Can take off ok and fly at altitude reasonably well - but need to practice landings
Can anyone suggest 2 cities in Europe or UK that I can take off from and arrive at - or possibly elsewhere in the world
As i need to play the game of taking off and landing at my destination airport in one sitting - due to the missing toolbar fault - i dont want to be flying for 6 hours to my destination airport - just say 1 hour or upto 1 hour 30 mins max flight time
I need big towns and cities with easy runways to get my landing practice
If I do Bristol to Bournemouth - whats the safest maximum altitude I should fly at ?
The big problem I am finding is when I am cruising and then start the descent process to land - when I trim down to reduce elevation, the speed goes up - I guess the only way round this is to trim down and also reduce engine power to get the speed down hopefully. If I reduce engine power too much to get the speed down while descending - it could well result in an engine stall - so I need to be careful about this
How to reduce altitude gradually and safely while trimming down without speed going up is the main thing here to try and get right
There’s UUMO - Ostafievo airport just south of Moscow Russia - where I do most of my flying. You can also use that as a starting point for sightseeing over Moscow, just fly due north.
Once I finish figuring out which direction is “up” when flying, (!), maybe we can “buddy fly” around Moscow? And no, I don’t know how to do that either.
Even with multiplayer turned on, there’s not much happening there - though I normally keep multiplayer off.
One thing X-Plane has, (I don’t know if MSFS also does this, I have not found it yet), is that when specifying an airport/runway, one of the “starting positions” available is either positioned on final at 10 or 3 km, already lined up and ready to begin the let-down and landing. This is an excellent way to practice landings. And yes, my landings still stink too. . . .
The easiest way to practice landing without all that pesky flight time in between is to do touch and go. Stay in the pattern. Take off, fly the pattern, land, take off, etc. You can do this easily at most airfields. But of course, it’s less distracting at quieter airports.
I hope Bournemouth airport has a nice long runway for me to land Steve
I need all the help I can get - to make things as easy as possible for me when landing
Ideally Birmingham to London Heathrow would be great as they both have big long runways - but the problem here is flight time is a bit long
2 cities fairly close with runways as big as London Heathrow and Birmingham would be ideal with flight time not too long - but having said that I will give Bristol to Bournemouth a go !
Pick an airport - it really doesn’t matter which one.
If you want a lot of runway, pick something huge like Ramstein AFB in Germany, Heathrow in the UK, or JFK in the US - with AI traffic and ATC turned off in single player mode if you don’t want the distractions.
UUMO is near where I live when in Moscow with the grandchildren - and they like being able to fly/watch me fly over places they recognize. Unfortunately, the runway there isn’t too long as it’s used primarily for business jets, helicopters, and such like. I’ve gotten outta there with a DC-6, but you gotta use a bunch of flaps, or get the wheels up in a hurry, if you don’t want to clip the trees off the end of the runway!
Choose it as the “departure” airport. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time on the ground, spawn on whatever runway you want.
At UUMO, I usually use rwy 7, (though it defaults to rwy 25 which is not going the way I want), with engines running and go from there.
Most of the time I don’t bother picking a “destination” airport as I am just puttering around and I land wherever I want whenever I get tired of flying.
what some of these fine folks are saying is that if you want to practice your landing you don’t exactly have to do a full flight. You can pick literally any airport on the map and start 5 miles out on final. There is also no “good airport” to practice landing since landing is fundamentally the same be it a small local airport with a grass field or a major international hub with 6 full length runways. It only starts to matter when you do flights into challenging airports like Paro or Ronald Reagan (DCA) that typically requires some level of skill to land at.
You can always fly around in New York City. There are like 4 airports within 10-20 miles of each other, Teterboro, Newark, JFK and LaGuardia.
Also my main tip to learn landing (which I’m sure many will poo-poo and not be interested in hearing): don’t do it with an airliner. Learn to land using a small GA plane. Then move your way up. There’s a reason new pilots are trained in small Cessnas, Diamond, etc and not an Airbus.
But I’m sure that’s not advice that will go over very well.
What I want to practice is going from cruising altitude - say 3000 feet or so - and from here all the steps on descent to land - gradually losing speed and altitude, and applying each stage of flaps to land
So how many miles apart does the take off runway and arrival airport need to be for me to do this - that is the minimum distance apart ?
So to confirm what I want to do is
1 Take off
2 Climb to 2000 or 3000 feet
3 Keep at this altitude for a short period - around 10 minutes or so
4 Gradually start descent process - lowering speed, reducing altitude and increasing flaps
5 Straight final approach to destination runway
6 Touchdown and safe landing
Will take off and land between the different New York airports do this for me ?
wdym? Airbuses are easy, just push a button and relax for the next two hours. Heck it lands itself you just gotta it in the air. It’s so easy a caveman could do it
But no, seriously i agree with you. When people say “I can fly an airplane” my first thought is immediately a Cessna, Diamond, Mooney etc. Gotta walk before you can run, amirite?
Exactly. Airbus is actually “easy” because of all the automation. But in reality, you’re not learning to fly. You’re learning to be a system operator.
It shouldn’t matter. The bottom line is you’re trying to practice your landings right? Why bother setting a destination other than your departure airport? There’s no shame in landing at the same airport you took off from if you’re just trying to practice the basics.
You’re overcomplicating the whole process my dude. Stay at one airport, if you try and go from one airport to the next you’re just gonna confuse yourself. StevePer outlined it nicely in his reply earlier in the thread
Pick your local airport. The one right down the road from you. yes that one.
Take off
Turn Left, Climb to 3000 AGL
Fly straight for 15 miles
Turn left, line up with the runway
Land, but dont go below 30kts, set flaps to T/O config
Gun the throttle and take off. Congrats you’ve just done a touch and go
!), maybe we can “buddy fly” around Moscow? And no, I don’t know how to do that either.