A320 Airbus Flight Simulator Grant Muckart Over the last two and a half months I have become totally engrossed in the fascinating world of the A320 Airbus flight simulator. The territory covered by the program is vast. There are 89 different airports to choose from spread over the whole of western and central europe, including the UK. A320 requires a minimum of 1Mb of memory to run in and runs on the STe in colour. My computer setup consists of a 1Mb STE, single internal DSDD disk drive and nicam TV. The program runs quite happily on this. There is no mention on the box of whether it would run on an TT or falcon. A320 comes presented on a single floppy disk accompanied by two stylish glossy black soft back manuals, two navigation charts A a wall poster of the inside of the cockpit of an A320. One manual covers everything to do with flying the plane and the other is a bound copy of all the approach charts that correspond with the 89 different airports available in A320. On start up the program displays an evocative front page with the word A320 written in gold against a crumpled blue satin background. There is a haunting and atmospheric sampled soundtrack playing in the background. Once this finishes you find yourself in the office of the air traffic flight controller. From here you can opt for either a duty or training flight. Next it's onto filing a flight plan. Once the formalities are over you find yourself sitting in the pilot's seat of an A320 staring out the cockpit at the runway. The screen is split about two thirds instrument panel and one third is the view out the cockpit window. The instrument dials are well designed and easily read with good use of colour to differentiate between the various gauges. The view out of the cockpit is fairly basic but surprisingly effective and anyway the real challenge is to keep an eye on what is going on inside the cockpit. All flights occur in real time but there is a way of doubling the speed up to shorten journey times. One of the great joys of A320 is the fact that there is no disk accessing to slow things down and the program will run from a hard disk if one is installed. I wasn't able to try out this option as I don't have access to one. There are a lot of nice touches and attention to detail to be found throughout the program. I suspect that putting too much detail into the ever-changing view out the cockpit would slow program execution to a crawl and the programmers have come up with a very effective compromise. One thing that is clear from the start is that an awful lot of effort has gone into A320. It is a genuine attempt to squeeze a real flight simulator into 1Mb memory. The program has great integrity and is a marvellously crafted piece of work. During the past few months I have logged in excess of 100 hours flight time in the simulator and yet to cause the program to crash. It is rock solid and virtually bug free. There are no major bugs that I can find and only a few minor ones. The main objective in A320 is to progress up the ranks, starting at student pilot, working up through pilot, senior pilot 4 commander to finally reach the coveted rank of chief pilot. In order to do this a pilot must aquire a wide variety of skills. These include mastering the basics of radio navigation, being able to read and make sense of navigation charts, flight planning and simple fuel management. It is also essential to be able to convert the constantly changing stream of infomation provided by the cockpit instruments into coherent and workable mental picture of where the aircraft is in relation to one's intended target destination. This may all seem a little daunting at first but a program such as this requires an initia1 investment of one's time and understanding in order to make any headway. When I encountered A320 I knew absolutely nothing about flight sims and it took quite a while to figure everything out. Somebody with prior knowledge of flight sims would not face such a steep learning curve as I did and could make some progress straight away. Here are some hints which I have gleaned from many long hours spent flying the simulator. I hope they are of some use. It is a good idea to customize the navigation charts and to highlight only those radio beacons and airports that are included in the simulator. This reduces clutter and indicates which airports are available and whish radio beacons can be used for navigational purposes. Flight planning can be simplified by including as much useful information as possible on the charts themselves. My method has been to tag airports and radio beacons with small blocks of colour in felt tip pen. Each block representing a different function available at that location. Fuel planning doesn't need to be complex to be successful. The fuel usage figures listed in the back of the pilots manual can largely be ignored. In their place simply allow 1000 kg of fuel for every 50 nautical miles flown. This is in addition to the 2500 kg reserve to be carried on all flights. I generally Cruise at 10000 ft. for the bulk of the flight and never carry any passengers or freight so as to keep my fuel calculations as simple as possible. Any excess fuel can be dumped as the aircraft nears its destination. The above method may seem a little rough and ready but it works surprisingly well. Be warned this program has great depth and oodles of gameplay! Before very long you will find yourself spending entire evenings racking up hour after hour of flight time in the simulator. I can thoroughly recommend A320 for anyone looking for a decent challenge that taxes their grey cells and will keep them engaged for the best part of a month. ** A320SNAP.GIF **