

The cockpit of the MiG-21 is a bit of a confusing jumble, and that’s before I realized it was all labeled in Russian. It took me some time to figure out what was what.

To the left, as usual, is the throttle and a number of switches related to landing gear, flaps, and trim. To the right is a bank of switches mainly devoted to lights, communications, and avionics.

Figuring out—and remembering—where the main instruments are was a bit of a challenging task. Most of the gadgets on the upper left are related to weapons controls, while a mach and angle of attack gauge are located on the upper right. On the far left, from top to bottom, are the airspeed indicator in km/h, a barometric altimeter, and a radar altimeter. To their right are an attitude indicator (top) and heading indicator (bottom). To their right is a combined turn coordinator/vertical speed indicator (top), true airspeed indicator, and a clock (bottom).

This version of the MiG-21 is a “bis” model, introduced in 1972, with more advanced avionics. So in addition to the main engine gauges (to the far right), it has a large radar scope at the center-right of the instrument panel.  Looking up, there’s a rearview mirror. There’s also a special console below it for managing nuclear weapons. We’re not fooling around here.

Like the F-104, the MiG-21 was one of the first fighter jets to feature an ejection seat. In early models, the hatch opened forward to shield the pilot from the oncoming rush of air. In later models, like this one, it opens to the side.

For an afternoon mission, I’m at the Russian airbase at Monchegorsk, about 100km south of Murmansk, where Soviet MiG-21s were based in the 1970s to intercept American bombers in the event of a nuclear war. I’ve set my flaps down 25 degrees. The takeoff speed of the MiG-21 is about 175 knots, or 320 km/h on my airspeed indicator, and I have less than 8,000 feet of runway to reach that. Even with full afterburners, I’ve found that it takes about 6,000 feet of runway for the MiG-21 to get off the ground fully loaded, which matches what I’ve been able to find from other sources on the internet.

The ice crystals in the air this winter afternoon are forming double rainbows over downtown Monchegorsk, established by Stalin in the 1930s as a work settlement for mining copper and nickel. During my mission, it has a population of 42,000, declining rapidly.

The emptying of the MiG’s internal fuel tanks alters its center of gravity and makes it unstable. This severely limits its range and time in the air to about 45 minutes. To overcome this, most MiG-21s flew with at least one external tank, like the one I’ve attached to the centerline. Other tanks can be attached to the wings, if needed—but at the expense of weapons.

In addition to normal afterburners, the MiG-21 could inject a second, “emergency” stream of fuel into its exhaust, giving it a performance boost for a maximum of three minutes. This boost gave it a thrust to weight ratio slightly better than 1:1, and a climb rate of 254 meters (833 feet) per second, matching the (much later) F-16. It had a service ceiling of 17,000 meters (almost 56,000 feet) which it could reach in 8 minutes 30 seconds. I’m barely at 11,000 feet here, but that’s because I want to be able to find my way home.

One issue with the nose intake and shock cone is that it leaves very little room for radar. Initially, this wasn’t seen as a problem because Soviet doctrine relied on ground radar stations to guide interceptors to their target. Looks like a false alarm: no American B-52s coming to obliterate the Motherland, at least not today. We better return back to Monchegorsk.

The MiG-21 lands fast, at 365 km/h, or almost 200 knots. To avoid sinking rapidly, it has to approach at closer to 450 km/h. I found landing the MiG-21 quite challenging, and I had to perform multiple go-arounds. With flaps and landing gear down, it’s very easy to get behind the power curve and fall short of the runway. One little problem is that the ejector seat only works safely above 110 meters (360 feet). When you do make the runway, it’s easy to clunk down very hard if you’re not careful. Fortunately, once you are on the ground, there’s a chute to deploy to slow you down quickly.

NATO forces gave the MiG-21 the code name “Fishbed”, a rather unappealing moniker for their premier fighter jet that the Soviets found insulting. Fishbed or not, the Russians saw a promising export market for the MiG-21. The very first customer, surprisingly, was Finland.

As neutrals in the Cold War, the Finns had a “treaty of friendship” with the Soviets that barred them from buying advanced combat aircraft from the West. One way the Finns got around this was by buying French-made Magisters as training jets that could be converted to attack aircraft in a pinch. However, in 1962, Nikita Khrushchev offered Finland the chance to buy a truly top-shelf fighter jet, which the Finns snapped up right away, eventually accumulating a fleet of 54 of them. About 20 years later, the Finns upgraded to the MiG-21bis, like the one I’m flying here. Finland’s air force actually continued flying MiG-21s until 1998, when they were replaced by the American F/A-18.

Only after Finland were the Soviets’ Warsaw Pact allies equipped with the MiG-21. This one, flying over the Elbe River, belongs to East Germany. Instead of air-to-air missiles, it is equipped (and camouflaged) for a ground attack role with a UB-32 rocket pod and a 500 kg (1,100 lbs) bomb under each wing. Had Soviet tanks ever rolled through the Fulda Gap in an all-out assault on NATO, MiG-21s like this one would have helped clear the way. That scenario never came to pass.

That does not mean the MiG-21 never went head-to-head with its U.S. adversaries. It did, in the skies over North Vietnam. Starting in 1966, the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with MiG-21s to defend against the U.S. bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. I’m in one of them taking off from the Gia Lam airbase just north of Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese relied on the Soviet method of using ground-based radar stations to direct the MiG-21s towards incoming U.S. airplanes. In their first encounters, the Vietnamese pilots found themselves outmatched and were quickly shot down. But those who ejected and survived quickly learned to adapt.

Their primary foe was the F-4 Phantom, a more advanced “third-generation” multirole jet flown by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Equipped with sophisticated electronics, the F-4 relied primarily on radar to detect enemy airplanes and missiles to engage them at a distance, rather than engaging in close-in dogfights. Initially, the F-4s didn’t even have any guns, only missiles. The North Vietnamese soon found that they could utilize the MiG-21’s superior speed and agility to launch ambushes on the F-4s before they knew what hit them. Their tactic was dubbed “one pass, then haul ass.”

The MiG-21 had dogfighting weaknesses of its own. Its stubby delta wings gave it poor turning abilities in a sustained close-in fight. But its bursts of speed—along with its capable short-range Atoll heat-seeking missiles and 23mm cannon—gave it an unexpected edge against its more “advanced” opponent. Thirteen North Vietnamese pilots qualified as aces in the MiG-21, including Nguyễn Văn Cốc, who scored nine kills. All told, from 1966 to 1972, the North Vietnamese claimed 165 kills (including 103 F-4 Phantoms) at a cost of 65 Mig-21s (including 60 shot down by F-4s). The North Vietnamese MiG-21s even claim to have shot down at least one high-altitude B-52 bomber, though the U.S. attributes the loss to a SAM (surface-to-air missile).

The lethality of the MiG-21 gave rise to the legend, among American pilots, of the ominously named Colonel Tomb. Tomb (or Toon) allegedly had 13 kills before he was shot down by F-4 pilot and later Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham in May 1972. In fact, Colonel Tomb, like “the ghost of Kyiv,” was a myth. The legend may have been because the North Vietnamese pilots shared MiG-21s, and the kills painted on any one MiG (like the 13 red stars on this one) could be attributed to several different pilots.

In any case, the harsh lessons learned from fighting (and losing to) MiG-21s over North Vietnam led the U.S. Navy to establish its Fighter Weapons School, known as “TOPGUN,” in 1969 to re-learn the dogfighting tactics they had once dismissed as irrelevant in an age of missiles.

The combat success of the MiG-21 made it an enticing perk for countries willing to align more closely with the Soviet Union. Egypt, Syria, and Iraq all acquired fleets of MiG-21s for their air forces in the 1960s. Here I’ve taken off from Inshas Air Base, on the eastern edge of Egypt’s Nile River Delta, and am approaching the Suez Canal to match wits with the Israelis over the Sinai.

In 1967, Egypt’s entire fleet of MiG-21s were caught on the ground by the surprise Israeli attacks that started the Six Day War. Out of 110, 100 were destroyed before they could take off. In the war’s aftermath, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula for 15 years, until the Camp David Accords let to Israel’s withdrawal in 1982. The Suez Canal became the front line and was closed to all shipping for eight years, until 1975. During this period, Egyptian MiG-21s regularly skirmished with Israeli third-generation F-4 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks, in dogfights that often turned fatal.

By all accounts, the MiG-21s—once they got airborne—gave as good as they got, and Israeli losses steadily mounted. Some reports say that in 1970, the Soviet Union sent its own pilots and planes to take part in the action. Though their losses alarmed the Russians, they were able to pressure Israel into a ceasefire.

One of the major selling points of the MiG-21, for countries like Egypt, was its relative simplicity and low maintenance requirements. Ground crews said that turning one around was all but a matter of changing the oil and topping off the fuel, before it could take off again. Effective, long-lasting, and relatively cheap to operate, MiG-21s were sometimes dubbed the AK-47 of airplanes and proliferated accordingly. However, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli was able to upgrade its warplanes to fourth-generation F-15 Eagles and F-16 Falcons, with combined advanced electronics with more agile dogfighting ability. These newer airplanes completely outclassed the MiG-21 in the skies, and took some of the shine off the appeal of Soviet-supplied weaponry, at least against top-shelf U.S. allies.

In other theaters, though, the MiG-21 continued to excel. India bought its first MiG-21s in 1961, and soon entered in a technology agreement with the Soviets to manufacture their own. While they flew in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, India’s MiG-21s really proved their worth during the rematch with Pakistan in 1971, where they gave their supposed direct counterpart, the US-supplied F-104 Starfighters flown by Pakistan, a thrashing. The Indian MiGs claimed to have shot down at least four F-104s, along with two Chinese-built F-6s (a MiG-15 copy), one F-86 Sabre, and a C-130 Hercules. After the first few days, Indian MiG-21s controlled the skies and were able to focus their attention on ground attacks on targets in Pakistan. After the war, Pakistan dropped the F-104 from its fleet, and several countries like Iraq turned to India to train their MiG-21 pilots.

India ended up producing 840 of its home-built MiG-21s, and upgrading them to a version of the MiG-21bis which it dubbed the “Bison.” For years it served as the mainstay of the Indian air force. While the intention has long been to phase them out in favor of more modern aircraft, India still has three squadrons flying MiG-21s.

In 1999, the MiG-21 saw combat high in the Himalayas, when they were used to beat back ground incursions by Pakistan troops along the Line of Control (LOC) near Kargil. Operating in treacherous terrain, the Indian MiG-21s bombed and strafed Pakistani troops who had taken up position on Tiger Hill (in my sights straight ahead), at an elevation of 16,608 feet msl. One MiG-21 was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile, but the Pakistanis were eventually forced to withdraw after several days of tough fighting. More recently, in 2019, Indian MiG-21s even claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16 in a border skirmish—though the story is hotly disputed.

That said, India’s aging MiG-21s are not without their problems. Since 1971, more than 400 of them have gone down in accidents, killing 200 pilots and 50 people on the ground. The chronic problems are blamed on inadequate maintenance and poor quality replacement parts, as well as the airplane’s lack of modern safety features. Still, India continues to fly MiG-21s long after their expected retirement date because of difficulties acquiring more modern aircraft, and the fact that they still, despite everything, get the job done.

Another country that still flies the MiG-21, unsurprisingly, is Cuba, which reportedly retains a fleet of 12. Below me is downtown Havana.

The first MiG-21s were initially deployed to Cuba by the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A year later, rather than bringing them home, these aircraft were transferred to the Cubans. In the 1980s, the Cubans sent several MiG-21s, flown by Cuban pilots, to aid the Marxist government in Angola in its fight against US and South Africa-supported UNITA insurgents. Several of the Cuban-flown MiG-21s were shot down by shoulder-fired missiles, and at least one was downed in dogfights with French-built South African F1 Mirages.

• READ MORE: Flying Back in Time on the First Civilian Passenger Airplane

In all, over 60 countries have flown the MiG-21 at one time or another. Some 18 countries still have it in their inventory. Production continued from 1959 until it was halted in 1985, for 26 years. Until it was recently surpassed by the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon, that was the longest production run of any combat aircraft in history. In addition to the 840 built by India, the Soviets built 10,645 and the Czechs 194. That’s a total of 11,496 airplanes, making the MiG-21 the most-produced combat aircraft since the Korean War, and the most-produced supersonic jet in history.

That’s not counting over 2,400 knock-off variants of the MiG-21 (called the Chengdu J-7) made by China and sold to at least a dozen other countries—and still flown by many of them. The Russians shared partial plans for the MiG-21 with China in 1962, but when relations cooled, the Chinese reverse engineered the airplane and started making it themselves. Production continued until 2013, and the J-7 (dubbed the “Fishcan”) is only now being phased out of active use in China’s air force.

In recent years, the MiG-21 has fought in smaller wars from the Congo to Ethiopia to Syria and Libya, providing both air superiority and ground support. In the 1990s, after the Berlin Wall fell, the MiG-21 came back into play in Europe. When Yugoslavia broke up into civil war, it brought all of its MiG-21s back to bases in Serbia. Those MiG-21s were used in an attack role against Croatian, Slovenia, and Bosnian troops on the ground, who lacked their own aircraft. Nevertheless, several were shot down by AA fire.

In 1992, the Croatians were able to acquire a handful of MiG-21s from pilots who defected (pictured above). Together with 40 MiG-21s there were able to purchase in violation of an international arms embargo, they served as the foundation for that country’s new air force. Croatia is now a NATO member (since 2009), but it still has a dozen MiG-21s. Plagued by accidents, they are scheduled to be replaced next year (2024) by Dassault Rafale F3R jets, purchased second-hand from France.

Romania is another NATO country which inherited a fleet of MiGs from the Cold War days. Originally numbering 110, they were significantly modernized in cooperation with Israel from 1993 to 2002. Despite these improvements, Romania’s MiG-21s have also been plagued by crashes. Only about two dozen are still operational, and they are scheduled to be retired later this year (2023), to be replaced by F-16s and eventually F-35s.

Some have proposed that Romania should hand over its retired MiG-21s to Ukraine, to aid in its fight against Putin’s ongoing invasion. Ukraine doesn’t have any MiG-21s in its air force anymore, but it has a lot of experience flying them, and even hosts a major maintenance depot for them, so it could integrate them quickly. If that does happen, it will add one more chapter—a rather ironic one—to the story of the Russian-made MiG-21, one of the most successful jet fighters in history.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here. 

This story was told utilizing the MiG-21bis add-on to MSFS 2020 from Golden Key Studios, along with liveries produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post The Effective, Long-Lasting MiG-21 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Beechcraft Model 17 “Staggerwing” cuts an unusually sleek profile through aviation history. Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’ll be flying the Model 17, widely regarded as one of the world’s most enviable private airplanes. 

Walter Beech was born in 1891 in Pulaski, Tennessee, and flew in the U.S. Army during World War I. After the war, he joined Swallow Airplane Co. as a test pilot. In 1924, Beech joined fellow airplane designers Lloyd Stearman and Clyde Cessna—both of whom later gave their names to famous aircraft—to form the Travel Air Manufacturing Co. in Wichita, Kansas. The small company hired a 21-year-old office manager and bookkeeper named Olive Ann Mellor. She proved to have an extremely good head for business. Walter and Olive Ann began a low-key romance and were eventually married in 1930.

In 1929, Travel Air was acquired by Curtiss-Wright. Olive Ann urged Walter, frustrated with his new corporate job, to follow his dream and start his own airplane design company. She told him, “If you want something, you can do it.” They rented a factory from Beech’s friend and rival Cessna in Wichita. The first airplane they designed and produced, starting in 1933, was the Model 17 (because the last aircraft produced by Travel Air was Model 16).

I’m here at the Beech Factory Airport (KBEC) on the east side of Wichita, where modern-day Beechcraft are still produced, to check out that airplane, which was intended as a high-class, high-powered private option for wealthy business executives—the Gulfstream of its day.

The most obvious and eye-catching feature of the Model 17 is the fact that its upper wing is set back from its lower wing—the opposite of most biplane designs. This “negative stagger wing” gave rise to it popularly being dubbed the “Staggerwing,” a nickname Beech didn’t particularly like, preferring to call it the “Beechcraft.”

Some major advantages of the negative stagger wing were improved stalling characteristics and reduced interference drag between the two wings. But another was better forward visibility, which in conventional biplanes was often blocked by the top wing.

• READ MORE: Flying Back in Time on the First Civilian Passenger Airplane

Like many aircraft of its day, the Model 17 was constructed of fabric covering a steel tube frame. However, its skin was faired (smoothed to minimize drag) with wooden formers. The high-end manufacturing process was complex and time-consuming.

A variety of radial engines were used, ranging from 350 to 690 hp. This model, the D17S, features a 450-hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior, the same used (in twin configuration) to power the Lockheed L-10 Electra and Grumman Goose.

To further minimize drag and increase speed, the landing gear is fully automated and retractable—something that was still an innovation for new all-metal airliners, much less a private airplane.

The Model 17 also featured flaps—another relatively new innovation at the time—on the lower wing for sufficient lift at slower landing speeds and nearly full-length ailerons on the top wing for effective control. The cabin was spacious with comfortable upholstery trimmed in leather and mohair, suitable for its high-end target market.

There is only one yoke, which can be switched between the left and right seats. The throttle, mixture, and variable pitch prop controls are all located in the center of the panel below the flaps switch. Note that the main instruments in front of the pilot are arrayed in a recognizably modern “six-pack” configuration before this became standard.

Time to rev up the engine and find out how this package handles in the air. Perhaps a little odd looking on the ground, the Staggerwing shows its true streamlined prowess once it takes off and raises its gear. 

The Staggerwing has a cruise speed of 202 mph (175 knots), not that far short of a fighter for its era. I got it up to its maximum speed of 212 mph on a flat straightaway.

The forward visibility is generally excellent, because of the negative stagger wing, but I did find the three structural braces and position of the overhead compass in the cockpit do make it a bit difficult to see the runway clearly on approach.

Nevertheless, I did end up safely on the ground and found it easier (at least in the sim) than many tailwheel aircraft to keep straight and avoid a ground loop on landing.

The first Beechcraft was one sleek machine. But at a price tag of between $14,000 and $17,000 (the equivalent of $320,000 to $390,000 today), aimed at a high-end customer, it was initially a tough sell when it came out at the depths of the Great Depression.

Only 18 were sold in its first year, 1933. But the Staggerwing caught the eye of professional air racers, one of whom won the Texaco Trophy Cup that year. I don’t know if it’s related, but Texaco soon purchased a small company-owned fleet of Beechcraft models for its executives to visit remote oil fields across Texas, like I’m doing here.

The main advantage of the Staggerwing was not only speed and comfort but the ability of its durable, widely spaced landing gear to take off and land at small, unimproved airstrips, as needed. Beechcraft advertisements highlighted its “rugged dependability” in out-of-the-way locations.

In 1936, Olive Ann had the idea to sponsor two women pilots, Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes, to compete in the cross-country Bendix Trophy transcontinental race from New York to Los Angeles. Flying a light blue Staggerwing, they finished first—the first women to claim a race previously won by such flying legends as Jimmy Doolittle and Roscoe Turner. The next year, Jackie Cochran set a new women’s speed record (203.9 mph) and altitude record (over 30,000 feet) and finished third in the Bendix race —all in a Beechcraft Staggerwing.

The speed and dependability that appealed to racers and oil executives also caught the attention of governments as conflict loomed in the late 1930s. Spanish Republicans flew them as bombers in their civil war, and the Chinese used them as air ambulances when the Japanese invaded. Ethiopian emperor Haile Salassie owned his own personal Staggerwing, NC14405, flown by an African-American pilot from Mississippi, Colonel John Robinson. When Salassie’s country was invaded by Benito Mussolini and the Italian military, he used it to fly to and from the combat zone.

Finland bought two Staggerwings (BC-1 and BC-2) to serve as military transports. I’m flying one of them here over Helsinki. I’d be curious to know if Finnish leader General Carl Mannerheim ever used them during the 1939-1940 Winter War with the Soviet Union. (The swastika here, of course, is Finnish, not Nazi.) The only information I was able to find were a couple of photos of it.

In October 1941, Beechcraft shipped this special camouflaged Staggerwing to Prince Bernhard of Lippe, who was in exile in London after fleeing the German invasion of the Netherlands.

Born a German, Prince Bernhard was married to Queen Wilhelmina’s only child, Princess Juliana. Before the war, he was a member of the Nazi Party and the Reifer (Mounted) SS. His brother was a German army officer. But when the Germans invaded the Netherlands, he organized the palace guards to resist and fled with the royal family to England, where he spoke out against Adolf Hitler.

Prince Bernhard applied to serve in British intelligence, but he was distrusted, for obvious reasons. At King George VI’s personal recommendation, and after being screened by Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond) for U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he was assigned to help on the Allied War Planning Councils. At his own initiative, he learned to fly a Spitfire and was given the honorary rank of Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF). He flew numerous missions as an observer, attacking V-1 launch pads in occupied Europe in a B-24 bomber, hunting submarines over the Atlantic in a B-25, and performing battlefield reconnaissance in a L-5 Grasshopper (a modified Piper Cub).

He used his personal Staggerwing to assist his work assisting refugees and organizing the Dutch underground resistance. I’m flying over Antwerp, Belgium, in the Prince’s Staggerwing, following its liberation in September 1944.

That winter, the Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge, a desperate counteroffensive in eastern Belgium. As a follow-up, in January, the Luftwaffe launched a massive last-ditch air campaign against neighboring Allied airfields. Unfortunately, Prince Bernhard’s Beechcraft was one of the airplanes destroyed on the ground during those raids, dubbed the Battle of Bodenplatte.

Prince Bernhard became Prince Consort of the Netherlands in 1948 when his wife became queen. He lived until 2004, helping to found the World Wildlife Fund and remaining an active pilot for the rest of his life.

By the time World War II broke out, Beechcraft had sold at least 424 Staggerwings. In 1942, the U.S. Army recognized the need for an executive-type courier airplane and placed an order, along with the Navy. The slightly modified military version of the Staggerwing became known as the Beech UC-43 Traveler. This one that I’m flying here out of an old RAF airfield in rural England belonged to the “Mighty Eighth” Air Force, assigned the task of bombing Germany into submission.

Over 400 Staggerwings were built for the military, and the government leased or acquired at least 100 more from private owners for wartime use. They played an essential if largely unsung role in coordinating the command of the largest air force ever assembled. If you doubt that, let me highlight the story of this one particular airplane, which I’m flying over London.

Tommy Hitchcock was the scion of a wealthy American family, a star polo player, and a friend of author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some believe he was the model for Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. During WWI, he had served as a dashing fighter pilot in the famous Lafayette Escadrille. Now, with the start of a new war, he was desperate to fly in combat again, but he was considered too old. The only position he was able to secure, through his extensive contacts, was that of assistant air attache at the U.S. embassy in London. Arriving in summer 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Hitchcock regularly flew the embassy’s Beechcraft Staggerwing to airfields across Britain, coordinating with the RAF.

Through 1943, the U.S. Eighth Air Force was just forming in Britain, and on its early raids its unescorted bombers were suffering horrific losses at the hands of the Luftwaffe. On his puddle-jumping visits across Britain, Hitchcock discovered the British had modified the mediocre-performing P-51 Mustang with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, giving it speed and performance that outmatched the Germans’ Focke-Wulf 190 at any altitude—with a range long enough to escort bombers all the way to Berlin. There was stiff resistance in the U.S. Army Air Force to ordering any fighter modified with a British engine. But Hitchcock relentlessly lobbied his longtime friend, U.S. Army Air Corps Gen. Hap Arnold, to change his mind. Eventually, he succeeded, and the P-51 Mustang played a key role helping to turn the tide of the air war. The Beechcraft Staggerwing, in its unsung way, had made it possible.

This airplane, by the way, is still on display at the Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California.

Walter Beech fell ill in 1940, and Olive Ann ran the company through WWII and beyond, becoming one of the most powerful and influential leaders in aviation. But that’s a story for another time.

Only a handful of Staggerwings were produced after the war. The company soon shifted its focus to the all-metal monoplane V-tail Bonanza as its successor, at about a third of the price.

The Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing is still considered by many aficionados as one of the most beautiful and impressive airplanes of all time. About 150 are still registered, and an estimated 50 are actively flying. In 2003, Plane & Pilot magazine ranked it among its top 10 favorite airplanes of all time. A poll of 3,000 members of the Airplane Pilot and Owners Association (AOPA) named it the Most Beautiful Airplane. In 2012, Aviation History ranked it No. 6 in its top 12 list of the World’s Most Beautiful Airplanes.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing the Beechcraft Model 17 add-on to MSFS 2020 from Carenado, along with liveries produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post The Rugged, Sleek Legacy of the Beechcraft ‘Staggerwing’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.