Losing Altitude in Microsoft Flight Simulator

Video Transcript

DIXON GILLETTE: Welcome back to Expert Village, my name is Dixon Gillette and let's continue our tutorial on Microsoft Flight Simulator X. All right, time to talk a little bit about how to make an aircraft stall, and how to recover from a stall. Another one of those great myths is that when an aircraft stalls, you usually think it has something to do with the aircraft's engine; it has nothing to do with the aircraft's engine. It has everything to do with the amount of lift that that wing is currently producing, or in the case of a stall not producing. A stall happens when your aircraft reaches a critical angle of attack, and does foils any airflow able to come over that wing resulting in a loss of lift and a severe sudden drop in altitude with your aircraft. These are extremely dangerous especially on approach to landings and directly after take off. Keep in mind, every wing at a given configuration will stall at the same angle of attack. Now, keep in mind the angle of attack at which your wing stalls is not the same thing as the angle of your pitch. A lot of pilots will confuse this factor and get themselves into a lot of trouble. Generally, you can tell the onset of a stall by having a high angle of attack and soon your aircraft will begin buffeting or shaking a little bit. If your aircraft is equipped with a warning buzzer or a stall horn, this stall buzzer will go off, just moments before your aircraft's nose drop sharply sending you either into a spin, or a direct nose-down maneuver straight to the ground. To recover from a stall you simply nose over your aircraft, decreasing its angle of attack to the relative wing. Now, keep in mind, all aircraft lose different amounts of altitude, so when you're practicing your stall recovery, make sure you have quite a bit of altitude underneath you. Now, you can see why this will be important, because when you do practice this, you'll notice how much altitude your aircraft will lose. So, it makes it especially critical to always pay attention to your angle of attack on landing and take offs.

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