Prospective new user with a bunch of questions

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TheOldestMonk
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:12 am

Prospective new user with a bunch of questions

Post by TheOldestMonk »

Hello PE community,
This might be a slightly long post, but like the title says, I'm considering joining this network and currently deciding if I'm ready for it or not, and I had a bunch of questions I thought I could get clarified from you guys here :)

Background: Been in love with aviation since 5. I have absolute zero real world flying experience, would be joining an airline cadet pilot program in a few months time. Was introduced to flight simulators at age 14 by a friend and started off as the "default FSX 747 barrel roll kid", you know what I mean. Fast forward 6 years, I've come a long way getting serious about the entire thing. Been flying all sorts of tubeliners and turboprops on VATSIM for two years now, with okay enough skills to pretty much be able to do everything on that network. It's been a while since I've been doing the same things essentially to the point that it is not feeling challenging enough. Yes there was some learning curve to start with but after a while, you realize it's FMC and your planning software doing most of the things for you, along with VATSIM's other limitations like people spawning on runways, limited ATC availability outside of busy hours and airports, almost 2nd-class citizen treatment of VFR traffic by ATC. The lack of challenge has started to bore me now.

Some time back I bought the A2A C182 in a sale and I thought I'll go VFR and that is when it struck me that even though I can easily fly complex aircraft between city pairs, I did not know anything about VFR flights and I could barely do anything without a GPS. I also realized my instrument skills are not particularly good without electronic glass displays. I thought I'll learn about this and I came across pilotedge workshops on youtube. I went through all the VFR ones (planning to go through IFR ones in some time), and I learned a lot from it. I've turned GPS off from my GA planes now. I tried replicating those VFR flights on VATSIM but again it was not challenging enough as most of the time I was speaking to LAX_CTR for everything and it did not feel all that "realistic", if you may.

This is when I started exploring pilotedge last week, and from what I see it seems to have a lot of people with actual PPL and flying experiences. I'm a little nervous about joining this network as I'm still learning VFR basics and I don't know yet how well some "VFR rookie" errors that I might make would be received by ATC and pilots flying here, and maybe you guys can let me know more about this, and if this is the right place for me to come and learn. I do not plan to use a GPS as I've noticed I end up depending too much on it, and plan to hit the CAT ratings program first.

For my preparation, I've set up my P3D with ORBX Southern California scenery (I'm only interested in ZLA at the moment to start with). Is there anything else I can do for this?

From what I understand, you can run your own weather for PilotEdge. Does this not cause issues if two guys are running different weather conditions, when they want to land at an airport coming in from different directions on the same runway? Or the ATC assigning me a runway with high tailwinds for my weather?

Also I went through some FAA VFR Navigation material earlier this week and it mentioned about accounting for wind deviation enroute with some calculations using an E6B flight computer. I do not have an E6B and I don't know how to use one either, how do I go about my flight planning? Do I just ignore the compass and wind deviations?

Thanks and I hope to look forward to see you guys on the network when I'm ready for it.
zerofay32
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:34 am
Location: Grove City, Ohio

Re: Prospective new user with a bunch of questions

Post by zerofay32 »

First, Welcome!

The short answer to your anxiety being a sim only pilot, there are a lot of those on the network. PE at its core is a training network so most mistakes and learning pains are to be expected (and for the most part encouraged). But know that if the controllers are busy, they might not be able to offer any help when a deviation occurs, but they will always let you know when one happens. The forums or the PE discord are good places to get answers in those cases. The rating programs are the best place to start.

As far as scenery, I can't really help there as it's personal taste. I'm fine with default scenery but a good heads up would be always have a current airport diagram because in P3D the airports may not reflect the current state of the airport. The biggest example in ZLA would be Santa Monica, since it's runway was recently shortened. If there is a discrepancy, don't sweat it. In most cases it won't matter. I'm sure there are scenery suggestions in the P3D area of the forum.

Custom weather is always allowed but as a suggestion, if you are worried about the winds, just match the real world winds (at least close). But know that if the "local" winds are favoring a different runway, just ask the controller if the airport is towered and if untowered you will just have to work it out on the CTAF just like real life.

The flight planning is a bit harder to answer in a post. With a quick google search, you should be able to find free online e6b calculators and there are a lot of free e6b applications in the popular app stores. A 'must read' is the FAAs Pilots Handbook Of Aeronautical Knowledge. It's free! Focus on Chapter 16 Navigation (but the whole thing has a lot of great info). Download it from the FAA website here:

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policie ... ndbook.pdf

Good luck and again, Welcome to PE!
Andrew Fay
PilotEdge V-3; CAT-11; I-11; Skyhigh 10
Commercial Pilot/Instrument ASEL/AMEL- KOSU / Commercial sUAS
zerofay32
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:34 am
Location: Grove City, Ohio

Re: Prospective new user with a bunch of questions

Post by zerofay32 »

Just realized that you said that you had FAA material so you may already have that handbook. :oops:

To actually answer your question, yes you need to account for wind/Magnetic variation/Magnetic deviation in your flight planning. Really, you don't need an E6B to do the planning. All the e6b is, is a calculator that has some equations preprogramed into it. If you know Tragicomic math it should be easy to do by hand :P

The only equation that is hard, is figuring out the Wind Correction Angle (that's the Trigonometry part). I was playing around with this online E6B and it seems to work really well. https://www.e6bx.com/e6b/ I only played around with it for a few minutes so your actual mileage will very.

If you use Skyvector, it gives you you Magnetic Heading, So all you need is to figure out the WCA with an E6B. Diveation is really not a factor in most sim airplanes.
Andrew Fay
PilotEdge V-3; CAT-11; I-11; Skyhigh 10
Commercial Pilot/Instrument ASEL/AMEL- KOSU / Commercial sUAS
FDXDave
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2017 7:56 pm

Re: Prospective new user with a bunch of questions

Post by FDXDave »

I can't say anymore than Zerofay said. But I'll tell you, I have no real world flying experience. I flew on Vatsim for 6 months before transitioning to PE. If you've been on Vatsim for two years, you will have some bad habits as I did. But the learning curve won't be as hard as you think. During the week the controllers are less busy and more able to assist you. The weekends are hectic. So I would leave the questions for the forums and discord then. All coms are recorded. Before your first flight, listen to the coms and see how things are stated. You'll like it here. I only fly on Vatsim now during events for the traffic.
Have fun
Dave.
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