Glider Soaring on Flight Simulator X

Fly gliders is a fun undergo, and FSX has added features that now allow us to fly gliders is some realistic waye. Keep reading to learn how to fly a sailplane in Flight Sim X.

Go to in game's "Free Flight" by selecting it on the main menu.

Select the glider you want to fly.

Select the airfield were you want to depart and hit Fly now.

Once airplane and scenery is loaded hit Ctrl + Shift + Y keys simoultaneously, this will "call" the tow plane.

After a few seconds you will feel tow plane starting the take off run, once reach hundred feets above the runway, hit the G key to retract the landing gear.

Keep your glider behind and a little over the tow plane flight path at all times.

Once you reach 1500 feet above the groud you can hit the Shift + Y key combination to release tow airplane rope.

In order to keep flying you have to maintain over sunny areas and objective structures, as thermals (hot air ascending) are belike to be over these areas, and fastness the glider adrift.

If your glider is equiped with a variometer you will hear some beeps, high pitched and fast beeps indicates your plane is being elevated by upward air flow, higher the pitch and faster the beeps indicates stronger level of ascentional forces. If it drifts too low, start a shallow dive until the variometer beep pitch raises backwards up.

When you are willing to land, ask ATC for landing clearance, point your plane on the landing pattern to your airfield, once in "with the wind" pattern hit G key to extend the landing gear. You must use the speed brakes and flaps to put your airplane under the correct glide path and speeds.

These procedures will let you fly gliders and have a good time, but with the inherent game limitations, you will not be able to soar on ridges and with more realistics thermal environment. On my next article I will explain you how to fly gliders under realisting soar environments, including rigde soaring.

Where do you get more resources? Get new FSX gliders and FSX scenery