User Guide

Flight Simulator
20002000
20002000
2000
50
Microsoft
Tutorial 2: Turns
If you ended our last tutorial by flying into the sunset, you’re probably still headed that way. After all, I
didn’t teach you how to turn the airplane—a very important maneuver that all pilots need to know. It’s
time to learn about turns: right ones, left ones, steep ones, and shallow ones. Perform turns well and
every heading of the compass is open to you for discovery.
Let’s begin this tutorial by reactivating our European vacation:
1. From the Flights menu, click Select Flight, then choose Tutorial 2, Situation 1, and click the
OK icon.
2. Press Z, then CTRL+Z to activate the autopilot’s altitude hold.
The airplane is paused in straight-and-level flight and I’ve given you an external (Spot Plane)
view.
3. Continue reading.
Turn Aerodynamics
To understand how an airplane turns we need to
know something about the forces that keep it
airborne. Figure 1 shows the four forces acting
on an airplane in flight. (And you learned about
these when you did your homework, right?
Right?) Thrust, produced by the engine-propeller
combination, pulls the airplane through the air.
Drag acts opposite to thrust and is the air’s
resistance to a moving airplane. Weight is the
force exerting a constant downward pull on the airplane. And lift, which acts opposite to weight, is
the upward-acting force that keeps an airplane airborne.
Important point here: Lift is also the force responsible for
allowing an airplane to turn.
I want you to think of lift as a force that pulls the airplane
upward. Since lift pulls upward, could it also pull a little to the
right or the left? Absolutely. Tilting the lift force allows it to pull
the airplane horizontally, right or left, as well as upward
(Figure 2). The small horizontal component of lift that’s pulling
to the side is the part responsible for making the airplane
turn.
Figure 2
Figure 1
TOTAL LIFT
VERTICAL
COMPONENT
HORIZONTAL
COMPONENT
LIFT
DRAG
THRUST
WEIGHT