How NOT to transition to new aircraft!

Emphatically this is not how I would have done it in real life but…

I love flying GA aircraft low and slow in VFR. It works beautifully for me and I get huge enjoyment out of it. I normally fly the community mod G36 Bonanza and I have dabbled in full IFR. So at this stage I am very comfortable with the Bonanza and also with IF using the G1000.

But this sim is so much more, so I HAD to try other things as well. So over the past couple of days I hopped into both the A320 and the CJ4 with essentially zero pre-study of the aircraft or systems. Sort of like arriving at your local airport and seeing an A320 and thinking “Hey, this is neat, let’s see if I can fly it across the country!”.

And it actually worked, surprisingly enough!

First the A320: I decided to fly from Johannesburg (FAOR) to Cape Town (FACT) as I have been seated in A320’s numerous times on that flight in real life and I have also done that leg in real life with a C210 and a BE33 several times. So I did a rudimentary high level IFR flight plan in the Word Map, got in the aircraft and on the fly sort of figured out how to activate the AP and generally manage the flight. And everything went OK… sort of! Not being familiar with the speeds and details of the AP, for instance in retrospect I definitely climbed more slowly to the cruise altitude of FL380 than I should have. And I descended way earlier than I should have. And I messed up the ILS approach at FACT so I did an overshoot, hand flew a circuit and landed it rather nicely by hand, even if I do say so myself!

Not perfect or even particularly good but hey, I did it!

And, emboldened by my “success”, I decided to try the CJ4. And this time without doing a flight plan or even having a plan in my head as to what I was going to do… Really textbook flying stuff… NOT!

Seeing as I was in Cape Town after landing the A320, I thought it made sense to take off from there again. So once airborne I just set the AP on FLC to FL250 in heading mode and headed off into the wild blue yonder. I finally decided that Port Elizabeth (FAPE) would be a nice hop over pretty countryside in the CJ4. And using the AP in heading mode kind of worked while checking the flight in Little NavMap, that wasn’t really cool. So I decided to try and figure out how to use “Direct to”. And with some fiddling, lo and behold, I actually got that set up!

I always intended to do a hand landing at FAPE so I initiated the descent early to give myself adequate time to get settled for the circuit and landing. I was hoping for a straight in approach to Rwy 08 but ATC had other ideas and gave me left circuit to 26. In the end I hand flew that and again had a lovely smooth landing (surprisingly!).

Some images from my experimentation:

Climbing to cruise level out of FAOR

En route

Approaching Cape Town

Taxiing to the gate

At cruise with the CJ4

Descending to FAPE

Parked: done and dusted!

An interesting exercise for me. And what did I learn?

  1. High level longish distance flights in jet aircraft are fine but not visually appealing or particularly engaging for me
  2. While it is possible to “kludge” things to get where you want to go if you are reasonably tech savvy and have sufficient exposure to at least marginally similar systems and you are comfortable hand flying aircraft, this is obviously not the way to go. Duh!
  3. While properly learning the advanced systems of the A320 does hold some interest as a challenge, I don’t really think it is something I want to invest the time and effort in at the moment.
  4. Flying longer distances in exotic locales with the CJ 4 PROPERLY :laughing: does somewhat appeal to me. I have decided I will install the WT modded aircraft and learn how to do a full IFR flight appropriately.

Biggest takeaway for me? I just love the variety and breadth of experience the sim offers. even for someone like me that has strong preferences of what I normally want to do.

Alwyn

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If you fly the CJ4 (regularly) and don’t use this mod, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

4 Likes

Interesting perspective from Slabsfly. I agree also that flying VFR or flying to/ from VOR/DME is for me more interesting then at 35000 ft where in my experience apart from the occasional ATC, I seem to be sitting watching a video besically.
I also find that all the instruments (VOR etc) work very well once you work out your flightplan. I never load it in the Simulator. I create a flightplan beacon to beacon in Little NavMap and print out the top (summary) page.
This gives me the freqiencies I need to fly, the Saitek instrument panels tell me distance etc and using the excellent TouchPortal I can do the rest.
I actually hardly touch the keyboard. Not needed.
It all works fine. The Sim invariably correctly intercepts localiser and glide path and I am busy all the time doing things to make the flight.
But I think that is the strength of this Sim. You can fly like this, almost totally manual or you can jump into a jet or fighter.
I feel sorry for Asobo sometimes because they have to satisfy all these different likes and dislikes. But general opinion in the World seems to be that they manage it.
It has been a great year for Simming.

4 Likes

From what I have seen that certainly seems to be the case. I was especially impressed by the manual on their website.

A project for the new year! :grinning:

1 Like

The Working Title CJ4 Mod not only improves the ProLine 21 FMS but also overlays a more realistic FDE, so the handling and performance of the jet is improved.

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