Saturday, April 17, 2004

Baby steps....

It has been a while since the last update. Until i start the consturcution (which could be months or year(s) away :-) I guess this could be the right frequency to log. What did i do in the last couple of days? A lot of research and learning. As mentioned, i am not a good computer pilot either. I started flying the program regularly and begining to pick up skills. One of the important piloting skills ofcourse is navigation and i discovered this excellent website exculsively on this topic. Another important goodie on this site is - it also has a modified Cessna plane (C182 Nav Trainer) which makes it easy to master these skills. I would highly recommend this airplane if you are just learning to fly the MSFS. It has digital readouts as opposed to the analog dials you get with the default MSFS Cessna. Having this explicit visual feed back helps a lot initially in learning how to trim the aircraft.

I made my first purchase towards the sim last week. I bought two second hand, viewsonic professional series (P95f), 19" CRT monitors from local supplier for $175.00 each. These monitors are of excellent quality and should serve well as the PFD/ND display screens for pilot and FO. Currentlyy I am doing a lot of research on computer hardware configuration. At somepoint, i will post my configuration information here. My goal is to make all my research information available online to the last nut and bolt. I have few computers (5 in total) and i have to plan the new ones taking what i have already into consideration. One of the things i am considering doing is to convert/build all of them into rackmount systems and mount entire system into a single rack.

more on computer hardware and networking later....