User Guide

Flight Simulator
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Microsoft
Beginning a Climb
Get that lab coat because it’s time for another experiment.
1. Keep the autopilot’s wing leveler active but disengage its altitude hold
feature (press Ctrl+Z).
2. Raise the airplane’s nose
by applying a little back
pressure on the joystick
until the upper-middle
part of your instrument
panel touches the
distant horizon as shown
in Figure 4.
3. Apply enough nose-up
trim to hold the airplane
in this attitude and
examine the results.
Notice that the airspeed drops as the vertical speed indicator shows a
climb. The airplane appears to be in a slight nose-up attitude as seen in the
Spot Plane View.
4. Press P to pause the simulation once you’re established in the nose-up
attitude.
Believe it or not, you’ve just entered your first climb and this is what it looks like.
Here’s the aerodynamic explanation:
In straight-and-level flight at 17 inches of manifold pressure, the engine
produces enough thrust to pull the airplane forward at 110 knots. As you raised
the nose, the airplane began to slow down in much the same way a car slows
down when it begins to climb a hill. In a sense, when you placed the top middle
part of the instrument panel on the distant horizon, you pointed the airplane up
a relatively shallow hill.
As the airplane’s speed decreased, its drag also decreased. Therefore, since you
didn’t change the setting, you had more thrust than you needed to fly at a
slower speed. (As you’ll learn later on, there are two basic types of drag. One
type decreases as the airspeed slows. Then, as the airspeed continues to slow,
another type of drag starts to increase. But you don’t need to worry about that
yet.)
Figure 4
Before we start flight
training, let’s pretend
that you’re listening
to the philosophical
radio station KYMI.
Let’s also assume that
it’s aviation question
night. Here’s your
question. With the
power set to 17 inches
of MP, why does the
airspeed reading remain
at a steady value of
110 knots? Drag is the
reason. This power
setting produces enough
thrust to accelerate
the airplane to
approximately 110
knots. When the
rearward pull of drag
precisely matches the
forward pull of thrust,
the airplane’s speed
remains constant.