40 Great Flight Simulator Adventures
by Charles Gulick
Central
Issue
| North Position: 17027 | Throttle: 19455 (all except IBM) |
| East Position: 20942 | Rudder: 32767 |
| Altitude: 1000 | Ailerons: 32767 |
| Pitch: 359 | Flaps: 0 |
| Bank: 0 | Elevators: 32767 (IBM only) |
| Heading: 76 | Elevators: 36863 (all except IBM) |
| Airspeed: 112 (IBM only) | Time: 23:11 |
| Airspeed: 120 (all except IBM) | Season: 3-Summer |
| Throttle: 21503 (IBM only) | Wind: 5 Kts, 70 |
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You're over Jersey City, New
Jersey, pointed across Upper Bay of the
Hudson River and toward the Statue of Liberty as well as the lower tip
of Manhattan. The city is a festival of light in the distance, as you'd
expect. Continue on course, adjusting pitch or power if necessary to maintain your thousand feet of altitude. Beyond the statue are the familiar World Trade Center towers. |
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After the disk access, try to
aim your aircraft so the statue will pass
directly under you (you'll have to be pretty quick), and take a
momentary down view. Next, head the plane so you'll pass just to the right of the Trade Center towers (there'll be another disk access as you fly). |
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Take a left-front view followed
by a left-side view to get a dramatic close-up of the buildings as they
go by. |
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Now turn left and set up a
course to the left of the Empire State
Building. Central Park, 26 blocks north of that landmark, will look
like a huge green or orange runway ahead of you. And who could resist such a beautiful grass strip? Plus the fact that-compliments of the simulator-there are no gulleys, lakes, trees, roads, or other natural paraphernalia of the real Central Park to contend with on this flight. So I don't have to tell you what to do, do I? (Elevation is 20 feet.) |
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But be sure to enjoy some
close-ups of the grand old Empire State Building on the way. |
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After you've looked around, tune
your NAV to Carmel VOR, 116.6, and
center the OBI needle with a TO indication. Then take off, climb to
2000, and fly the needle. Be sure to look behind you as you climb out.
Pretty. You're headed for a real (genuine, serious) landing at Westchester County Airport, about 12 miles this side of the OMNI station you've tuned. By the time you have your altitude, things look pretty dark ahead, don't they? Even those highway lights on the right of your windshield begin to slip away. And around 26 miles out, they're gone. Dark, isn't it? Kind of time when you look somewhere other than straight ahead just to see some light. But, then, aha! Some neat blue lights ahead. Civilization. |
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Radar doesn't provide any clue
as to what the blue lights are, but they
persist. Perhaps they're the Westchester County runway lights? The closer we get, the more it looks like those are runways, for sure. Westchester has three strips. (If you're flying an Archer, you never had the least doubt, did you?) There's no tower in the simulator for this airport, but assuming the winds haven't shifted, our runway of choice is 6. Elevation of the airport is 439 feet. |
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When you're convinced that you
have your runway in view, figure they're flying a righthand pattern.
Base leg is 330 degrees. After you land, a cup of coffee would be great, wouldn't it? But you're lucky if you find anything open in the airport at this hour. If you do, play it cool. Have your coffee. But don't go bragging about how you landed in Central Park en route. |
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