Just adjust the trim until you've got everything the way you want it and then hit the AP (auto-pilot) button

And remember.....learn the basics of AP flight in the cessnas....dont jump straight to a 747

.mic

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That's an UNderstatement. But it's not just the autopilot ...  it's flying in general.. EVERY aspect  

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You've already figured out that just plopping an airplane at an airport, and then making the model behave enough like an airplane to "simulate" flying, gets boring, in a hurry..  Trust me... being told how to use the autopilot to track a GPS course, or VOR radial... so that you can watch a 737 hum along at 34,000feet will get boring, even more quickly.

The best method for getting THE most satisfaction out of simming; is to go about it, just like you would real-world piloting.

Step back and start from scratch. You're now a student pilot with a solo endorsement in a Cessna 172. Every time you sit down to sim, have a goal in mind. Be patient and deliberate focus on the fundementals and a step-by-step mastery of the same skills you'd need to prove, before even thinking about moving on to bigger, faster, and more complex airplanes.

As soon as you can; Take off, hold a heading, hold altitude, fly a perfect pattern (at pattern altitude) and execute a perfect (stabilized) approach/landing... it's time to move on to maneuvers:  

Multiple, successive, 360 degree steep turns (at least 45 degrees of bank), +/- 100 feet .. +/- 10kias ..  rolling out +/- 5 degrees

Slow flight; holding 50kias (+/- 5 knots), while making 90 degree turns (+/- 5 degrees), while holding altitude +/- 100 feet.

Turns about a point; picking a landmark and flying a near-perfect circle around it at 1500agl in at least a 20knot wind.

Fly a perfectly squared-off pattern in a 20knot wind...

When you're able to adjust your approach, for ANY wind... hold a stable crab-angle (locked on runway center-line) and manage a smooth, cross-controlled, cross-wind landing... It's time to move on to navigation.. There's no satisfaction; very little learning, and not a whole lot of fun in watching an autopilot track a GPS course, if you haven't mastered basic VOR/NDB navigation.

At this point in your student piloting, you're ready to start "going places"... and the importance (and fun) of realistic flight planning comes into play. Just like for real.. you need to have the whole thing planned before sitting behind the yoke/joy-stick. You're still a solo-student, so you won't have passengers and weight/balance planning isn't critical (yet). All you really need to plan, is your fuel burn.
                                      ---------------------
**note:  It's best to save a flight for training (might as well make it the default flight, since you aren't rated for anything other than the C172), and it's realistic to do your training out of the same (home) airport... Go ahead and leave both occupants (or take the right seat guy out if you like), but be sure to start each flight checking and setting the fuel. Kinda like part of the pre-flight... and on some of your later flights (you and three buddies and some gear) you'll need a VERY specific amount of fuel, to stay under the maximum take-off weight, but enough to make each leg (with legal reserves)***
                                       ------------------------

Assuming that you use real weather for these flights, you can go to this sight for weather info and winds-aloft forecasts   http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/   (this also assumes that you know how to calculate a heading and calculate your ground speed, adjusting for the winds aloft, for each leg of the flight). This is ground-school stuff, so I'll just state the obvious.. You need to know your ground speed in order to calculate a fuel burn..

P.S.   *** absolutely NO GPS use yet  ****

Keep it simple at first... to and from some realtively close airports to get a feel for using VORs and NDBs to find them...and then expand the horizons going further and further. In no time at all, you'll feel confident in VOR/NDB use and your flight planning will get more complex.. using several nav-aids to go further and further.. even needing to have planned fuel-stops and multi-day (session) trips.

When you can confidently and comfortably navigate (no GPS)... you're pretty much a sim "Private Pilot", and ready to move on to instrument flying.. A college course worth of learning, all by itself    ... and can be done so realistically with a desktop computer, that the FAA allows up to 10 hours of your logged, instrument training to be done under a CFII's supervision.

 *** to be continued****

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EXCELLENT !     and, you're welcome...

When you have questions, or need advice, or just wanna report your progress..
we'll be here 

beaky wrote on Oct 21^st, 2007 at 11:52am:






beaky wrote on Oct 21^st, 2007 at 11:52am:


Righto, sir...

I'm off to go fly a pattern in an itty-bitty cessna.... toodle-oo!!

Boy, am I in a strange mood tonight....

TSC. wrote on Oct 21^st, 2007 at 5:36pm:


I guess I just wanted to learn the technicalities of it. That sort of thing I find very interesting.

If you're recommending I stick to the GA, are there any GA downloads in particular you'd recommend?

TSC. wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2007 at 11:55am:


Downloading the 'misty fjords' add-on as we speak; looking forward to it...

As for GA aircraft, I use the much-talked-about cessna 150 freeware package, and sometimes the also-much-talked-about King Air 300, see here