>First, the skill Russell deployed from (only?) having used a PC flight simulator surprised me. If Russell in fact never had any flight experience outside a sim

>First, the skill Russell deployed from (only?) having used a PC flight simulator surprised me. If Russell in fact never had any flight experience outside a simulator, well, I'm just stunned at what he was capable of doing. (Linked in article, here for convenience.) [0] Taking off and simply flying around are the easy parts. Playing a couple hundred hours of simulators would get you a nice feel for hand flying, especially if you had a PC yoke and rudder pedals. You could download a good plane model and know where absolutely everything is in the cockpit as well.