Three Novice Questions About Flight Simulator

I am a novice to flight simulator, and flying. I have been enjoying flying around in a Moony Bravo in Flight Simulator. As of now, I keep the malfunction setting so no malfunctions occur. I have three questions about it.

1. Often, air traffic control tells me there is traffic in the area, and I am to report back that I see them. I look around, but I never see the other traffic. When I report back that the traffic is not in sight, they never repond. Am I supposed to see the other traffic? It seems that air traffic control should say something when I report back that I do not see the other traffic.

2. Sometimes localizers are very accurate, and others are so inaccurate, they are hardly usable. For example, landing in Saul Ste Marie, the localizer was so far off, I could not use it, and there was no altitude shown on the localizer (Yes, I was landing on the corect runway, and the localizer was set to the correct frequency). Sault Ste Marie is only an example, this has happened at other airports also.

3. My joystick is way too responsive. I try adjusting the settings, but it never seems to do anything. I am using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro.
Thank you for your help.

Dean

1- I haven't played VFR in awhile so I'm not sure what the rules are, but I don't think it's something you need to worry about. The built in ATC is not all that good anyway.

2-Have you set your VOR OBS to the runway heading? Also some runways will have a localizer, but no glideslope.

3-You should be able to adjust your sensitivities under settings->controls-> calibration. There's a slider for each axis on your joystick (i.e. pitch, roll, and yaw.) It might be called assignments, I'm not by my computer to check. Just dig around in the menus a bit.

1- I don't use this, but have also heard it's not so good.

2- I tried an approach to KCIU in the default Moony (not the Garmin glass). Both localizer and glide slope seemed to work for me (runway 16, 157 degrees, 110.3 Mhz) . Is this the airport you are using? (USA).
If so, like Traches said, make sure you have the localizer course set for 157.

3- In the flight simulator control settings try sensitivities all the way down (to the left) and add some Null Zone (slider to the right).

Thank you for your replies.

1 It sounds as though air traffic control could use some improvements. That's too bad it does not work better, because it is enjoyable to communicate with them.

2. The airpoirt I was referring to was CYAM in Canada. I tried it again this morning. I landed on runway 12 with localizer set to 109.50 and a bearing of 114. Again, it was off. I would have crashed if I was in the fog and could not see the runway. A few other localizers have been off as well, but I cannot remember which ones. Most of them are extremely accurate.

3. Those settings are what I was referring to. I can adjust the sensitivity and/or null zone back and forth, and it does not change what the joystick acts like.

I appreciate your help.
Dean

Hi Dean

2- I went over to CYAM with the Bravo and did the approach for RW 12. HSI set for 114 course. It seemed to work correctly for me (both the localizer and GS). I did notice that it's not real easy to see where you are setting the bearing on the HSI. I had to zoom in on the instrument to get 114. I remember some of the other aircraft have a feature that when you let the mouse arrow rest on the adjustment knob a little note box pops up and tells you exactly where its set, but that did not work for me on this aircraft.

3- The controls are a little sensitive for me too (using CH yoke/pedals). I've got sensitivity slider all the way down (left) and null up about 1/3 (right).

Kurt

Can you adjust your joystick settings in windows? Ctrl panel -> Game controllers/Joysticks/Devices and printers/input devices/something like one of those. Or does the joystick have its own profile software that runs in the system tray?

I just landed in Saint Louis on runway 30L. The localizer was way off - no where near correct.

Are you running the default scenery for the airport or do you have updated versions of it? It could be the airport itself is not set right.