I like to use flight sims to try and stay current
especially when i can't go out flying for real and I recently got hold of this
new Logitech 3D Pro joystick to try and add a bit
more realism to the whole flight sim experience.
That's Animal Crossing.
So i ordered this online it arrived the other day it cost me $79 dollars
and i figured what I'd do in today's video is plug it into XPlane and find out
if having something like this can actually help if you are learning to fly.
Not actually playing anything it's not even plugged in at the moment. It comes with a
USB-A connector which is a consideration if
you're running a machine like a MacBook Pro which I run XPlane on because these
don't have USB-A connectors anymore they only have the USB-C one so if you are
buying this just bear in mind that it's going to come with an older style USB.
So what you'll need is something like this which is a USB
adapter so you can plug the joystick into the adapter...
so you can plug the joystick into the adapter why does it never work first... and then
plug the adapter into the MacBook. Then apparently once
that's done all i need to worry about is opening up XPlane
and it should recognize the joystick automatically. I haven't tried it yet
though so... So let's open up XPlane and it starts
with the normal first screen. This is good so it automatically
recognizes that there's a new device plugged in it says it's an uncalibrated
device and it tells me to calibrate now.
So, let's calibrate. Axis one roll roll
roll roll yeah nice. Axis two, pitch so the lines remain red until it's got I
suppose until it's calibrated correctly.
Now the good thing about this joystick is you can yaw by actually
twisting it. So you can twist it left like that twist it right and that's done.
And axis 3 throttle. I've got this small lever on
the back here you can see this one which i'm going to
use for the throttle. Throttle forward throttle back throttle
forward. And then what I can do, this is pretty cool,
then what i can do is using all the buttons and there are loads of buttons
on this thing as well at least 15 according to this. Ican use
them to map to different functions on the
aircraft as well. For example I want to use this hat switch at the top for the
electric trim and a few of you have told me in the
past as well to use the trigger for braking.
So what I do is click on the button that i want hold brakes,
maximum, pitch trim down, pitch trim up, down...
I think that's pretty much it let's do a new flight let's pick
of course the red rocket and let's go out of an airport that we know.
Back in the cirrus vision jet let's just check that it's looking
amazing... yes it is. Let's go, full throttle
and then i can test my directional control with the yaw oh that's
brilliant. That's sensitive we've got 50 knots
we've got 60 knots 70 knots rotate. Pitch up Stef. There we go now one thing
I want to try then is this electric trim so if I let go the controls obviously
things are going to level off again but can I trim back...
It helps if my battery doesn't run out. Let's go, brakes off,
full power. It's great having the trim on the hat switch at the top because you
can trim and then you can kind of let go.
All right gear up.
All right let's just try an approach then into the runway here let's see how
accurate we can get it. Oh I didn't assign a button for flaps.
Flapless landing here, uh way fast this isn't going particularly well, this was a
terrible approach. It all comes down to a stabilized approach but the controls
here, oh i didn't gear down, gear down? Is that button... full power go
around, okay i need to map a few more keys hang on...
All right so here we are then on a three mile final into the runway let's see if
we can let's see how accurate it is to actually try and
land a plane using the joystick. I think it wants me to put my gear down.
and we just want to bring it in nice and slowly.
On the glide slope coming in a little bit fast so i'm going to take a bit of
power off. Pull back on the stick just a little bit
to bring the nose up just to slow us down.
500 feet to go it's looking pretty stable at the moment.
Famous last words from any pilot - this approach is looking great!
I do like being able to very carefully make tiny little adjustments
in the power just using this throttle lever at the bottom that's great. (TCAS warning)
Of course there's another TCAS alert low down at Moorabbin Airport.
Another student pilot. All right so a little bit of center line so we'll just
bring us around like that coming back on the power, runway is made,
flaring. God what's going on in the side of the runway there?
Flaring above the runway holding it back little bounce, holding it back,
braking, directional control. What's happening on the side of the runway?
No idea. Awesome! I'm not just saying this because I didn't want to like this
joystick too much but that was actually straightforward... why are you taxying on
the runway? I haven't even vacated, at least let me get... okay you're
taking off, fine okay i'll just give you some space, aghgh!
What I really want to use this for though is I do a fair amount of IFR
or instrument flight rules training. I want to see how good this is for things
like practicing hand flying an instrument
approach. That's looking better so overcast
conditions oh let's turn this to CDI. So we're on the localizer and now what
we're going to do is we're going to wait for the glideslope to come in
and see if we can fly this down the ILS using just the joystick. So no
autopilot no cheating like I normally would in echo yankee zulu.
Now I normally would be capturing this from three thousand feet I know I'm
below. I can try and climb up to get to the
glide slope but we're not gonna do that. I'm just gonna
chug along at two thousand feet for now just assuming the air traffic controller
held us down a little bit lower for whatever reason. It can happen,
I've had to catch the glide slope at um Schipol in Amsterdam from 2000 feet
before so they can get you to do that sometimes.
Now this is no way a demonstration of how to fly an ILS so please do not watch
this and then go and try this for real or tell your
instructor this is how Stef flew the ILS at Avalon. This is
just me testing the joystick to see if it's actually helping me with my
hand flying skills. So glideslope is coming in when we got one dot deflected
then we're going to go uh, we're going to slow the aircraft down. So slow the
aircraft down, we're going to go one stage of flaps,
we're going to go gear down, and then we're just going to ride the glide slope
down. So I'm a little bit above and now we're off localizer so i'm going
to just turn around. So I've been focusing there and
concentrating on something else and I've come way off the localizer so little
movements to fly the localizer again. All right now we're quite a bit above
the glide slope so I'm just going to reduce power a little bit to get back
down onto the glide slope. Now we're back on
localizer so let's turn back to that heading.
This is a shonky attempt to fly on the ILS I tell you. This is not
the most accurate flying i've done in my life. All right glideslope's looking a
little bit better we've got 1500 feet our minimum is 390.
Back on the localizer, you've got 1000 feet for 390.
Things start to get a little bit more twitchy as we get closer to the ILS
but i haven't got the flight director in here either which are the other two
arrows that can help you sometimes when you are trying to fly down
an ILS. It's like basically having a autopilot helping you out but i didn't
want to do didn't want to cheat with that. I'm just
hand flying using the raw data. 480 now see we're breaking visual so
let's take this off, we are visual, great let's land. So flaps down power
back, 390 we got minima there. Continue.
Lined up nicely this is looking pretty good our speed's a bit slow i know that
but i'm not used to the speeds in the vision jet.
I think i'm still doing the speeds for the SR22 but there we go. PAPI's
showing two reds two whites. Flaring, flaring and breaking
and welcome to Avalon, a typically gray Avalon. Hey
that was really good I was quite happy with that, very realistic.
Okay so after playing around with this thing for a few hours
what are my thoughts? Can you use this to like really
improve your flying and can you learn to fly using something
like this? Well from a hand flying skills perspective yeah you don't quite get the
same touch and the feel that you would obviously in the movement in
a real aircraft but in terms of using the instrumentation to fly an instrument
approach, yeah I reckon this actually could help
improve my flying. You can't replicate the same feelings
you get landing an aircraft the feeling of
you know the airflow over the control surfaces that you get flying for real
but does it help to add to the realism so it makes you feel a little bit more
immersed and therefore maybe it does make your brain think in the way that it
should be thinking. Yeah one quick comment though what I
will say is being a Cirrus pilot I do fly with a side stick so this is
incredibly realistic for me. If you fly with a control yoke
then you might not get the same kind of sensation that you would obviously
because it's a very different feeling.
This joystick, I think because it's a gaming joystick, it's really meant to be used
with your right hand. There's a little thumb bit here you can
see where your thumb rests and there's a button
I don't know what that button does I haven't programmed it but it's more
natural for your right hand to sit on this joystick. Whereas when you're
flying as pilot in command in the left seat
in a Cirrus you want to be using it with your left hand so it's a little bit
awkward but to be honest you get past that in a couple of minutes. Also I do
want to say this this is my flight sim setup this is a MacBook Pro from 2017
this joystick like I said at the beginning cost me $79
And i've got XPlane 11 running on this laptop here,
and that's it. Now you can obviously get a whole bunch of flight sim equipment
you can get throttle quadrants, rudder pedals,
multiple screens, and that's great if flight sim is is
something you want to get into seriously. But if you just,
if you're a student pilot and you're just looking for a solution to
help you you know like I said with your instrument flying or
or maybe just with how you trim the aircraft or just basically using a
flight sim to try and improve your skills at home
you don't need a massively fancy sophisticated setup.
Don't get too carried away with the gear you don't need all the gear
you can do a lot with an $80 joystick and a copy of XPlane running on a laptop
and to be honest save your money and spend it on avgas.
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