Beginners guide to starting and flying the Cessna 172 Classic in Flight Simulator 2024

A beginners guide to starting and flying the Cessna 172 "Classic" (with analogue instruments) in Flight Simulator 2024. We're at C56 Sanger airfield, Illinois, USA. The airfield comes with all versions of Flight Simulator 2024. The classic C172 comes with the premium, premium deluxe, and aviator versions of Flight Simulator 2024.

To start the aircraft, I follow a written functional procedure that breaks everything down into "where to look", "what switches to flick", "what levers to pull" and so on - it doesn't cover everything a real-world pilot might do, but it does cover the basics, and can obviously be extended as you learn more.

You can get a copy of the functional procedure from the link below:

https://ko-fi.com/s/13ffd29910

This video demonstrates a basic circuit around the airfield, and emphasises the importance of simplifying concerns for new pilots - not trying to do too much at once. We take off, we climb to pattern altitude, we turn to the reciprocal of the runway direction, we fly down-wind while maining speed and altitude, then we turn back towards the runway, descend, slow down, deploy the flaps, and land.

Over the coming weeks and months we will look at combining these skills - with climbing turns, descending turns, slow flight, stalls, spins, recovery from unusual attitudes, crosswind landings, and more.

In the longer term we'll also look at differnt aircraft types - including twin engines, turboprops, business jets, and even the "heavies".

It's going to be fun!