I find that as I fly FSX more and more, I try to make it as real a possible. No HUD's, no GPS; just flight maps, the Mark One eyeball and the instruments on the panel of the aircraft I'm flying .
Which are invariably almost always pre-1945 era, if not positively Vintage. And one of the toughest things I having to come to grips with is using the Airspeed Indicator as a navigational tool.
Aircraft of that era were equipped with an airspeed dial that measured Indicated Airspeed ie air density, not airspeed over the ground. Indicated airspeed is crucial for a pilot to know, to ensure he stays within the boundaries of the aircraft's performance eg stall speeds, airframe limits etc. But at anything other than sea level they are no indication of his true through the air speed ie TAS. And it's TAS that the pilot needs to know to determine how fast he is travelling and how far he has come. Admittedly it won't tell him wind speed or direction, that he has to get from weather reports before he takes off. And then rely on said Mark One eyeball.
So a couple of questions.
* IAS is as old as flight itself. But when was TAS first understood/discovered and how was it quantitified?
* Once known, how did pilots determine their TAS? Was/is there a rule of thumb? No computers in those days.
* Why wasn't an airspeed indicator developed that measured True Airspeed?
* And finally are aircraft - GA or otherwise - equipped with such now?
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