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I've been playing with the FlightGear flight simulator for a bit. Actually having a joystick makes it pretty playable (and it Just Worked out of the box), so I've been experimenting with trying to get around in a controlled fashion, looking at charts online and such.
When the charts are informative, getting around is kind of easy. I tried a flight from Logan to Fitchburg yesterday. Step 1 was getting to a point that is 21 degrees from the Fitchburg airport beacon and 85 degrees from the Gardner beacon. So set those frequences and directions on the instruments, then fly around until I find one vector or the other, then go to the intersection. If I'm reading the approach plate correctly, I fly away from the airport for a bit, make a couple of turns, then come back towards the airport at 201 degrees, heading through that same point again, and land.
This is all fine and straightforward, except that when I get there, the airport isn't there. It's off to my left, and the runway is at an angle for where it should be. Also, I find out that I'm coming in too high and can't land anyways. And then I find out that other things running on watertown want memory and CPU cycles, and suddenly I'm flying upside down at 3,000 feet and my instruments aren't quite working right. And then I decide to give up.
I suspect I'm missing something straightforward, like not accounting for magnetic vs. true direction. I also need to figure out the not-so-straightforward case where the approach plate doesn't show any beacons, so I can figure out where the airport is (airnav.com gives beacons around airports) and then apply trigonometry. Or, Flightgear seems to have some sort of GPS support, so I could just feed in the coordinates of the waypoints...
When the charts are informative, getting around is kind of easy. I tried a flight from Logan to Fitchburg yesterday. Step 1 was getting to a point that is 21 degrees from the Fitchburg airport beacon and 85 degrees from the Gardner beacon. So set those frequences and directions on the instruments, then fly around until I find one vector or the other, then go to the intersection. If I'm reading the approach plate correctly, I fly away from the airport for a bit, make a couple of turns, then come back towards the airport at 201 degrees, heading through that same point again, and land.
This is all fine and straightforward, except that when I get there, the airport isn't there. It's off to my left, and the runway is at an angle for where it should be. Also, I find out that I'm coming in too high and can't land anyways. And then I find out that other things running on watertown want memory and CPU cycles, and suddenly I'm flying upside down at 3,000 feet and my instruments aren't quite working right. And then I decide to give up.
I suspect I'm missing something straightforward, like not accounting for magnetic vs. true direction. I also need to figure out the not-so-straightforward case where the approach plate doesn't show any beacons, so I can figure out where the airport is (airnav.com gives beacons around airports) and then apply trigonometry. Or, Flightgear seems to have some sort of GPS support, so I could just feed in the coordinates of the waypoints...
