I need a Flight simulator to help me brush up on what little skills I have. What I really need is something to help me use the radios. I have stage fright with the radio. It has been 4-5 years since I doing any flight training and I do not want to loose all that I had learned. Thanks
I would have to guess Microsoft Flight Simulator for that. I haven't messed with it in a long time, but it has a LOT of community around it. I am pretty sure there is even an air traffic simulation setup for it where some people fly the planes while others act as controllers. I do remember the old version definitely had radios / frequencies etc. I would guess by now they simulate a lot of radio protocol.
Came up with an interesting link here (no actual knowledge of it though):
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0764588222.html
Another one to look into would be XPlane. It has radios in it, but I am not sure if they are as complete as MFS. It does have some very cool plane modification (as in make you own) capabilities though.
Man dig through the sportys website. www.sportys.com they sell software that helps train you in just that area. If it makes you feel any better, that is the part of flight training that slowed me down as well. I had a bit of an ace in the hole though, my old man is an ATC and a pilot.
I have a copy of MS Flight Simulator X (most recent one), a joystick, and pedals, and haven't flown in a while.
Make me an offer.
My little brothers have a good one on PC, a World War II sim game. They had a mission to go bomb a German town in a B-17, and its so realistic, you would have to make the 2 or 3 hour flight. They would put it on auto pilot and go down stairs and make a sandwich and watch a movie, then come back upstairs to carry out their bombing...
Darn, thought y'all were talking about combat flight simulators.
FWIW, I've been tooling around with Third Wire's Strike Fighters 2 series. It's not as hardcore as Falcon 4.0 but not arcadey like Ace Combat either. It's pretty grassroots in that the company is small and made up of castoffs from other companies who closed their flight sim divisions, and there is a HUGE modding community.
Third Wire home page
Combat Ace Forums - good place to learn about and get mods and brag about your simulated kills.
If you want to practice your radio skills there is software Sporty's Pilot Shop but it is expensive.
There is an online course at AOPA for free. I haven't done this one.
Get a scanner and listen to ATC while you go watch airplanes. Try and imagine yourself in the cockpit and what you would say, etc...
Probably the best to get over stage fright would be to fly online and actually talk to real people instead of your computer. Check out VATSIM where you fly MS Flight Simulator (or X-Plane) online with (varying degrees of) online ATC. They do train the controllers and expect them to act as if 'real' ATC would. Some are controllers in real-life. Try being a controller and see what it is like from the other side?
A word of warning about VATSIM: read the documents in the new pilot section, some of the controllers get snippy if you don't follow the rules. The big one is not to connect to the VATSIM servers while sitting on a runway or taxiway. They expect you to be at a parking position, just like in real life. Not to mention, someone else may be on final when you suddenly appear on the runway!
Thanks for all the help. Keep it coming. The VATSIM site looks great.
chaparral wrote: I have a copy of MS Flight Simulator X (most recent one), a joystick, and pedals, and haven't flown in a while. Make me an offer.
lets talk.
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