Checklists and realism in PE

[zkline]

Hi All,

I'm curious how many people who fly on PE use checklists to try and make the experience as realistic as possible? One of the weird things about flying as a blind pilot is that I have a choice of two programs for plane control. One of them doesn't really handle SID/STARS at all, but does an excellent job with aircraft-dependent checklists. The other can fly SIDS/STARS/holding patterns, but has virtually no checklist functions.

Ideally, I'd love a "best of both worlds," approach, but there doesn't seem to be one. I want to be able to fly realistic procedures and also have realistic checklists.

For reference, the two programs I mention are Its Your Plane, and FSX Pilot. I highly recommend one or both for FSX users interested in neat add-ons

[Althar93]

I almost always go through the checklists, unless I am messing around and/or practicing a particular phase of flight offline.

I usually fly on Xplane with the Airfoil Labs C172 and have recently acquired the C210 Centurion with the Reality Expansion Pack, which I am slowly learning to fly. Eventually I will build my way to the Take Command! SAAB 340 which I own but don't fly online yet due to my lack of knowledge & experience flying IFR "the proper way". In all three instances, so many things can go wrong due to pilot error, aging, wear & the occasional random failure, that there is an actual incentive to perform all these checks.

I guess the only thing I tend to skip is the walk-around, which these aircrafts/addons offer : this is not due to a lack of interest but more due to the fact I do not get a lot of simming time and would rather spend it taxiing/flying the plane and talking to ATC, rather than remove chocks & pitot tube covers.