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Lago F-16 Collection for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 As the excellent .pdf manual asserts, flying the F-16 is quite simple compared to most aircraft. The computers literally do most of the work for you. You steer, add power and away you go, climbing at a fantastic rate if so desired. An F-16 with no weapons and a light fuel load can in fact sustain a vertical climb, although I didn't manage to replicate this in the sim because we couldn't work out how to jettison weapons and external fuel tanks. Basic flying was easy but paradoxically I found that longer flights were made slightly irksome by the confusing (authentic) F-16 autopilot design which requires two switches to be set in various combinations to change modes. I never did manage to engage 'altitude hold' mode and on a ˝ hour flight from Aalborg to Kastrup in Denmark was all over the sky. (Of course I would blame the F-16 for that). The F-16 moves along rather quickly and even though throttled back to cruise at 250 knots, I found constant attention had to be paid to the pitch. This is not really a criticism of the product, the autopilot probably works just as advertised, but I was were put off longer flights by the F-16's rather abstruse avionics… and to the dismay of the cowboy pilots at this virtual test facility there was no GPS either! Ce'st la vie - next time I'll take the Lear jet on the longer jaunts and stick to buzzing the tower and flying nap of the earth in the Falcon. |
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