Supplemental: Pre-Solo Chair Flying

Mario told me to "chair fly" this week, which means thinking through the procedures, mentally re-flying a lesson like the last one, thinking through the checklists, radio calls, taxi, run-up, takeoff, pattern, and landing. I've been studying for the written too -- I filled in most from memory then looked up the FAR's for each answer (not multiple choice!).

I have tried to chair fly with the help of X-plane and Fly! but the behavior is so different from the C152 that I don't think this is helpful for the landing phase. Chair flying with no sim is better! Last night I discovered that Flight Unlimited 3 does actually support separate USB yoke and pedals with suitable edits to the flt3.cfg file, and I got this to work with a lot of finagling (USB situation is messed up -- have to re-plug both devices after every reboot, and their ID's can change, changing what FU3 defines to be device 1 vs. device 2). Although FU3 includes only the Seattle area, it seems to behave and look better than either Fly! or X-plane. So it may be worth spending some time with it -- though Fly! is the obvious thing to use for navigation practice and cross-country preparation, since I do have the Boston area scenery in there. The elevation still doesn't look right, but the Wachusett, major roads, and area airports are in the right places.