Simple Flight Simulation Knowledge and skills. This material will give some depth to the flight simulation world

1. Course Material
FLIGHT
SIMULATION
Introduction to the World of Flight
Simulation

2. Introduction
Chapter 1
What are we going to Learn
• How do Planes Fly?
• How do Wings make a Lift?
• Force & Motion
• Speed & Velocity
How do planes fly?
If you've ever watched a jet plane taking off or coming in to land, the first
thing you'll have noticed is the noise of the engines. Jet engines, which
are long metal tubes burning a continuous rush of fuel and air, are far
noisier (and far more powerful) than
traditional propeller engines. You
might think engines are the key to
making a plane fly, but you'd be
wrong. Things can fly quite happily
without engines, as gliders (planes
with no engines), paper planes, and
indeed gliding birds readily show us.
If you're trying to understand how
planes fly, you need to be clear
about the difference between the engines and the wings and the
different jobs they do. A plane's engines are designed to move it forward
at high speed. That makes air flow rapidly over the wings, which throw
the air down toward the ground, generating an upward force called lift
that overcomes the plane's weight and holds it in the sky. So it's the
engines that move a plane forward, while the wings move it upward
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3. How do Wings make a Lift?
In one sentence, wings make lift by changing the direction
and pressure of the air that crashes into them as the
engines shoot them through the sky. Airplane wings are
shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing.
When air moves faster, the pressure of the air decreases.
So the pressure on the top of the wing is less than the
pressure on the bottom of the wing. The difference in
pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up
into the air
Laws of Motion
Sir Isaac Newton proposed three laws of motion in 1665.
These Laws of Motion help to explain how a planes flies.
1. If an object is not moving, it will not start moving by
itself. If an object is moving, it will not stop or change
direction unless something pushes it.
2. Objects will move farther and faster when they are
pushed harder.
3. When an object is pushed in one direction, there is
always a resistance of the same size in the opposite
direction.
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4. Force & Motion
Force: A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting
from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever
there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force
upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the
two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only
exist as a result of an interaction.
Friction: Force that opposes the motion of an object, when
the object is in contact with another object or surface is
called frictional force. It slows down or stops the motion of
an object. In Planes such forces are called drag. Higher the
thrust, higher the drag. Friction is the resistance to motion
of one object moving relative to another, in airplanes, Air
plays a big role in bringing frictions. There are two main
types of friction, static friction and kinetic friction. Static
friction operates between two surfaces that aren't moving
relative to each other, while kinetic friction acts between
objects in motion. In Airplanes, Air acts as a Kinetic friction.
Exercise 1.0
1. What are the four different forces which is exerted on a
Plan when flying?
a. Glide, thrust, weight, drag
b. Thrust, glide, gravity, drag
c. Engine, lift, gravity, drag
d. Thrust, Gravity, Lift, Drag
2. When did Newton proposed the Laws of Motion
a. 1960
b. 1963
c. 1965
d. 1970
3. How do Wings make a Lift?
a. When air passes at high speed then it creates high
pressure at top and low pressure at bottom
b. When air passes at high speed then it creates low
pressure on top and high pressure at bottom
c. By creating a drag
d. By creating a Thrust
4. Match the correct Answers
1. A body at rest will remain at rest, and
a body in motion will remain in
motion unless it is acted upon by an
external force.”
2. For every action, there is an equal
and opposite reaction
3. The force acting on an object is equal
to the mass of that object times its
acceleration
A. First Law of Motion
B. Second Law of Motion
C. Third Law of Motion
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5. How fast is that plane? Will my car get there faster than
yours? Which of us will use the most gas on the drive
home? How can you fire a rocket up from Earth and have it
land precisely on the Moon? If you want to
answer .questions like this, you need to be able to measure
motion. We have four main ways of doing that, using speed
and velocity, acceleration, momentum, and kinetic energy.
Speed
A sports car can go 50 times faster than you can walk and 8
times faster than you can run. That's because its engine
turns gasoline into power much more quickly than your
body can burn food to pump your muscles. The faster a car
burns gas, the quicker it can go—the more speed it has.
In science, we define speed as the distance something
goes in a second. You can figure out a car's average speed
by dividing how far it goes by how long it takes to get
there. If a car is going at 100km/h (60mph), it can travel
100km (60 miles) in an hour.
This is the formula for speed:
Speed = d/t
Exercise 1.1
5. Engine pushes a Plane. What causes the Plane to move?
a. Force
b. Friction
c. Gravity
d. Inertia
6. Newton's _____ law of motion explains why you may lean
sideways in a plane if the pilot turns a plane too quickly.
a. First
b. Second
c. Third
d. Primary
7. ____ is the speed of an Plane and the direction of motion.
a. Friction
b. Mass
c. Gravity
d. Velocity
Speed & velocity
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6. there. If a car is going at 100km/h (60mph), it can travel
100km (60 miles) in an hour.
This is the formula for speed:
Speed = d/t
Here, d is distance and t is time.
You can see from this that a car is a kind of time machine:
you can use its speed to get somewhere more quickly. If
you go twice as fast, you can arrive in half the time. The
faster you go, the sooner you get there, and the more time
you save. Of course, you can never actually arrive before
you leave—that would be taking the science a bit far!
Velocity is not just another word for speed: it means your
speed in a certain direction. When a Formula-1 car races
round a tight bend, its speed stays the same, but its
velocity is always changing because it's turning and
changing direction the whole time.
Suppose you drove from the North Pole to the South Pole
in a straight line at 100km/h (60mph) and then drove back
again at the same speed. Your average speed would be
100km/h (60mph), but your average velocity would be
zero. That's because your velocity from South to North
would be exactly opposite the velocity from North to South
and the two would cancel out.
This is the formula for velocity:
Velocity = d/t
Here again, d is distance and t is time. You'll notice this
formula is the same as the formula for speed. But
remember when you have to state which direction the
velocity is heading in too.
Acceleration
If you're a driver, acceleration means putting your foot
down to go faster. But if you're a scientist, acceleration also
means stamping on the brakes. That's because
acceleration means any change in your velocity. Speeding
up is an acceleration, but so is slowing down—it's just a
negative acceleration. And because your velocity is your
speed in a certain direction, you accelerate every time you
go round a corner, whether you change speed or not.
A car is a heavy lump of metal and it takes a lot of force to
get it moving, speed it up, slow it down, or turn it round.
The heavier something is, the more force it takes to
accelerate. That's why trucks take longer to accelerate than
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7. than cars, even though they have much bigger engines
Airplanes are very Heavy, hence everything will
be slow, and for that you have to move Controls
very slowly
People compare cars by seeing how many seconds they
take to accelerate from 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph). If a car can
go from 0-100 km/h in 5 seconds, it changes its velocity by
100km/h in 5 seconds, so its acceleration is 20 km/h per
second. That's the same as changing your speed by 5.5
meters/second every second. Scientists write that 5.5 m/s/s
or 5.5m/s2 (and say it out loud as "five point five meters
per second squared").
This is the formula for acceleration:
a = v/t
Here, v is velocity and t is time
Exercise 1.2
8. If you flew a airplane for 90 minutes and covered a
distance of 300 km. What was your average speed?
a. 3.33 KM/Hour
b. 300 KM/Hour
c. 200 KM/Hour
d. 150 KM/Hour
9. If you flew a distance of 500 Km at an average speed of
180 KM/H. How long did you take to cover the distance?
a. 2 Hours 47 Minutes
b. 2 Hours 77 Minutes
c. 2 Hours 30 Minutes
d. 2 Hours 15 Minutes
10. What is the average velocity of a Airplane that moved
400 km East and 800 km West in 2 hours?.
a. 600 KM/H
b. 500 KM/H
c. 200 KM/H
d. 100 KM/H
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8. Knowing Airplane
Controls
Chapter 2
What are we going to Learn
• Airplane Controls
• Elevator
• Ailerons
• Rudders
• Throttle
• Trim
This lesson will introduce the basic controls of aircraft, and their
use. For many of you these will be well known, but for others they
may be yet unfamiliar. A proper understanding of the controls and
how best to use them is essential to the proper and precise control
of our aircraft that will be required in the lessons to come.
Elevator
This control will cause the aircraft to pitch up (pulling back / mouse
down) or down (pushing forward / mouse up). This allows the
aircraft to climb or descend.
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9. Ailerons
These controls will cause the aircraft to roll left or right in
order to make turns. These function by moving the joystick
sideways, or the mouse left / right in the control box.
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10. Rudder
Use of the rudder will cause the aircraft to 'yaw' or skid left
or right. This is also the usual method used for steering on
the ground. Input will depend on your control setup. Real
aircraft use pedals -one for each foot- and there are USB
rudder pedals available for computer flight sim use (CH
Products and Saitek are two manufacturers); pushing the
left pedal will yaw the aircraft to the left, and vice-
versa.More common, however, is a 'twist grip' joystick,
which in addition to moving forward and backward, left
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11. and right, can be twisted for rudder control. If you are
using a mouse for control, then X-plane will automatically
input some rudder for you when you use the ailerons. For
full control of the aircraft, however, you need to have at
least a joystick with a twist grip.
Throttle
The throttle controls the engine power to increase or
decrease airspeed. You can increase the throttle by
pushing the joystick throttle slider forward, or by pressing
and holding <F2>. Slide the throttle back to reduce
power, or press and hold <F1>. Alternatively, you can click
and drag the throttle handle up and down with the mouse
when in panel view (it is a black or grey knob, and you
may need to scroll down to see it).
Trim
Trim is used to set a constant force on the controls, so you
don't have to constantly hold the joystick in a deflected
position to keep the aircraft pointing the way you want it to.
To trim nose-up, press ']' and to trim nose-down, press '['.In
practice, if you find yourself having to hold the joystick back a
bit to stop the aircraft from diving down towards the ground,
you can trim up (hold ']') so that you can centre the joystick,
and the controls will be set in position to hold the nose up
without your input. My preference is to assign joystick buttons
to the Trim Up and Trim Down commands; many real aircraft
do this. You can also click and hold on the trim wheel in the
panel view, near the top to trim down, or near the bottom to
trim up.
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12. Exercise 2.0
11. What is the function of Ailerons?
a. To move the aircraft up and down
b. To rotate the aircraft up and down
c. To roll the aircraft left and right
d. To turn the aircraft
12. What is the Function of Elevator?
a. To pitch up and down the aircraft
b. To climb and decent the aircraft
c. To stop the aircraft
d. To turn the aircraft
13. What is the Function of Rudder?
a. To turn the aircraft on Air
b. To roll the aircraft on Air
c. To turn the aircraft on Ground
d. To Stop the aircraft
14. What is the Function of Trim?
a. To Turn the Aircraft left or right
b. To keep the aircraft at a desired altitude or at a
constant climb/decent
c. To climb up and Go down
d. Assist Landing and Take Off
15. What is the Function of Throttle?
a. To go up and down
b. To stop the aircraft
c. To increase and decrease the speed
d. To control engine power
16. If you decent @ 1000 ft per min, how long will you
take to decent from 35000 feet to 20000 feet.
a. 10 Min
b. 20 Min
c. 15 Min
d. 5 Min

13. Fuel Calculation
Chapter 3
What are we going to Learn
• Key Terms used in Aviation
• Fuel Calculation for Cessna 172
Key Terms Used in Aviation
★NM is Nautical Miles, A nautical mile is a unit of measurement
defined as exactly 1,852 metres (6,076.1 ft; 1.1508 mi).
Historically, it was defined as one minute of latitude, which is
equivalent to one sixtieth of a degree of latitude. Today, it is a
non-SI unit which has a continued use in both air and marine
navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters.
★Kts is Knots, The knot (/nɒt/) is a unit of speed equal to one
nautical mile per hour, exactly 1.852 km/h (approximately
1.15078 mph). The ISO standard symbol for the knot is kn.
Worldwide, the knot is used in meteorology, and in maritime
and air navigation—for example, a vessel travelling at 1 knot
along a meridian travels approximately one minute of
geographic latitude in one hour.
Cessna Sky-hawk 172SP. In the specifications of this C172 we
discover a specific range (this is the maximum range to fly in NM)
of 638 NM.
The cruising speed is 124 kts. Divide the specific range by the
cruising speed and we get the “Endurance”

14. the Endurance is 638 / 124 = 5,1 hrs; this means that you
could fly ~5 hours with max. fuel loaded.
But what is max fuel loaded in terms of litres/USG or
kilo’s…?
In the specifications of this C172 we learn that the max fuel
allowed is 318.00 pounds (lbs) or else in gallons: 53 USG.
With this information we can calculate that
:: the Average Fuel Consumption per hour is the (Fuel
capacity in USG) divided by the (Endurance) 53 / 5.1 ~ 10
USG/hr
Now the trip:
If you want to fly a trip of say: 248 NM with an average
speed of 124 kts, your Flight Duration is:
:: Flight Duration= Distance to fly in NM divided by
Average Speed in kts equals 248 / 124 = 2.00 hrs
Your Fuel Needed = Flight Duration x Average Fuel
Consumption per hour and in this case: 10 USG x 2 hrs =
20 USG
In case of emergency there is a 45 minutes rule, saying that
you need extra fuel for 0.75 hr; in conclusion we need 2,75
hrs x 10 USG ~approx. 28 USG to buy.
Exercise 3.0
You are going to fly from Pune to Mumbai on C172, the
distance between Pune to Mumbai by air is 63 nautical
miles, how much fuel you would need to buy if your
average speed is 80 knots