Flying on Instruments with Flight Simulator

by Jonathan M. Stern

Foreword

You've flown Flight Simulator countless times, been sightseeing from Puget Sound to Martha's Vineyard, and can put your airplane down on the shortest landing strip. But unless you can fly in the worst conditions—through heavy clouds, in the dark of night, with low visibility—you're only a fair-weather pilot.

To fly in bad weather—just as every professional pilot does—you must use your airplane's instruments. You must know what each instrument is for, how to read it, and how to use those readings to navigate, fly, and land your aircraft.

Flying on Instruments with Flight Simulator is your tutor and guide to this new and challenging aspect of Flight Simulator and Flight Simulator II. Written by a pilot/instructor who is instrument rated (and who worked as an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport), this book will make you an all-weather, not just fair-weather, pilot.

You'll learn how your instruments operate, and what they're telling you. You'll learn how to climb, bank, and dive under complete control, with only instruments to guide you. And you'll learn how to navigate using the same kinds of charts real pilots use.

Then you'll delve into the instrument-rated pilot's world. You'll learn how to read and use Instrument Approach Procedure (IAP) charts—charts so vital to pilots that they're updated every 56 days by the Federal government. You'll execute actual instrument approaches, using actual charts, as you take off, fly, and land your airplane under less-than-perfect weather conditions.

Flight Simulator and Flight Simulator II provide three methods of navigating and landing with instruments. These three methods—VOR, NDB, and ILS—are thoroughly explained and illustrated. Then it's your turn as you fly VOR radials, read your ADF as you approach a nondirectional beacon (NDB), or stay on the ILS glideslope.

That's just the beginning. Once you've mastered flying on instruments in Flight Simulator (and you will have by the time you finish this book), you can use the more than 100 IAP charts to fly on instruments, on your own, into and out of most of the simulations airports.

Flying on Instruments with Flight Simulator can be used with any version of Flight Simulator or Flight Simulator II, with Atari, Atari ST, Apple, Amiga, Commodore 64/64C/128, IBM PC/PCjr, or Macintosh personal computers.

Learn to fly on instruments, not by the seat of your pants, with Flying on Instruments.

Dedication

To my wife, Joy, who has put up with my many hundreds of hours at the computer.

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