I've clocked a couple dozen hours flying the Lebanon pattern and practicing landings in my old Cessna 172. Actually I've started using a hybrid trainer, which lies somewhere between a 182 and a 172. Charles Wood was good enough to include it with his excellent on-line navigation instructions. It makes using and reading the instruments much easier, plus provides a little more visibility over the panels.

Last week I discovered the "realism sliders" in FS2004 which were defaulted to anything but. Ok, ok, slide them all the way over to max realism and check off a couple of other features that FS was taking care of. Except for gas, for now I'll enjoy the bottomless tank. Thanks.

Now when I take off there's P factor to counter with some right rudder. The rudder is something I'm trying to learn. When you hop in an airplane and see a steering wheel the reaction is to drive it like a car. The wheel (the yoke, i.e. ailerons) does nothing on the ground except cause your instructor to shake his head. Drive with your feet.

On an IFR flight from KMHT to KLEB last night I also turned on real-time weather. Supposedly FS grabs the local weather conditions every fifteen minutes and uses that to ~~spoil~~ enhance the flight. It's the first time I've flown in real turbulence (and with a barometer at something besides 29.92). Straight and level at 6,000 feet when *BAM* we lose a couple hundred feet to turbulence. Boston center gets on the horn to remind me about maintaining altitude. Yeah, right. *BAM*

Oh, and I got a copy of X-Plane 7 last week. It's a beautiful application, running natively on Macs (OS X & 9) and Windows. The UI takes a bit of getting used to and it's not as polished a "consumer" app as FS2004, lacking instructional videos and interactive tutorials. But it's a solid simulator and there's an active community. Be sure to check out this Pop-Sci Article.

So last night after a half dozen laps around the KLEB airspace and an IFR flight from KMHT to KLEB in my trusty trainer, I fired up X-Plane. At first I was going to spend some time practicing with its Cessna 172. While navigating the airplane list I, um, accidentally crawled into a B-52.

I should have taken off from a longer airport than Lebanon. All I can say is thank god the runway ends in a drop-off and the perimeter fencing isn't substantial!

So there I was tooling around the Green Mountains of Vermont in a B-52, struggling to keep from defoliating the side of some ski resort with this overgrown military scythe. At one point, gliding through a bank of wispy clouds and banking sideways through a mountain pass I had a Slim Pickens moment. Strange...

BTW, the photos are from X-Plane. It has a snapshot feature (along with a movie recording mode) so I snapped a couple to share. I haven't actually flown the airplane in the top photo longer than it took to get the picture. It's an Anime Fighter, about as strange to fly as it is to look at.

p.s. definitely shouldn't LAND a B-52 at KLEB...

Addendum: due to the wonders of the internet you can now listen to ATC radio traffic live. Here are some streaming feeds for KBOS & Boston Center.

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