TOP PERFORMANCE: Getting the most from your flight-sim aircraft.
PLEASE NOTE -
the book mentioned above is specifically for the users of
Personal Computer Flight Simulators only. It is NOT
a guide to flying in the real world!!
Now here's a book I've been awaiting in anticipation for quite a while - "Top Performance". It's big - 200 pages, seven chapters! The book is the usual A5 size, ring bound, clear print and easy to read. There is a huge amount of detail here, what to do and what NOT to do! It's possibly the performance aspect that intrigues me most. What parameters should I be looking for in an aircraft? It's all here in Bills' book Check out Training Associates site (link at the bottom of the page) for more information on the book itself.
Chapter 1, "Knowing your aircraft abilities, limits and restrictions", is of special interest to me as I test aircraft models in MSFS98 for Tradewind Caribbean Airlines(TCA). I'm especially interested in "numbers to fly by" for TCA aircraft. This started off when aircraft were being converted from MSFS5.1 models to MSFS98. Some "flew" well in MSFS5.1 and abysmally in MSFS98. But it went much farther than that. How close were the "numbers" to the real world aircraft (where I could get real world aircraft data for comparison!)? But if they "fly" ok, how well does it match real world "numbers"? And if the "numbers" are in the "ballpark", it's great to have pointers like this chapter to help me consider all aspects. Bill discusses many issues here and the finishing paragraph makes statements about flight simulation aircraft. The last sentence exhorts you to simulate the techniques as best you can if your Flight sim aircraft does not seem to behave realistically - I say ( for MSFS98, anyway!) dump the aircraft and acquire a better model. There are some good programmers out there.
Four of the chapters cover management techniques on fuel, weight, flights & problems. The other two, not mentioned so far, cover instruments and weather. Everything is interrelated and crossreferenced- altitude, drag, speed, attitude, weight, endurance, range! Bill uses diagrams, tables, pictures and graphs aplenty as well as text to clarify the issues. He goes into a lot of detail for each issue and this would make for repetition of detail across the various chapters. But it also means you get all the detail you need for each individual issue discussed.
Emphasised a few times across various chapters is Flight Planning. It comes out as a very important issue in any sort of flight, IFR or VFR! As one becomes more experienced in flight-simming and increased realism the importance of flight planning becomes clearer. Bill gives you the "why"!
Since I am using MSFS98 there are some issues here that are of less relevance to me, e.g. "balance". I only have control over the weight difference that fuel makes. This means that I look at how much is in each tank and just balance between left/centre/right fuel tanks -forget about placement of pasengers/cargo/luggage!
This book I can't put down! I keep rereading it. It has me questioning various aspects of my favourite aircraft. It certainly has a place in my Flight-sim library.
PMW
Dublin, August '99.