TUTORIAL: FOCUS ON LANDING

Time is valuable...and while taking off, flying out far enough, turning and lining up with the runway in order to attempt a landing is a good practice exercise, it can become tedious and time-consuming if what you’d really like to do sometimes is JUST focus on landing.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to use the FMB to setup a practice mission that begins with your aircraft already in the air, lined up with the runway and coming in for a landing?

The following walkthrough will show you how to do that.

Note: this walkthrough assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the first tutorial called “Using the FMB to Practice Takeoffs and Landings With Any Aircraft," which covers, among other things, the basics of how to use the map, how to select your aircraft and how to place your aircraft object on the map/runway. That tutorial can be found at the following link:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/50910533/m/3011031656

So, referring to the tutorial “Using the FMB to Practice Takeoffs and Landings With Any Aircraft,” when you get to the part about placing your selected aircraft on the runway, instead of placing it on the runway, place it a decent distance straight out OFF THE END of the runway. Be generous with your guess in distance here. A flashing circle will appear, representing your aircraft.

Don’t worry too much about whether you’ve placed your aircraft too close to the runway or too far away; you can edit the map setup later once you fly the mission and determine what adjustments need to be made.

The object box should already be open. If it isn’t, open it (by clicking “View” and then “Object").

In the object box, go to the “Plane1” tab and make sure the little white box to the right of the word “Player” is checked. Then go to the “Waypoint” tab and make sure the “Type” field is set to “Normfly” and take note that the “Height” and “Speed” settings are located under this tab as well and that they are set to 500 and 300 by default. Those settings are fine for now; you can always fine-tune/adjust them later if you want to.

Now hold down “Ctrl” and left-click on the END OF THE RUNWAY closest to your aircraft. At this point you should have two circles (the first one you placed OFF the runway and the second one you placed ON the runway) and a waypoint line between them, all three of which will be flashing.

Important Note: placing the second circle on the runway and establishing a waypoint line is how you FORCE/ESTABLISH your aircraft’s initial heading (in this case, toward the runway) when the mission begins.

Close the object box and save your mission. Then go to “File” and click on “Play.” When the briefing window appears, click “Fly” at the bottom.

When the mission begins, you may find that on your first attempt you didn’t get the setup quite right. Maybe your aircraft is too far away from or too close to the runway, or maybe it’s a little bit too much to the left or to the right. Or maybe your starting speed and/or your altitude is too high or too low, relative to your distance from the runway. Don’t worry about it. It’s very easy to fix. You just need to make a minor adjustment or two on the mission map. In that case, simply hit “Esc” on your keyboard, then choose “Quit Mission” and then “Done.” The mission’s map will load. Zoom in on the airstrip. You can adjust the position of either or both of the circular aircraft objects on the map simply by dragging them with the mouse to where you want them. If you need to make adjustments to the starting speed and/or altitude of your aircraft, click on the aircraft object circle (the one OFF the runway) so that it’s selected and flashing and then open the object box (by clicking on “View” and then “Object”). Speed and height settings can be found under the “Waypoint” tab. By adjusting the position of the circular aircraft objects and tinkering with speed and height, you will find the setup that suits your preference.

After making adjustments, save your mission again and then play it to see if you are happy with the setup.

SELECTING A DIFFERENT AIRCRAFT

If you would like to practice with a different aircraft, there’s no need to delete anything on the map or make any major changes. Just follow these quick steps:

-Load your mission (map)
-Zoom in on the airstrip
-Click on the aircraft object circle (the one OFF the runway) so that it’s selected and flashing
-Open the object box
-Go to the “Type” tab and select your aircraft

The new aircraft you select will replace the previous one on the map, and there is no need to change any settings in the object box. The new aircraft will be flyable by you and previous height and speed settings will remain exactly as they were. Save the mission and then go fly.

Note: this changing of aircraft without deleting the existing aircraft object applies as well to the original tutorial, “Using the FMB to Practice Takeoffs and Landings With Any Aircraft.” I just didn’t realize it at the time of its writing.

Map Recommendation: the Kyushu (South Japan) map has TWO, easy-to-find concrete airstrips which are particularly suitable for takeoff and landing practice (especially landing) because the runways are much wider and (possibly) longer than the average runway. The map is relatively small, therefore easy to work with. One of the airstrips is located on the north end of the map, directly to the left of “Kita-Kyushu" and the other can be found on the south end of the map, at the far left.

Cheers, and have fun perfecting your takeoffs and landings!

Riggs

This message has been edited. Last edited by: riggs_SC,