Instrument Flying, AirMail’s Rocky Debut

AirMail’s

Rocky Debut

On May 15, 1918, the United States Postal Service began airmail service. When the first pilot, George L. Boyle, was ready to depart Washington, D.C., his Curtiss JN–4 “Jenny” refused to start: the plane was out of gas. And that was just the beginning of his trouble.

Eventually, Boyle took off, following train tracks. But as the tracks circled, so did he. Then, after running out of gas, Boyle crashed in a field.

To read more about the

Of course, you can still create custom weather piece by piece, defining cloud layers, winds aloft, visibility, precipitation, and temperature. Watch raindrops spatter the windscreen of your Beechcraft King Air 350 during a low-level run in coastal Alaska, or slice through a stratus layer on your climb through 30,000 feet in the Bombardier Learjet 45. With an Internet connection, you can fly in Real-World Weather by downloading current conditions. You’ll confront the same weather that you’d encounter most anywhere in the world, in real time.

To read more about Flight Simulator’s improved weather functions, read the articles in the Weather section of the Learning Center.

Instrument Flying

The need to fly in all conditions eventually led engineers and pilots to develop techniques for flying without the aid of ground references.

In 1929, Jimmy Doolittle made the first instrument-only flight using an altimeter, artificial horizon, and directional gyro to take off, circle, and land.

Flying with instruments in Flight Simulator, you have access to the same navigation aids and instruments available to real-world instrument- rated pilots. You can create VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and IFR (Instrument Flight Rules)

flight plans with the Flight Planner; selected aircraft include IFR panels, which show all key instruments, avionics, and controls on the screen. The Flight Simulator NavData database, supplied by Jeppesen, includes the world’s VORs (VHF omnidirectional receivers), NDBs (nondirectional radio beacons), ILSs (instrument landing systems), low- and high-altitude airways, and intersections.

Curtiss Jenny and to re-create this historic flight, click Century of Flight on the left side of the main screen.

To learn more about using navigational aids in Flight Simulator, read the articles on Navigation in the Learning Center.

Compare the cockpits of the Curtiss Jenny (top), the Vega (middle), and the Boeing 777–300 (bottom), and see the evolution of instrumentation during flight’s first century.

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