Page 1
Article Type: Feature
Article Date: August 02, 2001
My best Father’s Day gift ever from my two daughters was a gift certificate for a flight in a biplane, a Stearman N2S to be exact. In the Air Corps it was designated the PT-17.
So ok, it was time to get real after all those years of being an armchair pilot and then a PC simulator pilot. So would I have the right stuff or the wrong stuff? Would I get airsick and throw up? Would any of it be anything like what I thought it would be?
The Stearman division of Boeing built 8,584 primary trainers that they called the Kaydet, though the name never stuck. It was used militarily from 1936 through 1948. It has a wingspan of 32-feet and a length of 25-feet. Empty it weighs 1,936 lbs, and full up it’s only 2,717 lbs. The 220 HP Continental 7-cylinder radial turning a two-blade wooden prop gave a top speed of about 106 knots. Range was 500 miles. Rate of climb was a modest 840 FPM and a ceiling of 11,200 feet was maximum. Navy students called it “Yellow Peril” due to its, and any tail dragger’s, ability to ground loop if full attention is not paid. A few Lycoming and Jacobs engines of similar specs powered some. Amazingly, some 2,500 still fly today.
It was a perfect day for flying. Sunny, cloudless skies bombarded southern California and visibility was unlimited. I rarely eat breakfast and today was no exception. But today I had a good reason. I didn’t want a queasy stomach, much less be embarrassed by upchucking. I could never live that down to myself.
I was there for the first flight of the day just before 11 a.m. The Stearman still sat in the hanger. It’s brilliant yellow paint brightened up the place and I was able to do my own walk around. But when it was rolled out into the sun it was stunning. One thing for certain, it was highly visible.
This particular Stearman entered Navy service in 1943 and no doubt had a lot of harsh handling at the hands of aviation cadets hankering to become aces. At the end of the war it was declared government surplus, as were many aircraft, and sold. It had a life crop dusting as so many of this type did.
They can be seen in any number of movies over the past forty years dusting crops or stunt flying. There may be more of these planes still flying than any other aircraft of the era. The current owner obtained the plane in the late 1980s and set to work on restoration. A search of Naval records told the ship’s numbers, 396 on the fuselage, and color scheme. Top-notch aviation companies experienced in refurbishment did the restoration and the result is this beauty that hauls folks like me for a taste of the past.
After telling the pilot Mike Hanson and his wife, Kendle, who also holds a pilots license, that I was a life long combat aviation enthusiast and how my father started out on the PT-19 and AT-6 moving to P-5s1 late in the war, I was instructed on how to enter the front cockpit using the hand holds and step area of the wing. After I mentioned I was a PC flight sim pilot he warned me to experience the flight by actually looking through the windscreen and out of the cockpit. Seems PC pilots he’s had before tend to stare at the instrument panel as if it was a monitor!
Mike leaned into the cockpit and I immediately felt what I imagined fighter pilots experienced when the crew chief fussed over their seat belt harnesses and gave them any mechanical info about the plane's quirks that day or things to watch out for.
My Hawaiian shirt and jeans was the appropriate flight suit for the warm summer day. Mike wore shorts. I donned my goggles, helmet with intercom and microphone and strapped tight the four-inch lap belt after the shoulder harness was fed through it. I wondered if the shoulder belt's looseness was ok but didn’t ask. Mike was the pro here and I was glad to see a few wrinkles on his suntanned face. Experience always makes the difference.
At eye level was a sparse but modern set of instruments. Tachometer, airspeed indicator, fuel, oil temp and pressure gauges all sat below the compass. There was no bank indicator or rate of climb gauge. As I would soon realize these were superfluous any way. The stick was a plain, slender wooden affair about the diameter of a broom handle. The rudder pedals were metal and not as large as I thought they’d be. The throttle on the left had three quadrants: one for mixture, one for carb heat and one for acceleration/deceleration.
The engine chugged to life, after having been dormant for two weeks, on the first pop. A very small amount of smoke wafted back. The engine noise was surprisingly minimal. With no further warm up Mike began the familiar S turns as we moved towards the runway of Long Beach Airport. Every tail-dragger of the era that had a long nose had to do this so forward vision could be maintained while taxiing. Tower permission for take off was acknowledged and we watched a banner dragging plane take off, dip down to snag his advertising sign, and climb steeply away. Wild.
The Stearman began to roll as the 220-horse radial put out power becoming airborne at about 50 knots with little fanfare. Mike began a long gentle climb out and turned towards the harbor since we would be mainly flying over the ocean. The quiet, smooth Continental pulled us on the way to 3,500 feet. Mike explained that we’d be pass through the marine inversion layer. This is what people in airliners think is smog even on clear, clean days, which the L.A. Basin mostly has these days. The layer was just a thin line. At 80 knots the landscape below was visible in incredible detail. In a plane like this you can just look over the side and see everything.
Now I understand how discernable things like buildings, and ships are at attack altitude. Huge cargo container ships were easy targets like the ships at Pearl Harbor were. Of course no one was shooting at us, but I could see how straightforward it would have been to nose over and make runs on them now. I imagined how Val and Kate pilots would have had their canopies slid back getting the same effect as I was now—total visibility even at higher speed.
Floating kelp clung to the shoreline in spots as we flew over the water and got “feet wet.” The ocean was greenish-blue though the sky was pure azure. Behind us were the mountains north of the L.A. Basin and at 10 o’clock was Catalina Island some 26 miles distant. At 3 o’clock was the Palo Verde peninsula. I thought of WW I pilots and machines now as I viewed the world around struts, wires, a top wing and cylinder heads. The only thing missing was a pair of machine guns on the cowl.
We made our way offshore a prudent distance as Mike cleared himself for aerobatics with the Long Beach tower and specified our location. All the while he’d been rubbernecking to keep sight of other aircraft in the area. A mirror below the top wing was aimed at him so we could communicate non-verbally and, no doubt, so he could keep an eye on the faces of his riders for visual clues as to how they felt.
Mike came on the intercom and asked me if I was ready for a loop to which I responded, “Roger, go for it!”
The Stearman dipped its nose and gained speed as it began the loop. Then we were vertical and quickly coming over inverted smoothly and crisply. The next view was all green ocean as the little plane regained level flight. Mike had mentioned, and I already knew, to look out to the left to get my horizon bearings during maneuvers. I did that and switched to look through the windscreen both and was never disoriented once. I could look straight up which was straight down at times too. He kept a running description of the maneuvers he was performing as though he was expertly commentating for television.
Mike likes hammerhead stalls and we did several one following a nice loop. There was no sensation of losing all air speed as he kicked left rudder and fell off on the wings towards the ocean pulling out handily. We rolled and barrel rolled too. He made a comment like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the plane…” as he kicked it into a tight left spin. I don’t think we went through more that about three or four spirals till he smoothly righted the plane continuing, “Some people get a little worried when I do that.”
Actually I should have asked him to do that again. I liked it. I could imagine a nervous student long ago attempting to right this very plane after his instructor did the same thing. He described the Immelman, named for WW I German ace Max Immelman, We’ll do a half loop with a roll out at the top and be going in the reverse direction from what we started.” I pictured old Max’s Fokker monoplane surprising his combat foes with it.
I learned what G-force was. It’s totally different than the force felt at the bottom of a roller coaster’s dive. It’s much stronger and longer! Mike later told me we experienced about 3-Gs or so. This is where I began thinking about combat fighters. Stringing together a series of violent maneuvers in combat at much higher speed and Gs had to have been brutal on pilots. At fifty-three years I certainly would not now be able to but I guess when I was nineteen or twenty, like most fighter pilots were, I could have endured. Adrenaline was certainly a factor in combat during life and death situations too.
With a scenario of maneuver, G-force, maneuver, lateral G-force, maneuver, negative G-force, maneuver, G-force until the outcome of combat I can attest that pilots were in good physical condition. I see it now as a matter of stamina as well. Like the old Bruce Lee movie, Fists Of Fury, where he didn’t perform any computer assisted super moves just basic karate that every primary student learns. It was a matter of stamina and keeping the moves sharp. That’s what it took to be victorious in dogfighting!
Next we strafed pleasure boats. Hey, over the water there are no restrictions on how low you can go like over the city! We banked and turned to come out behind a boat, which we rapidly overtook, from seventy-five feet altitude. Mike dipped a wing as we passed to their right and someone waved. I gave a wave back and noted how easy it was to recognize faces even for a fleeting moment. Fighter pilots have described this to me—how they were so close they could pick an enemy pilot out of a police line-up. It’s true. For that second the image is etched in your mind like a still photo.
I remembered how Charles Lindbergh talked about flying low and slow near Ireland when he saw a fishing boat on his Atlantic crossing and hollered to ask directions from the stunned crew who failed to answer. He was surprised since he said he’d made himself heard from airplanes many times before with the throttle back, quietly gliding. They were simple too surprised to respond. I could see that it could easily be possible to do what he did.
The intercom crackled and Mike came on. “Look in the mirror. Now is the scariest part of the flight. YOU have the airplane!” Both his hands were visible above the cockpit frame.
Ha ha, ha, yes! After all these years of wondering what a combat-rated aircraft was like to fly! Now was my chance.
The Stearman was in gentle climb as Mike instructed, “Level off at eleven hundred and head towards the Queen Mary at 11 o’clock.”
I grasped the stick but didn’t choke it. It rose comfortably to the exact height I use on the PC with the joystick on my lap. I dutifully leveled at 1,100 feet with little input. I remembered from reading Thunderbolt how Bob Johnson described his civilian flying lessons and always kept the nose down on turns so as not to stall out. I made an easy turn noting how much resistance there was from the rudder bar. More than I thought. The stick forces at this attitude were not proportionately as heavy, it seemed, and response to input was immediate.
Mike told me use rudder, aileron and a bit of elevator in a turn. It was comfortable to bank at 45-degrees and pull the nose around even a full 360. I leveled off and Mike said, “good recovery.” I piddled about some more, kind of doing a baby skid continually holding right rudder, though it was really just a rudder turn. All too soon I felt Mike’s talented hands back on the stick. It was time to head home.
The Stearman, cleared for runway 25 Left, approached lazily. All throttled back and slowly sinking towards the tarmac, the trainer became eerily quiet. Mike side-slipped tenderly to maintain sight of the runways around the nose. The engine ticked over as the prop slowed down. Smooth and easy was the regimen as the runway became closer in slow-mo fashion. I experienced a perfect three-point landing performed by a master. It was the smoothest landing of any aircraft I’d ever been in. We turned off the runway with little roll out and S’ed back to the hanger.
I can completely understand the principle of primary trainers. The average guy could easily learn to fly in them and get better at it with more stick time. As Mike reminded me, it was the landings where many fellows washed out. Though he could land perfectly, the new student to the Stearman could not without practice. Some never could. It’s not like ‘flying onto the ground” in a tricycle Cessna.
The phrase best describing the vice-less flight characteristics of the N2S is simply “forgiving.” It has no flaps and only elevator trim tabs. Instrumentation is minimal but sufficient. It flies well slow enough for new pilots to feel confident. The airframe is stressed for 9-Gs and the sturdy fabric covering works fine. If a student could fly this they moved on to the North America SNJ/AT-6 and then to either fighters or bombers. During the early war years these planes introduced lots of farm boys and city slickers to aviation, some of whom went on to carve their names into the history books as aces.
So as a PC pilot-cum-N2S pilot, even briefly, I proved several things. First and foremost as we all should realize, PC sims are NOTHING REMOTELY LIKE REAL FLIGHT and spirited maneuvering. Being in this bird reinforced that for me. The reason is simply that you have the feel of gravity and inertia forces. This is what many real combat pilots have lamented to me about when I’ve brought up the question of flight sims. Much of it is what I’ve always stated being that your field of view is reduced to the myopic CRT squatting on your desk. Even target lock-on view on the sim pales in comparison to actually focusing your eyes and turning your head even slightly because it is so natural. I get disoriented using it where I did not in real world maneuvers.
I must say that force feedback joysticks do a good job in the reality area comparatively. The Stearman’s stick forces were less than some PC planes in high G maneuvers so I was ready for it and comfortable. The rudder force threw me some since I don’t have any pedals—feedback or otherwise using the twist of the Microsoft Sidewinder instead. Actually, a sidewinder stick, controlling rudder on a real plane would be comfortable to some extent, but you’d not be able to experience feedback right I think.
I also confirmed what every combat pilot told me: you aren’t looking at instruments in combat. I glanced at 100 on the clock while maneuvering once but that’s about all. You FLY the plane. You don’t watch instruments like some stationary engineer babysitting boilers.
Next, I didn’t throw up or feel airsick. Yahoo! My head felt a bit light afterwards. I probably just needed some inverted blood flow to stimulate the old computer between my ears! My stomach sort of felt like it was still moving for a while but the sensation was not objectionable.
Finally, I’m certain I could learn to fly on a plane like this. PC combat simulations have schooled me in what to expect and what control input to use to maneuver and counteract things. I firmly believe PC pilots would have a leg up on those who never experienced them.
For anyone living in the greater Los Angeles area, you can find out more info at the Biplane Flights Website or toll free at (866) 331-3333.
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Time Flies!
by Jim "Twitch" TittleArticle Type: Feature
Article Date: August 02, 2001
What A Gift!
My best Father’s Day gift ever from my two daughters was a gift certificate for a flight in a biplane, a Stearman N2S to be exact. In the Air Corps it was designated the PT-17.
So ok, it was time to get real after all those years of being an armchair pilot and then a PC simulator pilot. So would I have the right stuff or the wrong stuff? Would I get airsick and throw up? Would any of it be anything like what I thought it would be?
 |
| Another Restored Stearman |
The Stearman division of Boeing built 8,584 primary trainers that they called the Kaydet, though the name never stuck. It was used militarily from 1936 through 1948. It has a wingspan of 32-feet and a length of 25-feet. Empty it weighs 1,936 lbs, and full up it’s only 2,717 lbs. The 220 HP Continental 7-cylinder radial turning a two-blade wooden prop gave a top speed of about 106 knots. Range was 500 miles. Rate of climb was a modest 840 FPM and a ceiling of 11,200 feet was maximum. Navy students called it “Yellow Peril” due to its, and any tail dragger’s, ability to ground loop if full attention is not paid. A few Lycoming and Jacobs engines of similar specs powered some. Amazingly, some 2,500 still fly today.
 |
| Typical Continental Radial |
A Perfect Day
It was a perfect day for flying. Sunny, cloudless skies bombarded southern California and visibility was unlimited. I rarely eat breakfast and today was no exception. But today I had a good reason. I didn’t want a queasy stomach, much less be embarrassed by upchucking. I could never live that down to myself.
I was there for the first flight of the day just before 11 a.m. The Stearman still sat in the hanger. It’s brilliant yellow paint brightened up the place and I was able to do my own walk around. But when it was rolled out into the sun it was stunning. One thing for certain, it was highly visible.
 |
| # 396 |
This particular Stearman entered Navy service in 1943 and no doubt had a lot of harsh handling at the hands of aviation cadets hankering to become aces. At the end of the war it was declared government surplus, as were many aircraft, and sold. It had a life crop dusting as so many of this type did.
They can be seen in any number of movies over the past forty years dusting crops or stunt flying. There may be more of these planes still flying than any other aircraft of the era. The current owner obtained the plane in the late 1980s and set to work on restoration. A search of Naval records told the ship’s numbers, 396 on the fuselage, and color scheme. Top-notch aviation companies experienced in refurbishment did the restoration and the result is this beauty that hauls folks like me for a taste of the past.
 |
| Mike and Kendle Hanson |
After telling the pilot Mike Hanson and his wife, Kendle, who also holds a pilots license, that I was a life long combat aviation enthusiast and how my father started out on the PT-19 and AT-6 moving to P-5s1 late in the war, I was instructed on how to enter the front cockpit using the hand holds and step area of the wing. After I mentioned I was a PC flight sim pilot he warned me to experience the flight by actually looking through the windscreen and out of the cockpit. Seems PC pilots he’s had before tend to stare at the instrument panel as if it was a monitor!
Strap In & Climb Out
 |
| An N2S Cockpit |
Mike leaned into the cockpit and I immediately felt what I imagined fighter pilots experienced when the crew chief fussed over their seat belt harnesses and gave them any mechanical info about the plane's quirks that day or things to watch out for.
My Hawaiian shirt and jeans was the appropriate flight suit for the warm summer day. Mike wore shorts. I donned my goggles, helmet with intercom and microphone and strapped tight the four-inch lap belt after the shoulder harness was fed through it. I wondered if the shoulder belt's looseness was ok but didn’t ask. Mike was the pro here and I was glad to see a few wrinkles on his suntanned face. Experience always makes the difference.
At eye level was a sparse but modern set of instruments. Tachometer, airspeed indicator, fuel, oil temp and pressure gauges all sat below the compass. There was no bank indicator or rate of climb gauge. As I would soon realize these were superfluous any way. The stick was a plain, slender wooden affair about the diameter of a broom handle. The rudder pedals were metal and not as large as I thought they’d be. The throttle on the left had three quadrants: one for mixture, one for carb heat and one for acceleration/deceleration.
The engine chugged to life, after having been dormant for two weeks, on the first pop. A very small amount of smoke wafted back. The engine noise was surprisingly minimal. With no further warm up Mike began the familiar S turns as we moved towards the runway of Long Beach Airport. Every tail-dragger of the era that had a long nose had to do this so forward vision could be maintained while taxiing. Tower permission for take off was acknowledged and we watched a banner dragging plane take off, dip down to snag his advertising sign, and climb steeply away. Wild.
The Stearman began to roll as the 220-horse radial put out power becoming airborne at about 50 knots with little fanfare. Mike began a long gentle climb out and turned towards the harbor since we would be mainly flying over the ocean. The quiet, smooth Continental pulled us on the way to 3,500 feet. Mike explained that we’d be pass through the marine inversion layer. This is what people in airliners think is smog even on clear, clean days, which the L.A. Basin mostly has these days. The layer was just a thin line. At 80 knots the landscape below was visible in incredible detail. In a plane like this you can just look over the side and see everything.
Now I understand how discernable things like buildings, and ships are at attack altitude. Huge cargo container ships were easy targets like the ships at Pearl Harbor were. Of course no one was shooting at us, but I could see how straightforward it would have been to nose over and make runs on them now. I imagined how Val and Kate pilots would have had their canopies slid back getting the same effect as I was now—total visibility even at higher speed.
Floating kelp clung to the shoreline in spots as we flew over the water and got “feet wet.” The ocean was greenish-blue though the sky was pure azure. Behind us were the mountains north of the L.A. Basin and at 10 o’clock was Catalina Island some 26 miles distant. At 3 o’clock was the Palo Verde peninsula. I thought of WW I pilots and machines now as I viewed the world around struts, wires, a top wing and cylinder heads. The only thing missing was a pair of machine guns on the cowl.
Let The Good Times Roll…, & Loop & Hammerhead!
We made our way offshore a prudent distance as Mike cleared himself for aerobatics with the Long Beach tower and specified our location. All the while he’d been rubbernecking to keep sight of other aircraft in the area. A mirror below the top wing was aimed at him so we could communicate non-verbally and, no doubt, so he could keep an eye on the faces of his riders for visual clues as to how they felt.
Mike came on the intercom and asked me if I was ready for a loop to which I responded, “Roger, go for it!”
The Stearman dipped its nose and gained speed as it began the loop. Then we were vertical and quickly coming over inverted smoothly and crisply. The next view was all green ocean as the little plane regained level flight. Mike had mentioned, and I already knew, to look out to the left to get my horizon bearings during maneuvers. I did that and switched to look through the windscreen both and was never disoriented once. I could look straight up which was straight down at times too. He kept a running description of the maneuvers he was performing as though he was expertly commentating for television.
Mike likes hammerhead stalls and we did several one following a nice loop. There was no sensation of losing all air speed as he kicked left rudder and fell off on the wings towards the ocean pulling out handily. We rolled and barrel rolled too. He made a comment like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the plane…” as he kicked it into a tight left spin. I don’t think we went through more that about three or four spirals till he smoothly righted the plane continuing, “Some people get a little worried when I do that.”
Actually I should have asked him to do that again. I liked it. I could imagine a nervous student long ago attempting to right this very plane after his instructor did the same thing. He described the Immelman, named for WW I German ace Max Immelman, We’ll do a half loop with a roll out at the top and be going in the reverse direction from what we started.” I pictured old Max’s Fokker monoplane surprising his combat foes with it.
I learned what G-force was. It’s totally different than the force felt at the bottom of a roller coaster’s dive. It’s much stronger and longer! Mike later told me we experienced about 3-Gs or so. This is where I began thinking about combat fighters. Stringing together a series of violent maneuvers in combat at much higher speed and Gs had to have been brutal on pilots. At fifty-three years I certainly would not now be able to but I guess when I was nineteen or twenty, like most fighter pilots were, I could have endured. Adrenaline was certainly a factor in combat during life and death situations too.
With a scenario of maneuver, G-force, maneuver, lateral G-force, maneuver, negative G-force, maneuver, G-force until the outcome of combat I can attest that pilots were in good physical condition. I see it now as a matter of stamina as well. Like the old Bruce Lee movie, Fists Of Fury, where he didn’t perform any computer assisted super moves just basic karate that every primary student learns. It was a matter of stamina and keeping the moves sharp. That’s what it took to be victorious in dogfighting!
Next we strafed pleasure boats. Hey, over the water there are no restrictions on how low you can go like over the city! We banked and turned to come out behind a boat, which we rapidly overtook, from seventy-five feet altitude. Mike dipped a wing as we passed to their right and someone waved. I gave a wave back and noted how easy it was to recognize faces even for a fleeting moment. Fighter pilots have described this to me—how they were so close they could pick an enemy pilot out of a police line-up. It’s true. For that second the image is etched in your mind like a still photo.
 |
| You Can See Everything Below While Banking |
I remembered how Charles Lindbergh talked about flying low and slow near Ireland when he saw a fishing boat on his Atlantic crossing and hollered to ask directions from the stunned crew who failed to answer. He was surprised since he said he’d made himself heard from airplanes many times before with the throttle back, quietly gliding. They were simple too surprised to respond. I could see that it could easily be possible to do what he did.
Moment Of Truth
The intercom crackled and Mike came on. “Look in the mirror. Now is the scariest part of the flight. YOU have the airplane!” Both his hands were visible above the cockpit frame.
Ha ha, ha, yes! After all these years of wondering what a combat-rated aircraft was like to fly! Now was my chance.
The Stearman was in gentle climb as Mike instructed, “Level off at eleven hundred and head towards the Queen Mary at 11 o’clock.”
I grasped the stick but didn’t choke it. It rose comfortably to the exact height I use on the PC with the joystick on my lap. I dutifully leveled at 1,100 feet with little input. I remembered from reading Thunderbolt how Bob Johnson described his civilian flying lessons and always kept the nose down on turns so as not to stall out. I made an easy turn noting how much resistance there was from the rudder bar. More than I thought. The stick forces at this attitude were not proportionately as heavy, it seemed, and response to input was immediate.
Mike told me use rudder, aileron and a bit of elevator in a turn. It was comfortable to bank at 45-degrees and pull the nose around even a full 360. I leveled off and Mike said, “good recovery.” I piddled about some more, kind of doing a baby skid continually holding right rudder, though it was really just a rudder turn. All too soon I felt Mike’s talented hands back on the stick. It was time to head home.
The Stearman, cleared for runway 25 Left, approached lazily. All throttled back and slowly sinking towards the tarmac, the trainer became eerily quiet. Mike side-slipped tenderly to maintain sight of the runways around the nose. The engine ticked over as the prop slowed down. Smooth and easy was the regimen as the runway became closer in slow-mo fashion. I experienced a perfect three-point landing performed by a master. It was the smoothest landing of any aircraft I’d ever been in. We turned off the runway with little roll out and S’ed back to the hanger.
 |
| Yours Truly & Pilot Mike Hanson After Landing |
Conclusions
I can completely understand the principle of primary trainers. The average guy could easily learn to fly in them and get better at it with more stick time. As Mike reminded me, it was the landings where many fellows washed out. Though he could land perfectly, the new student to the Stearman could not without practice. Some never could. It’s not like ‘flying onto the ground” in a tricycle Cessna.
The phrase best describing the vice-less flight characteristics of the N2S is simply “forgiving.” It has no flaps and only elevator trim tabs. Instrumentation is minimal but sufficient. It flies well slow enough for new pilots to feel confident. The airframe is stressed for 9-Gs and the sturdy fabric covering works fine. If a student could fly this they moved on to the North America SNJ/AT-6 and then to either fighters or bombers. During the early war years these planes introduced lots of farm boys and city slickers to aviation, some of whom went on to carve their names into the history books as aces.
So as a PC pilot-cum-N2S pilot, even briefly, I proved several things. First and foremost as we all should realize, PC sims are NOTHING REMOTELY LIKE REAL FLIGHT and spirited maneuvering. Being in this bird reinforced that for me. The reason is simply that you have the feel of gravity and inertia forces. This is what many real combat pilots have lamented to me about when I’ve brought up the question of flight sims. Much of it is what I’ve always stated being that your field of view is reduced to the myopic CRT squatting on your desk. Even target lock-on view on the sim pales in comparison to actually focusing your eyes and turning your head even slightly because it is so natural. I get disoriented using it where I did not in real world maneuvers.
I must say that force feedback joysticks do a good job in the reality area comparatively. The Stearman’s stick forces were less than some PC planes in high G maneuvers so I was ready for it and comfortable. The rudder force threw me some since I don’t have any pedals—feedback or otherwise using the twist of the Microsoft Sidewinder instead. Actually, a sidewinder stick, controlling rudder on a real plane would be comfortable to some extent, but you’d not be able to experience feedback right I think.
I also confirmed what every combat pilot told me: you aren’t looking at instruments in combat. I glanced at 100 on the clock while maneuvering once but that’s about all. You FLY the plane. You don’t watch instruments like some stationary engineer babysitting boilers.
Next, I didn’t throw up or feel airsick. Yahoo! My head felt a bit light afterwards. I probably just needed some inverted blood flow to stimulate the old computer between my ears! My stomach sort of felt like it was still moving for a while but the sensation was not objectionable.
Finally, I’m certain I could learn to fly on a plane like this. PC combat simulations have schooled me in what to expect and what control input to use to maneuver and counteract things. I firmly believe PC pilots would have a leg up on those who never experienced them.
Give it a try!
For anyone living in the greater Los Angeles area, you can find out more info at the Biplane Flights Website or toll free at (866) 331-3333.
Printer Friendly