[OFFICIAL] Twitch Flying Lessons: C152

Hi Foder, Jayne and MSFS Thanks for bringing this series back. Very excited about tomorrow’s session.

I have a few questions I meant to ask during the last session, Hoping you can briefly cover these.

  1. Flaps and their function. what should be the extension/retraction degrees while we are a. flying and b. approaching landing. You covered takeoff (o degrees) and extending the flaps fully on landing and this has helped me greatly with better landings. Anything else we should keep in mind.

  2. Trimming. As you mention we are always trimming. a. when is it better to trim rather than use flaps and vice versa.
    b. Do we ever use left/right trim? does the real c152/c172 have that functionality. My Honeycomb alpha yoke has the left/right trim switches and wanted to know if it applies in real planes.

  3. Taxing and take off. Is it normal for a real C152 and 172 to sway/turn towards one side to another while on ground and speeding during takeoff? I feel I really need to use my rudder pedals extensively on ground while trying to take off otherwise the plane runs off the runway. Is that a normal function in a real plane?

  4. Landing approach (altitude, degrees, maps) Can you please revisit/ touch upon the correct altitude range to the airport when we should engage final approach. What is too high and too low
    b. when flying to a new airport should we rely on skyvector maps for runway alingment, or is it common to flyby the runway before making the final approach. I understand we will be speaking with ground control on which runway we are cleared to land or not, but would we do a visual pass before making the final landing

Thanks again.
See you tomorrow.!

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Hello Fahanzi and thanks for your questions on flying. Others are probably thinking the same thing and will be interested in this thread.

  1. Flaps will be covered on Wednesday’s Lesson 3. The summary is we use them when landing to slow the plane further (below 85 knots before extending them) and to give better visibility. Up to 20 degress (two notches) is normal landing, as 40 degrees is reserved for soft/short fields where you need a steep approach. Once you level out, 40 degrees adds a lot of drag and it’s hard to go around without much effort.
  2. Trimming. After every attitude change, you trim. When climbing, Attitude, Power, trim and then hands free really. When descending or landing, Power, Attitude, Trim. and believe it or not, hands free landing until the flair, with small corrections for runway alignment and power. The main purpose of trimming is relieve pressure on the yoke. You can’t consistently hold the yoke in a pull or push position for long periods of time. Trimming reduces physical fatique and makes consistent flying attitudes.
  3. During real flying, minor changes on the ground. In the simulator, depends on the sensitivity and settings of your rudder pedals. You touch them and off you go, then overcorrect the other direction. Reduce the sensitivity of them and you won’t have that problem. In tail-draggers, then intentionally sway back and forth because their nose is high and they can’t see ahead.
  4. We will cover final approach Wednesday again. On downwind, 1000 feet above the ground. When you are 45 degrees from the runway threshold, turn to base, reduce power and when in the flap range, add 10 degrees of flap. As you approach 500 feet above the ground and you see the runway, turn to final and drop another flap notch to 20 degrees to slow you even more as you use your yoke to set your approach speed (say 65 knots) and then only use power (throttle) to change if you will overshoot or undershoot the runway numbers. So summary is 1000 feet up at 1mile, 500 feet up at 1/2 mile. If you do your circuit right, those numbers just work. We will be focusing on circuit work and landings in upcoming sessions. This Wednesday, Jayne will follow along for the landing, but we will focus more on it in Lesson 4 and 5.
    Yours in Flying,
    -Howard (Forder) Jayne’s instructor in the series
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Here is the video for Lesson 3! Please note I didn’t include the checklist as we had to deal with some technical issues so I jumped straight into the taxi and take-off.

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Great to see, how we progress further step by step, lesson by lesson.

Please continue the lessons with the 152 in each and every needed detail up to radio-navigation and what ever else we need to learn to fly, before switching to any other aircraft. The 152 is such a nice plane, it really would be great to fully learn and understand all about it, before entering a bit more complex planes later on.

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Thank you! Really appreciate both of you taking from your valuable time to do this.
It is very informative AND fun to boot! I don’t know how many others are following you in either the chat or on the PDFs, but I suspect it would grow significantly with more publicity. I found you quite by accident.

Just a quick observation regarding the ground scenery in your lesson:

I noticed (with relief) that your simulator also has a “great pyramid” on the northern horizon!
Curious, I flew right up to about 5 miles south of it yesterday, only to have it suddenly morph into a low flat building of some kind. My disappointment was hard to bear! LOL

Thanks again!

That was a really enjoyable, informative stream.

Just watched the 3rd lesson. Informative and fun to look at. I think alot people that would want to follow the lessons just don’t know about it. Seeing the quality of the lessons I think it would be nice to mention the lessons in the news section in the flightsimulator.

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Hi Tallest, thanks for your warm comments. It is appreciated. As far as that scenery goes, it will disappear in the next update. If they stayed there, we could use them as VFR landmarks and count on them. LOL
-Howard (Forder)

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LOL, indeed! ROFL!

I have noticed another forum thread where some folks have become rather emotional and impatient about the scenery glitches.

Although no computer/software that I know of is glitch-free, the conscientious efforts displayed by the developers to date convinces me that this simulator is only going to get better.

So, I too prefer to take your philosophical approach. When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade or in this case - landmarks.

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There is a mod for the Home Base Airport Paine Field KPAE. Maybe interesting.

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@Jummivana and @HowardElvis have you tried the flight simulator in VR? It feels more real. Only issue I am having is with trimming the plane. I am using the mouse, so I look down so that I can position my mouse but when I look up to look outside the window perspective moves and the mouse is not in the same position so I can not trim it.

I know I can assign controls to it but all my buttons on my joystick already have been assigned.

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Haven’t been able to check out VR yet, but I look forward to it eventually!!

FYI - Lesson 4 PDF is up. :slight_smile: See you all tomorrow!

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Here is the VOD for Lesson 4:

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Switched to nightshift, but caught this on VOD. Excellent lesson again; great landing Jayne!

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Agree with EdwardTX on both counts.

I shared your stress, Jayne, and I was just PASSIVELY watching your video clip.

Frankly, I find the flying part to be a piece of cake compared to the communications with tower and ground. Not certain that I’d EVER be able to master that!

Hang in there, though. From my perspective, at least, you are doing great!

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Hey @Jummivana and @HowardElvis friendly ping here. Could you upload the first lesson PDF when you have a chance? Thanks a lot and keep up the good work :small_airplane:

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Whoever chose to jump to the channel of “CptJentle” after lesson 4, that was a good decision!

A real world CFI, very cool and smart guy, fun to talk to and educating aswell.
As Howard suggests in his “Learn to fly” videos, to always listen to CFIs, that was an great suggestion.

So the evening was rounded up by some pilot songs, real world pilot´s anecdotes, sightseeing and some interesting aviation details like pilot triggered airport lights and ATC details.

Great evening, looking for lesson 5.

I was told, Jayne won´t fly a Space Shuttle then, as this would be just a glider to handle, but she´s maybe gonna butter the “Airforce One” on an Alaska airstrip, blindfolded, singing Irish Shanties.
But that needs to be kept secret.
So let´s see…
:wink:

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Completely missed this whole series so far…will be there for the next one…looks great

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Thaks for your patience Guardio. I have just sent the PDF for the first lesson to Jayne for posting. I presume she posts it in Discord as this forum doesn’t allow PDFs. I didn’t make one at the time as we hadn’t settled on the protocol for this series. Thanks for the gentle reminder.
-Howard

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