I don’t recommend you read the safety briefings at the end of the Robinson R22 manual, you will never set foot in a helicopter again. Low RPM rotor stalls and zero-g roll-overs. There’s one bit which says the rotor will flex so much that it will chop the tail boom, but this is irrelevant as you are doomed anyway. The copy of flight sim arrived.

Spent most of the day on renderer code again, still plodding along quite nicely. Walked the dog.

Went to the gym and did combat, it was very warm. Then came back and did some more work. Finally installed the flight sim and got the R22 up and running. I’m actually very impressed after setting every possible option to realistic it’s just as much of a bitch to handle as the real thing. Don’t have my flight stick yet, so trying to fly it with an XBox controller isn’t easy. But things like airspeed and RPM drop were spot on. It even has Gloucester airport so after I managed to get the bloody thing off the ground I managed to fly fairly stably along the M5. I then crashed it in a field trying to land. I think it’s going to be quite a good training aid, I look forward to doing some more hovering practice.