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How not to crash into a secret installation...

I've discovered Windows Movie Maker still exists!

So


I also did a quick flight from Washington DC to Los Angeles. I reached a cruise level of FL340, waited a few minutes, then hijacked my own plane. I set DCA (the Ronald Reagan airport VOR) into the CDU and headed back east. (I'd also put the DCA frequency of 111.00 MHz in the Nav 1 radio.) That's how I would have done it.

When about 100nm away from Washington, I started my descent to 7,000 feet. With about 10 miles to go, I began my 'impossible' turn: a 360° circle in my case. I turned off auto-throttle, pulled the throttle back to idle and just tried to maintain a 20° right bank. I straightened up when I was again heading roughly east.

Then... POWER!

I admit it's a bit Texas Sharpshooty. My intention was just to show that a person with absolutely no flying experience (apart from on my PC) can crash into stuff.

Incidentally, had I been flying a proper flight plan, one using the FMS, and had LNAV engaged, the aircraft would have slowed to 250kts below 10,000 feet! As it is, I was reminded to change from Standard to local barometric pressure. (It didn't matter as I was already on 29.92 inches Hg.

I think I was somewhere near Citgo :D

 
The Common Potato said:
Don't have a 757. I've tried to emulate the flight from Dulles to LAX in a 737-800. Every time, the sim crashes when I press TO/GA on take off. I'll try again.
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I have no idea what TO/GA is. Isn't there anything else that you could press? (Just trying to help)
 
Well thanks! Excellent resources! Bookmarked!

Brings back to memory this Chinese teaching assistant who was to help us with a software that felt really outdated in 1989. The most important action invariably was:

"Huoah ghoff too khitt doa khommmmmm keeeee!"

Took us all most of the quarter to figure out what the hell he meant.
You have to hit the 'Home' key!
 
The Common Potato said:
Well, I thought I ought to. Make a vid, that is. It's been a while since anyone talked about the difficulties of crashing from 7,000 feet.

So, I tried. Not at all easy to hit GCHQ from 7,000 feet, from five miles.

https://youtu.be/ifaSj-oVFxk
https://youtu.be/ZgAP-qxkdF0

LOL :-)

That comment came out wrong. I'll to that circling descent tomorrow.

Can't record sound.
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Overdue correction: GCHQ is not even remotely a secret installation.

Honestly I'm not sure there is such a thing as a secret installation anymore. Maybe the facility where Israel stores the nukes it doesn't have?
 
I'm reminded of Microsoft's flight simulator from back in the day.

One of the first 'missions' was to protect the President in Air Force One.
(I was flying a fighter that had to pace the President's jet.)

Of course I got bored, and, of course, I strafed the President's plane and blew it out of the sky.

The software responded with a message that I had to report to a nearby airbase for arrest, and I was lucky that the President wasn't onboard at the time.

Clearly I wasn't the first person that thought of doing that.

(And someone thought it was important to retcon the President out of the plane under those circumstances).

:)
 
The first ever flighty simmy game I played was called US Navy Fighters, in the mid 1990s. After the collapse of the USSR, various forces were, well, you get the idea... One mission was to protect Boris Yestsin! More recently-ish, a few months after 9/11, I bought MS FS2002 (MSFS 8).

Funnily, early today, I came across

The sim I used for the original post in this thread was X Plane; XP11, I think. I have since got XP 12 to work properly - ie not cause the sim the crash on pressing to/ga I was a RAAS thing. I do also have MSFS2020 but I prefer X Plane.

PS Second flight simmy thing: the first was in the early 1990s, in a desert war, in an F-16. These gaming studios ought to become politicians.
 
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I had my first MS Flight Sim experience probably in the 1986-1988 frame - v. 2.x.
Hills and mountains outside the detailed airport sceneries were modelled as flat, slanted cardboard triangles that would pop out of nowhere a minute brefore you'd hit it.

I remember I spent hours trying to land on the roof of WTC 2 the way a dove may - coming in from below the roofline with throttle 0, trying for v(vertical) = 0 just as my Cessna stalls on the roofline.
Also tried to land properly on the roof.

Never worked, always crashed. I figured in the end that the algorithm was "you touch the building surface, you crash", even if in reality plane and building may have escaped serious damage.

(I don't think that version had any fancy TO/GA buttons to press, was lucky it allowed for a joystick after some update. Before that, all flying was with keyboard commands. You'd turn or change throttle e.g.with arrow keys, repeatedly hit.)
 
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I got into flight simming because of 9/11. The UK television channels were wondering how the terrorists were able to fly. Pundits suggested that they might have used desktop flight sims. I then bought FS2002, which was released, late, to remove the Twin Towers.

What annoys me about Truthers is that they say the 'manoeuvre' to the Pentagon is impossible. It just isn't particularly tricky.

FWIW, I bought last month and am currently reading: Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. Prior to that, I read The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
 
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The Common Potato said:
I got into flight simming because of 9/11. The UK television channels were wondering how the terrorists were able to fly. Pundits suggested that they might have used desktop flight sims. I then bought FS2002, which was released, late, to remove the Twin Towers.

What annoys me about Truthers is that they say the 'manoeuvre' to the Pentagon is impossible. It just isn't particularly tricky.

FWIW, I bought last month and am currently reading: Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. Prior to that, I read The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
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If one "buys into" the northside of CITGO, it may be impossible, but from the south side looks doable. It all depends on how far they go into the rabbit hole.
 
When I go shopping, I do go east of a petrol station! Such is my obedience to the local geography. Mindless sheep that I am. As a pedestrian, I ignore that arrow!

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Back around 2006 I had flight simulator (forget the name) and decided to try flying a plane into the Embarcadero Center (San Francisco landmark). The plane hit fine, and just slid down the side of the building.:o
 
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