By Javier Rollon · 2022-11-20
There's a moment in every flight sim session that separates the casual players from the serious simmers. It happens before the engine even starts. You load into the cockpit, and everything is dark. No screens. No lights. No sounds. Just you and a dead aircraft. Cold and dark.
This is where the real flying begins.
Every aircraft has a logic to its startup. Electrical power enables instruments. Instruments confirm system health. Fuel pumps pressurize the fuel lines. Ignition creates the spark. The starter spins the engine. In that exact order. Skip a step, and you get a hot start, a hung start, or nothing at all.
Real airline pilots spend months learning startup sequences for their specific type. First officers do it by memory — battery on, external power connected, APU start, bleed air open, generator online, bus transfers, system tests, beacon on, fuel pumps, engine start sequence. The procedure exists because decades of operating experience identified the safest, most reliable order.
My CRJ-200 models the full cold-and-dark sequence. Battery master on — the overhead panel comes alive, dim orange lights confirming electrical buses are powered. Then the APU: press the APU master, wait for the self-test, press start. You hear it spin up, a rising whine that takes about 40 seconds to stabilize. APU generator online. Now you have real power.
Fuel panel next. Boost pumps on — left and right. Check fuel quantities. Set the fuel crossfeed if needed for imbalanced tanks. Now the engine start: park brake set, beacon on (so ground crew knows you're about to spin things), start switch to the first engine. Watch the N2 gauge rise. At about 20% N2, introduce fuel — the condition lever moves from cutoff to run. You hear the ignition, the EGT spikes, and the engine catches. Monitor the EGT carefully — exceed the limit and you've cooked the engine.
The whole sequence takes about six minutes if you know what you're doing. Twenty minutes if you're learning. And that's the point — those six minutes connect you to the machine in a way that pressing a "ready to fly" button never will.
The Jetstream 32 startup feels completely different from the CRJ. No APU — the Jetstream uses a ground power unit or battery only. The Garrett TPE331 engines use a different start sequence: condition lever to ground idle, starter engaged, fuel flow begins automatically at a specific N1 speed. You manage the process by monitoring ITT and watching for a positive N1 acceleration. If the start hangs — N1 stops increasing but ITT keeps climbing — you abort immediately. Close the condition lever, let the engine cool, try again.
I modeled hung starts in the Jetstream because they happen in real life. About one in fifty starts, you'll get a sluggish light-off that threatens the ITT limit. It keeps simmers honest. You can't just mash the starter and walk away.
Print the checklist. Seriously. Even experienced simmers miss steps when they try to do it from memory in a new aircraft. I include checklists with every aircraft I sell, and the support emails I don't get from checklist users versus the ones I get from "I'll figure it out" types is telling.
Take your time. A rushed startup leads to skipped items, which leads to anomalies in flight that you can't diagnose because you don't know what you didn't configure. "Why is my trim not working?" Because you didn't set the trim reference during preflight. "Why are my radios dead?" Because you skipped the avionics master switch.
Cold and dark isn't a chore to get through before the real fun starts. It IS the real fun. Every switch you flip connects a system. Every gauge that comes alive confirms the aircraft is waking up. By the time you push the throttles forward for takeoff, you understand the machine you're sitting in. That understanding makes you a better pilot — virtual or otherwise.
Javier Rollon develops aircraft for JRollon Planes. Follow on Twitter.