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CHAPTER 7. A BASIC FLIGHT SIMULATOR TUTORIAL
The little purple ball in the bottom of the turn indicator shows the sideways forces. In real life you would feel these as your turn, however it is not possible to simulate these, so you must simply keep an eye on the ball. If you turn neatly (using the rudder a little bit), the ball will remain centered. If the ball is pushed say rightwards, this means you the pilot too are pushed rightwards. Like in a car turning to the left. During a neat turn in an airplane, even a strong turn, the passengers never endure a sideways force. They are only pushed a little harder on their seats by the centrifugal force. By experimenting you will notice you can make much steeper turns by banking the airplane to high angles and pulling back on the yoke. Turns at over 60◦ bank angle are the realm of aerobatics and military flying, and dangerous is aircraft such as the Cessna.
7.5
Taxiing on the ground
While FlightGear starts you by default conveniently lined up on the runway and ready to go, you may be wondering how to get your aircraft from its hangar, along the taxi-ways to the runway. This is taxiing. The picture below shows the instrument. It displays how fast the engine is turning in hundreds of revolutions per minute (RPM).
Type the Page Up key a few times, until the tachometer is showing 1,000 RPM (as shown above). If required type the Page Down key to decrease the engine speed. At roughly 1,000 RPM, the airplane will move forward on the runway, but it will not accelerate and take off. Type the “.”key (Shift-; on Azerty keyboards). The airplane will make a sharp turn to the right. If you keep the “.”key down the airplane will halt. When you type the “.” key, you are activating the brake on the right wheel of the airplane. To activate the brake on the left wheel, use the “,” key. The “,” and “.” keys simulate two brake pedals located at your feet on a real airplane. Using the throttle and the brake pedals you can control the speed of the aircraft and cause it to turn on the ground. The brakes can be very useful when taxiing slowly on the runway. You can also steer the nose-wheel of the aircraft. In a real airplane this is done by pushing the rudder pedals with your feet. You push with your feet on the side you want to