PilotEdge Forums

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

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.