what makes you personally think that you are an expert? Was it when you reached expert level, was it when you accomplished your first approach and landing with ATC without getting ghosted ( Like i have been on my first session on the expert server :)
I edited my question because i think some people felt insulted because i asked the question if someone can be an expert when he can not fly a plane in IF manually.
: For a pilot, as far as i believed to know, it is the most fun part of every flight. The landing by hand. Did things change?
From a certain point on, should someone who got the grade 3 or 4 or 5 and is flying on expert not be able to handle his plane manual? Or learn it? Every landing done by hand, in for example, crosswinds and by night , when it was a good one, makes, can speak for myself only,me happy ( in IF, in real it would be weird when i would ask the captain after landing if he doesnt want to applaud me because we did not crash ) I see many with thousands of landings and 100.000 XPs but they still can not fly by hand. This is please a discussion without emotions, there are enough flying around by hand that better should have used autopilot, and my approaches are for sure also not always what i consider " THAT approach looked like i belong to the expert server "…no for sure i was then happy it was night and i hoped not too many looked at the disaster while holding short.
‘Expert pilot’ a pilot who understands how to fly with some degree of realism that caters to others who would like to be more realistic and adopt more real world procedures. Have a full understanding of how to fly the aircraft, what everything does and to make use of it all to fly as best as you can. And finally to be able to interact with ATC effectively and understand it all fully, a lot of people don’t get to this stage until they make it to IFATC or start training for it.
There’s the experts who do the bare minimum and just follow instructions and maintain basic realism of server rules… Then there the experts who pull up a checklist and all of that fun jazz… I have been starting to utilize checklists and I love the feeling of the added realism
Honestly someone who can fly on the expert server should just know how to communicate with ATC. That’s all they’re gonna need to survive. As for autoland, I consider it a hinderance as it jerks the plane around like crazy, and the autothrottle isn’t smart enough to deal with it.
At the end of the day, some people are here to have fun and enjoy themselves. The beautiful part of IF is that it caters to both those who aim to have fun and those who seek an immersive, realistic experience. Very, very few apps have achieved this, and this is why I love IF so much. I can go to casual to burn off some stress by doing acrobatics in a F-22, then realistically plan an IRL flight and fly it in the next hour. IF is versatile and will continue to improve as we have seen with recent updates.
Also, only flying something without the autoland function doesn’t make you an expert. Sure I like flying the 777 and 787, that doesn’t mean I am incapable of doing a manual landing. I fly the 737 family all the time and I can safely say I have the ability to fly in a professional manner. (in IF i am 13). That being said you are a real life pilot, and you have different standards than the rest of us. I am just trying to state that using the APPR function does not make you a bad pilot. APPR or ILS is something commonly used by pilots around the world. And all planes in IF have the ability to scan for ILS, which gives you a guidance as to how you need to adjust your rate of descent and heading in order to get to the runway, it just doesn’t do it for you.
let the emotions away :) Don’t feel personally insulted when one asks a question. If you for example would say: It is not expert like to fly all appr. by hand, because you can not fly as exact as the autopilot does…Yes that is what i would like as an answer. Because you would be right. As i stated in my topic :“And no, i am not perfect, i dont have the most XP nor landings here and so on.”
Nor did is say " i am an expert" . I asked what in your eyes makes an expert . @Chatta290 wrote a very nice reply. You started immediately with " oh look he has the flaps out way too far " . That is not expert like.
See this is a response where i say : Yes. You are right, operating the Autopilot requires skills, especially when flying in an area with heavy traffic and fast given commands by ATC. If you say this makes you an expert, then i am really with you and my question is answered :)
