User Guide

Flight Simulator

20002000

2000

Microsoft

There you have it: your first introduction to the aerial entertainment theme park known as Stall World.

The only problem, however, is that you didn’t visit one corner of the park called Reality Land. Here’s

what you missed:

I didn’t lie to you when I said that airplanes stall because they exceed their critical angle of attack. I

just didn’t tell you that this can happen in any attitude, at any airspeed, and at any power setting. Time

now for more truth.

In reality, if the airplane were pointed straight down and you

pulled back hard enough on the controls, the airplane would stall.

Of course, we wouldn’t do this in the actual airplane (even if it

was a rental). Remember, this is a simulator. We can do things

you’d never dream of doing in a real airplane. It’s like visiting Fantasy

Land in that we’re not exposed to great risk in the demonstration. So, let’s

take advantage of our technology and see what others only talk about and

never actually do.

Trouble in Fantasy Land

Here’s how you’ll demonstrate a stall with the nose pointed nearly straight down (something we only

want to do in a simulator).

1. Press P to reactivate the simulation.

2. With full power applied, pull the airplane into a near vertical nose-up attitude until the airplane is

near, but not yet in, a stall. (Remember, all these examples are highly exaggerated! You’re not

going to be doing this in a real airplane.)

3. Immediately push the nose of the airplane over until it’s pointed straight down toward the

ground. At this point, pull back abruptly and fully on the joystick until the airplane stalls. (You

don’t want to do this in a real airplane, either! If you do, your non-simulated passengers won’t be

simulating heart attacks.)

4. The airplane is stalled and it’s pointed nearly straight down towards the ground. You can recover

by doing what doesn’t come naturally: move the joystick forward enough to reduce the angle of

attack to less than critical. Then, after recovering from the stall, pull back, but only gently to

prevent entering a secondary stall. Of course, in real life we’d want to avoid excessive indicated

airspeeds.

5. Press P to pause the simulation.