User Guide

Flight Simulator
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Microsoft
Extra Credit!
I promised you I’d provide training that was as close to real airplane training as
possible and I mean to keep my word. Here’s a short section on rudder usage in
case you’re one of the Flight Sim users who have such things. You don’t need to
know this to have a realistic flight simulator experience. You will, however, need
to know about rudder usage if you plan on flying real airplanes. Don’t worry if
this is difficult at first; it’s difficult for all student pilots. It requires coordination
between your hands (joystick) and feet (rudder pedals), or for some of you, your
wrists (if you joystick gets its rudder action by twisting). So, if you look funny
when you dance, then you’ll probably need a little practice to perfect this skill.
Your simulator has a feature called Auto-Rudder, which you access by choosing
Realism Settings from the Aircraft menu. When Auto-Rudder is active, the
simulator works the rudder for you. Simply stated, the rudder points the
airplane’s nose in the direction it’s turning. Yes, the airplane’s nose doesn’t
always point in the same direction as the airplane is banking. You have a
phenomenon known as adverse yaw to thank for this.
Adverse Yaw
When banking to the right, the aileron on the left wing lowers, causing that wing
to lift up. While the lowered aileron increases the lift on the left wing, it also
causes a slight increase in drag. “Wait a minute,” you say, “I didn’t order any
drag with my lift.” True, but this isn’t a pizza either. Mother Nature always
accompanies lift with a little drag—like a chaperone on a high school date
(which would really be a drag).
In a right turn, the aileron on the left wing goes down to lift that wing. The wing
rises but the slight increase in drag pulls the left wing aft a little. This has the
effect of pulling (or yawing) the airplane’s nose adversely to the left as the
airplane banks to the right. Thus the name adverse yaw.
Obviously, if you’re banked to the right you want the nose to point in the same
direction you’re banking, don’t you? This is where rudders come in handy.
The rudder is controlled by pedals on the cockpit floor, or by a twisting action in
some joysticks. Let’s do another experiment.
1. From the Aircraft menu, choose Realism Settings, deactivate the Auto-
Rudder feature, and then click the OK icon.
2. Press P to reactivate the simulation.
Leave the altitude hold and wing leveler off. Okay, here we go.
What You’ve
Learned So Far
Believe it or not, in
these first two
tutorials you’ve
learned around 50% of
all the basic flying
skills you’ll need to
fly an airplane. But
hold on, we’re not done
yet, so hold off a
little longer before
you apply for that
airline job. We still
need to learn how to
make an airplane climb
and descend. After all,
when you become an
airline pilot, you’ll
want to climb to take
advantage of favorable
winds. You just can’t
fly around at low
altitudes knocking
buildings over. And,
once up there, you’ve
got to come down. We’ll
learn how to do this in
our next tutorial.