Now 50% off! Introduction Aerobatics Takeoffs and Landings

INTRODUCTION
This guide will help first-time pilots learn how to fly. Veterans will also find it helpful when getting to know a type of airplane they’ve never flown before. The outlined flying program makes frequent references to the Flight School section of the game handbooks. Whenever you feel stumped by something and it’s not in the manual or in this book, don’t guess. Hit the F10 key to pause the game and open the Options menu, which lets you access the game’s Online Help.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to be gentle with your joystick when you’re flying! A panicked jerk on the joystick always makes a bad situation even worse. Always move it smoothly and decisively, even when under extreme stress. When you’re flying a plane, indecision is almost as bad as heavy-handedness—when you’re flying a plane in combat, it’s suicidal.

First Steps

If you haven’t done so already, set the Realism options before you fly. As discussed in Chapter One, you should preferably set the flight model to Hard. If you are feeling very unsure, make your plane Invincible by checking the appropriate box. Just remember, it’s not really a good move because it impedes the learning process. Crashes are memorable by nature, which reduces the likelihood of repeating mistakes. Anyway, it’s a game, right?

Tip - The sequence in the Flight School section of the game manual suggests taking off an airfield runway following an examination of instruments. However, you’ll find things easier if you start with your plane already in the air. All done? Then click the Fly button.

After setting the Realism options, define what your first flight will look like. Choose Quick Combat from the game options on the left side of the main game screen. This will open another menu featuring yet more options.

• Flight Type: Choose Free Flight.
• Aircraft: Select the American flag and then the P-47D-25 from the list of American aircraft that appears. This is the best choice for your first flight and the reasons for this are enumerated later on in this chapter. Set the number of wingmen to zero (you don’t want distractions) and make sure the Ordnance in the pull-down menu is set to Clean.
• Location: It doesn’t really matter which airfield you choose if you have a reasonably fast system. If you don’t, avoid big cities like the default Paris; it’s a busy scene for slow machines. Use pull-down menus on the Location panel to set the following: starting position (5,000 feet or 3,000 meters is good—safe, yet close enough to the ground to let you feel you’re flying), time of day (morning or afternoon —you want good light), weather (clear, to minimize distractions), and season (whichever you like).
• Pilot: Whichever pilot nationality you choose, you’ll be presented with three ready-made pilots as well as the option of creating a new pilot. The three ready-made characters follow a pattern: the first pilot has excellent Vision; the second, excellent G-tolerance; the third has balanced attributes. It’s best if you either choose the second of the three pilots, or create a new one allocating all the skill points to G-tolerance. You’re not fighting anyone yet, but hopefully you’ll be pulling plenty of tight turns. You don’t need blackouts while learning your way around.

Your First Flight

You’ll find yourself in the cockpit of your P-47D, flying straight ahead. Leave things as they are and spend the first few moments checking out the various views from inside the cockpit here, as well as an outside viewpoint. As eager to fly as you are, you might want to pause the game, toggle the cockpit on (you’ll begin with the Virtual Cockpit view) and examine the instrument panel while referring to the relevant Flight School opening sections. Note also that individual gauges displayed in the Virtual Cockpit view may be dragged to any location on your monitor screen.

Once you feel at home in the cockpit, turn your attention to the plane. Flight School recommends you start by making the plane fly straight and level (which automatically means maintaining a constant altitude and constant heading) by making necessary corrections with your joystick. You’ll quickly find that running a plane straight and level may require endless small corrections.

But there is a way to make a plane run straight and level at any speed you choose without making any corrections: by adjusting control trim. This can be done very quickly by toggling on Autotrim. However, Autotrim is not 100% reliable in combat situations, where your speed and altitude can change really quickly. You should learn how to trim the controls of your plane manually, if only because a plane can be controlled with adjustments to trim when the main control cables are damaged in combat.

The Importance of Proper Trim

The practical value of good control trim is not limited to allowing you hands-off level flight. An aircraft with trimmed controls will handle better, and there’s no need to explain how useful that is in combat. Aircraft controls are trimmed to make the plane fly straight and level at a certain speed. Expert pilots re-trim the controls as circumstances dictate: for cruising, for landing, for fighting. A good compromise is to trim the controls while flying at 70% power. This trim will ensure good handling of your plane while maneuvering in combat without impairing landings.

It’s not possible to achieve perfect trim, but it’s possible to achieve near-perfect trim, and that’s the trim you want. Quite often, all that’s wrong is that your airplane keeps climbing or descending while flying reasonably straight and the only control that needs trimming is the elevator. However, if you also need to trim the ailerons and the rudder, you should leave the elevator trim last. It’s affected by adjustments to the ailerons and the rudder. The correct sequence for trim adjustments is ailerons first, then rudder, and finally the elevator. Make sure your joystick’s calibrated before adjusting trim!

You should begin every flight with an evaluation of your aircraft’s control trim and make adjustments as necessary. Good trim may make the difference between spinning out and crashing while maneuvering your plane. And learning to maneuver your plane is exactly what you’ll be doing next.

Tip - If your plane keeps dropping a wing, trim the ailerons, and if the nose swings to the side, trim the rudder. Center the joystick after these adjustments then trim the elevator as required.

Throwing Your Weight Around

The manual’s Flight School recommends that you try turning next—before you do, explore how individual controls affect your plane. Waggle the wings and apply alternating rudder (flip it back and forth) in order to develop a feel for the amount of control input needed. You’ll quickly see that the P-47D’s weight and size call for quite a bit of control input. Yet it’s a very docile and friendly plane; you can shake it from side to side as much as you like, but upon centering the controls, it immediately resumes normal flight. There’s also an important safety feature: a yellow message at the top right corner of the screen will warn you of an impending stall.

Once you have the feel of things, proceed exactly as described in Flight School to learn turns: bank the plane with the ailerons, adding a little rudder and pulling back on the stick to turn around in an arc. It’s important that you use these controls in the right sequence as well as in concert. Using rudder simultaneously with the ailerons will enable you to bank the plane faster, while applying up-elevator early will let you execute a climbing turn?a prosaic but very useful combat maneuver that you’ll perform again and again, particularly while attacking surface targets. Make sure you practice turns with various throttle settings! Once you’ve tried constant settings from 50% to 100%, try manipulating the throttle to make a turn tighter:

• Get your plane up to a decent speed at full throttle; around 250 mph is fine.
• Throttle back to 50% power and begin the turn.
• Halfway through, gradually open up the throttle to hit 100% as you come out of the turn.

More Turns

You should make sure you execute the paint-the-horizon turn described in Flight School, and preferably more than once. You’ll need delicate input from all three controls in order to keep the nose of your plane in line with the horizon. You’ll find that applying opposite rudder is extremely helpful to raise the nose when banked in a turn, but that tight turns with opposite rudder quickly produce a stall warning! Loosening up on the joystick and/or centering the rudder will instantly set things right.

Executing a perfectly horizontal turn is very valuable in learning how to control your aircraft. However, it is something that should never be done in combat as it makes you a very easy target. One of the biggest advantages of an airplane is its ability to go up and down, and you should begin exploring that ability the moment you complete a few horizontal turns. You already know how to execute a climbing turn by beginning to apply the elevator while the plane’s banked over just slightly. Practice that a few times, making sure that you come out of the turn going along at a good clip—keep it above 170 mph. You always want to come out of a turn at a respectable speed when flying in combat; otherwise you’ll be inviting people to do you harm.

Following a few climbing turns, reduce throttle to 50% and execute several shallow diving turns. The vast majority of your attacks will involve a diving turn, so don’t treat this part of your training lightly! You’ll find it’s difficult to keep diving turns as tight as originally intended because of the fast acceleration of your plane in a dive. Also, the controls will get heavier at higher speed, and the plane will take increasingly long in responding to control input. Cut the throttle more, to idle if necessary, when making steep diving turns! Keep an eye on the speedometer and the altimeter; try not to exceed 400 mph and plan to end the turn at least a couple of thousand feet above the ground. When you flatten out, open up the throttle and use the speed to regain lost altitude with a climbing turn. Then repeat.