Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer

Despite the addition of many more aircraft ( including the promise of the fantastic X-15 ), this sim was a total dead loss. The graphics were nothing special, and the cockpits were really hideous, with lots of magenta, bright green and red dials, and the flight controls were so twitchy almost to the point of impossible to control.

The original version I had for the Spectrum128 was so, so much better.

Test pilots paradise - that was Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer.

I can't remember how many different aircraft there were on it, but I remember it was my first chance to have a go at civilian light aircraft and experimentals - XRH-4 and XPG-12 are two that spring to mind. It also had the awesome SR-71.

My best mate Tom and I really got our teeth into this one. We flew all those planes to the limit and beyond. The flight models on these aircraft were really complex and you really did need to treat each aircraft type differently.

The manual also had a test pilots checklist that you could copy and fill in the numbers for every aircraft in the sim - in fact, we ended up copying the check list and using it on all our flight sims, testing each aircraft to the standards laid down in CYAFT.

It may sound corny, but our success in the various sims did improve with this knowledge. This little beauty also introduced outside views. The scenery was as complex as you would expect on a Spectrum 128k, but a very useful feature was the inclusion of dots on the ground. These got bigger the lower you flew, and really helped in giving a sense of moving & were very useful when you attempted ( or accidentally! ) did some spinning.

I remember there were city streets you could fly down and skyscrapers you could weave in-between. And, it you were steady enough, there were also a few open ended hangars on the airfields to try and pass through. You could break the aircraft through over stressing the airframe, which would prove fatal, as there were no escape options. Another detail that sticks in my mind is the absence of any fuel usage, which meant you could fly for hours on end without worry.

Rob "Bomber" Henderson