Flying with a German Co-pilot

I have been helping test the Polish and German versions of FSX flying missions to see if things are working well. It's very interesting to hear the lines I have come to memorize flying the missions in a different language (the Polish version has translated text, but the voice over dialog is in English, but the German version is all German).

I few Yakutat Mail Run in German today which is one of our hardest missions in the product. I botched it the first time and went into the trees, but the subsequent attempts I've greased it. It's one of my favorite missions, especially of the hard IFR missions.

Tomorrow I get to fly them in Spanish...

I also had the pleasure of showing Steve one of our real-helicopter trained testers how well I could fly Tutorial 12 when he has been having some trouble ;). Normally I fly this tutorial from spot view because, well, it's much easier that way. But being the purist that he is, he was flying form the VC and it's difficult to see the course int he R22 because it climbs steeply and then drops even more steeply before landing on the Yacht's helipad. I have completed the course in spot view in 1 minute and 51 seconds (twice), which I think is amazingly fast, but I've never tried it from the cockpit. After Steve crashed, I had to try it before heading home. With Steve as my witness, I did complete the course but it took a wopping 10 minutes and 10 seconds to do so (I made several mistakes). My arms were shaking from concentrating for so long making fine flight adjustments close to terrain. Considering I'm not a real-world helicopter pilot, and the fact that the beta testers have said they couldn't fly the course from the cockpit (many of whom are excellent helicopter pilots), I am justifiably proud of my performance!