40 More Great Flight Simulator Adventures
by Charles Gulick
Like its predecessor, 40 Great
Flight Simulator Adventures, the parameters and narratives in
this book are designed to enhance your enjoyment of the remarkable Flight Simulator and Flight Simulator II programs.
Designed by Bruce Artwick, these programs run on the IBM PC and PCjr,
Commodore 64, Apple II series, and Atari 800, XL, and XE computers.
Though other flight simulations have appeared on the
market, there is still, in my opinion, nothing to compare with
Artwick's achievements in realism or challenge. The Flight Simulator is as close as you
can come to piloting a real airplane, short of trekking to your local
airport and signing up for flying instructions.
Listen to the Flight Instructor
This isn't a book simply to be read,
but one to keep open across your knees or on your flight desk as you
fly. In each adventure you'll find, among other things, advice, notes,
suspense, mystery, and navigational tips. Reading about them will,
frankly, be meaningless if you're not flying at the same time. Just
think of the text in this book as the voice of your flight instructor,
a guide intimately familiar with the local terrain and conditions, or
just a friend along for the ride.
Don't expect to fly all adventures perfectly the
first time, or even the fiftieth, even if you're a skilled simulator
pilot. Taking the text and translating it into actual flight requires
practice and familiarity with what's happening. Be patient.
More Than Mystery
This book adds a further dimension to simulator flying in that it
offers specific flight instruction for ground maneuvering, taxiing,
takeoff, climbing, cruising, "letting down" from altitude, flying
airport patterns, landing, and more. The "Spanaway" adventures cover
such things as power settings (rpms) and elevator trim adjustments to
help you achieve precision control of your Cessna (Microsoft version)
or Piper (SubLogic versions) aircraft. You'll learn when and how to
rotate the aircraft on takeoff, how to set up standard climb and
descent rates; when to start losing altitude as you approach your
destination airport; how to understand and fly VOR radials; and
precisely how to fly airport patterns and legs, from takeoff to
touchdown.
But there's no shortage of the fun and mystery I
hope you enjoyed in my first book, 40
Great Flight Simulator Adventures. You'll fly with a strange
copilot in "The Arrow," discover a weird world of mirrors in "Time
Warps," lose your engine on takeoff, reconnoiter the WWI zone in your unmodified modern aircraft, learn
how to slew anywhere (including around the world). You'll also be
presented with a beautiful airstrip of your own in lower Manhattan,
explore mystic shapes in "Outposts," closely examine the Clouds
parameters, try to get yourself out of extended inverted flight, and
much more.
Close, But Not Quite
Be advised, though, that the included flight instruction is intended
purely for Flight Simulator
and Flight Simulator II, and
is certainly not intended as instruction for flying an actual aircraft.
However, the principles involved are valid for real flying and are
derived from those expounded in modern aviation literature. In this
connection, the author acknowledges a special debt to Positive Flying (Macmillan, 1983)
by Richard L. Taylor and William M. Guinther.
I also wish to thank COMPUTE! Books for its
exemplary conduct in the production and follow-through on these books
and the business of them, and editors Stephen Levy and Gregg Keizer for
their fine cooperation and discerning contributions to the text.
Finally, all of us who fly Flight Simulator and Flight Simulator II are indebted to
Bruce Artwick, the designer, for his great talent and the superb
quality of his work. I thank him for many hundreds of hours of
enjoyment, excitement, and challenge. Without his magical achievement,
of course, these adventures could not be imagined.
The blue yonder is calling. Climb into the left
seat, and let's get flying.
Charles Gulick
February, 1986
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