Cross-Country Soaring 2004
User Guide 
5. Quick Start
If you're eager to fly, this section will get you soaring quickly.
After installing FSUIPC and Cross-Country Soaring (CCS) (see Setup),
start Flight Simulator (FS). Start the flight of your choice (any
aircraft, any location). Set the time of
day between 1 and
If you want a demonstration of CCS’ ridge lift capabilities, then
choose the “Keel Mtn Slope Soaring” flight. This will reset the weather conditions to
conditions suitable for soaring the popular
If running FS in full-screen mode, press ALT-TAB to toggle to your Desktop. Start CCS Control Panel by selecting it from the “Cross-Country Soaring 2004” folder in the Windows Start menu. Click Exit and Launch Cross-Country Soaring. Then press ALT-TAB again to return to FS. After seeing the “initialization complete” message on screen, start soaring.
Press TAB-W or TAB-E to get the bearing and distance to a nearby thermal, and fly toward either thermal. You can press these “cheat” keys as often as you like, and pressing one often as you fly towards a thermal can help you find it more quickly by helping you fly a straighter course to it.
Once in a thermal (the glider will begin to climb), slow to near minimum sink speed, and maneuver the glider to stay in the thermal's core (the area of strongest lift). Climb as quickly as possible, because every thermal has a limited duration that diminished some even while you were searching for it. Use multiple thermals to stay aloft as long as you can or to cover distance.
After this “quick start” flight, spend some time in the CCS User Guide learning how to…
· customize soaring conditions
· create slope lift over the mountains of your choice
· use CCS for online multi-player flights
· create clouds atop thermals and more…