Posted By: BeachAV8R
LOMAC/FC: Training Mission #02 - 12/15/06 11:46 PM
After my rather humiliating first training mission in the Su-25T I was anxious to get back on the horse that bucked me. Having flown flight simulations for a long, long time, I was surprised at how badly I got spanked during my first training flight. So for this second flight, I kept the goals modest and decided to just explore normal flight a bit and start introducing some additional aircraft systems in “baby steps”.
For this training flight I relocated to Saki airfield on the west coast of the Crimea peninsula, in order to take advantage of the dual 3400 meter runways, allowing for a bit more leeway during operations.
Diving once again into the mission editor to construct my own custom mission I decide on a very short round-robin flight in order to practice a bit of navigating as well.
Download custom mission here: http://www.mudspike.com/lomac/simhq02.zip
Toying with the mission editor is actually pretty fun although, as others have noted, it does require getting your hands dirty and learning the quirks of the system. I’m certainly in the infancy of learning the mission editor and have only thus far learned how to add flights and input waypoints. There is a lot more to it, but it’s a learning process. I also strap on some external fuel tanks to check out how the fuel management is done.
For today’s flight we’ll depart Saki, head up to the railroad tracks east of the field, then proceed to the coast and follow it southbound down toward Belbek airfield where we’ll do a touch and go before proceeding back to base at Saki.
It’s a snowy and cold morning but the visibility and ceilings are very good.
Strapped into the –T I go about the process of bringing the aircraft to life (WIN key not necessary for engine start as I had mentioned before!). Since it’s a bit gloomy out I go ahead and turn on the instrument lights and the soft glow illuminates the gauges; a nice effect.
I start by lighting off the left engine, followed by the right. You can see the “START” light illuminated and the split engine RPM gauge starting to move. I also see now that the fuel gauge is showing 2840 KT, unfortunately I can’t find what “KT” stands for (?). The addition of external fuel tanks pushes the total fuel digital read-out past what the fuel tapes show for internal fuel, so the digital read-out accurately reflects the total quantity of fuel onboard. Unlike the Su-25, the –T doesn’t have a fuel rate gauge collocated with the fuel gauge, so I’m not sure where you find fuel flow information. (Still lots to learn obviously!)
A nice touch is the fact that the AOA indicator bounces around while you are on the ground, apparently responding to wind gusts.
Cont…