Flight - Lesson Two
- Hand-Flying the Heavy Irons -

Why bother with hand-flying at all?

Today's airliners are highly computerised machines equipped with autopilots capable of taking the aircraft from lined up position at your departure airport through the takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, and approach phase to a complete stop at the end of the active runway at your destination airport. The pilots are compelled to take over the controls only in case of emergency. But in FS there're no unexpected emergencies! Why should we bother with hand-flying at all? Well, for three main reasons:

• Hand-flying the heavy irons is fun - and flight simulation is all about fun! For real world pilots flying is hard work, yet one that they have dreamt of since their childhood, so there's a fun element in it for them as well. Therefore they do hand-fly the aircraft even when they're not compelled to. MALÉV 737 pilots, for example, normally hand-fly their birds up to and down from FL100, except in case of complicated weather. We, who spend hours staring at a computer screen in order to experience what is but a shadow of real world flying just for fun, should do some hand-flying, too.
• When something goes wrong, hand-flying is unavoidable - and despite the fact that your virtual aircraft is 100% (?) reliable, there are still several things that can indeed go wrong! Just imagine the situation when you fly with (On- or Offline) ATC and the controller makes a botch of your approach leading you into a position well above the glide slope, from where you cannot make an autopilot approach? It happens! Then you must hand-fly the aircraft down to the threshold to avoid a missed approach. In a situation like this, a good pilot must be able to correct the controller's mistake.
• Hand-flying helps you understand how your aircraft behaves in different situations - and this is something that you must be aware of, even if you always fly in full autopilot mode. Each aircraft behaves differently in each phase of flight. One reacts instantaneously to the aileron but quite sluggishly to the elevator; another one is more agile in the vertical. One is almost as easy to control with full flaps as with no flaps at all, while the other one becomes extremely sluggish at low speeds and high flap settings. A certain approach speed may allow a fine view out of the cockpit at a certain weight but may result in a high angle of attack approach when your fuel tanks are full, so that you'll be unable to see the runway. It's important that you always take into account these aircraft characteristics and don't require the autopilot to execute a maneuver that the aerodynamics don't allow...

The Emerald Air Management is working hard to provide you Flight Dynamics as realistic as possible within the confines of the FS simualtion engine. Our aircraft are among the best available in this respect, so I think that it worth testing them by some hand-flying. ;-)

How to prepare for hand-flying?

Hand-flying (and therefore all flying, as you might always end up with the stick in your hand) needs preparations. Real world pilots normally fly only one or two aircraft types and they fly every day, so that they know the aircraft like the back of their hand. We, virtual pilots, however, make only a couple of flights each month or (at best) each week, and even those flights we fly with a wide range of equipment. Therefore our knowledge of the type is often inferior. For this reason, we must read through the Operations and Flight Manual provided with each Emerald Air aircraft carefully before every single flight to familiarize with the type and memorize the numbers. Remember: you must always have the Manual at hand while in the air, so that you can check anything that you happen to forget!

Emerald Air Operation and Flight Manuals are based on data downloaded from the manufacturers' websites and additional information that I obtained from friends. Most data is correct, but at certain points I must have guessed. The numbers in the Flight Characteristics section (ie. takeoff, climb, cruise, and descent speeds, climb and descent rates, power settings, fuel consumption, etc.) have been verified by several test flights and match exactly the values that our flight models produce, so you can rely on them.

Practice, Practice and Practice!

While a profound knowledge of the type makes your life a lot easier while hand-flying, it worth very little without practice. Actually, you cannot obtain a profound knowledge of the type at all without practicing hand-flying, as having a knowledge of the type is much more then knowing the numbers! There are several factors that cannot be described by numbers, like responsivity to control inputs, stability in the 3 flight axis and angle of attack at certain airspeeds, weights, and flap settings. Such factors constitute the "feel" of the aircraft that you must know in order to fly safely. Why? Let me cite an example:

E.G. Once, I was flying a 757-200 back to Stansted after a long and demanding VATSIM flight. It was late night and the controller wanted to go to bed, so he led me in for a quite short final, but I was still too high and caught the localizer 2 points above the glideslope. I must have shut down the autopilot and made a steep manual approach. Having been occupied with losing altitude and airspeed at the same time, I couldn't read the Checklists. Stabilized at around 1000 feet, I realized that something was wrong. The runway slipped below the instrument panel and the aircraft didn't behave as usual. I looked around in the cockpit and realized with astonishment that the flaps gauge showed 5 degrees! I forgot to lower the flaps to the approach setting! I immediately advanced the throttles and lowered the nose, flying out of the imminent stall, gradually lowered the flaps to 25 degrees, re-established on the glideslope, and made a little hard but safe landing. The chain of events pointing towards a catastrophic accident has been broken only by my awareness of the plane's unusual behaviour.

For the above reasons you should practice hand-flying to familiarize with the "feel" of our aircraft in every situation and configuration. In Lesson 3, we provide you guidelines for a "familiarization course" that you can complete on your own in case of each Emerald Air aircraft before commencing commercial flights with it. We recommend you to repeat these exercises each time you jump into the cockpit of an aircraft that you haven't flown in the past months.