X-Plane Primary Instruments
| Go to the "File" menu and select "Open Aircraft".
Select the Cessna 172 Skyhawk, the most popular plane in the world these days. It
is in the "General Aviation" folder in the "Aircraft" folder. With that plane open, read the following. Most all aircraft are equipped with the "standard 6" instruments, which give your orientation and velocities in space. They do NOT tell you what piece of real estate you are over (they are NOT navigation instruments) but they tell you what your attitude and speed are, which is what you need to fly the plane. Navigation is secondary to staying right side up! So what ARE the "standard 6" instruments? Let us tell you: "Standard-6" Flight Instruments Airspeed Indicator This tells you your speed through the air. It is the upper-left speedometer-like instrument. Notice the airspeed arcs (the colored arcs on the edge of the instrument). These arcs go to and from certain critical speeds for the airplane, and here those speeds are: =>Vso: The bottom of the white arc is the stall speed with flaps (and gear) down. In other words it is the stall speed in the landing or "dirty" configuration. =>Vs: The bottom of the green arc is the stall speed with flaps (and gear) up. This is the so-called "clean" configuration. =>Vfe: The top of the white arc is the max. flap extension speed. Don't extend your flaps above this speed. =>Vno: The top of the green arc is the maximum normal operation speed, and the max. speed in rough air. =>Vne: The red line is the maximum allowable speed, or the velocity to never exceed. You can lose your wings above this speed. Artificial Horizon To the right of the airspeed indicator, this instrument displays the plane's attitude in the air. Note the "level adjust" knob. Use it on the ground to adjust the "nose-level" or horizontal reference to your liking. Altimeter Reading 1,400 feet above sea-level, note it's barometric pressure setting knob. Use it to adjust the altimeter setting. The barometric pressure is preset to 29.92"/1013,2 mbar (hPa), the standard altimeter setting. The altimeter should be adjusted for the local barometric pressure from time to time. Get the barometric pressure by checking ATIS, which can be done by hitting the ENTER key to activate radio communications. Once you get the current barometric pressure setting from ATIS, load that into your altimeter to calibrate it properly. This is needed for it to read correctly since it works be sensing air pressure! Turn-Slip Indicator Look at the instrument below the airspeed indicator. That is the turn-slip indicator. The airplane symbol indicates the rate of turn (not bank!) and the ball indicates sideslip. Use your pedals to keep the ball in the center. Horizontal Situation Indicator Very important navigational instrument with 2 arrow pointers controlled by the 2 buttons on either side of the instrument... see the next page for further explanation. Vertical Velocity Indicator The VVI indicates climb and descent rate in steps of 100's of feet per minute. |
Standard Flight Controls OK so those were the standard flight INSTRUMENTS, which tell you what the plane is doing... now lets go to the standard flight CONTROLS, which you will use to control the plane! The General Controls section already clued you in on using the joystick and throttle and rudder pedals, or mouse and keyboard for controlling the 4 major flight inputs (pitch and roll, yaw, and throttle), but now it is time to take a look at the engine controls. Here they are: Throttle gray handle (left) up is full The throttle simply controls the power output of the engine... full up is maximum. The prop is like a gearshift in a car.. it controls the pitch of the propeller to maintain a constant RPM regardless of the power setting. The Cessna 172 does not have this control because it cannot adjust the pitch of it's prop, but you can open the Mooney in the General Aviation folder to see and use this control. The mixture controls the ratio of fuel to air inside the combustion chambers of the engine... pull it back a bit to save fuel, but if you pull it back too far the engine will quit! The carburetor heat is needed when landing a carbureted a plane, or ice may form in the engine air intake and strangle the engine! If this happens then activate the carb heat found in the lower right! Flaps have a significant effect on both lift and drag. The first bit of flaps (say 10°, or 1 notch) increases the lift (upward force) significantly, yet does not add much drag (braking force). As the flaps are FULLY deployed, however, the lift does not increase that much more, but the DRAG goes up a lot. In short, deploy only a LITTLE flaps to get a LIFT boost (like for take-off) but deploy them FULLY to get maximum lift AND drag (like for landing). Cessnas in particular have very effective flaps for steep approaches and low minimum-flight speeds. It is not uncommon to have the airspeed indicator pegged on the lower end of the dial while in flight in a Cessna with the flaps down at minimum speed. The trim adjusts the speed at which the airplane will sit without any stick input from the pilot. Use the k/l keys or mouse (HOLD THEM DOWN!) to adjust the trim so that you do not have to hold the stick all day long to hold the plane level. |
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