5 ms·

I'm curious, what kinds of pitfalls can occur?

sowbug 6y ago
Uncoordinated flight (roughly, not being turned in the direction you're flying) feels very weird when you're experiencing it for real. It's also an ingredient of a deadly spin if you let other things also get out of control. On a sim, you won't experience much more than a certain dial reading a certain reading, and the plane will more or less fly as expected. It's important to learn coordinated flight "by the seat of your pants" to have the habit of adjusting the rudder ingrained in your muscle memory. There are other feelings, such as buffeting before a stall, that you'll miss on a sim. But flight training is very explicit about those situations, so you'll learn them when transitioning to a real plane. Avoiding uncoordinated flight is something that pervades your whole flight experience; it might be hard to retrofit it onto a sim-trained student. There are other habits, but that's the most notable one when I'm comparing the two environments.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  Why aren't those part of the sim?
  - ericpauley 6y ago
    While there is an instrument on panels that shows when turns are coordinated (a turn coordinator), fixating on it isn't really possible, and it's better to develop a feel for what coordinated flight is like, and be able to adjust automatically. Replicating this feeling in a sim is difficult because it's the interactions of motion and rotation that cause flight to be coordinated or not.
    - briandear 6y ago
      Vastly disagree. I am an instrument rated pilot about to take a commercial checkride and using the seat of the pants to determine coordination is a very bad idea. The turn coordinator is part of your instrument scan and “stepping on the ball” is a fundamental skill that you learn during primary training. In the clouds, you can be in an uncoordinated turn and not “feel” it because your inner ear is doing one thing, your eyes are doing another and using “feel” is a great way to crash. The FAA specifically advises to not fly by the seat of your pants due to the dangers of spacial disorientation. Teaching pilots to listen at all to physical sensations is teaching them how to die. Not hyperbole, but fact. VFR pilots can and should trust their eyes and look outside, but any CFI trying to train coordination through “feeling” is setting the student up for a very dangerous habit. Your inner ear lies to you. The majority of the airmanship training you get in the instrument rating is designed specifically to teach you how to ignore your body. https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/SpatialD.pdf https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media... https://www.aviation-accidents.net/tag/spatial-disorientation/ https://www.aviation-accidents.net/tag/spatial-disorientatio...
      - ericpauley 6y ago
        Thanks for the insightful reply, certainly not meaning to diminish the importance of trusting your instruments. For what it's worth, a turn coordinator isn't required equipment for VFR flying, and in either case (whether helpful or harmful), the inability of a simulator to faithfully reproduce turning forces seems like a weakness.
redis_mlc 6y ago
- no PC simulator feels anything like a real small airplane, but that's not really the main issue, which is: - learning flying yourself means you will probably learn the wrong procedures, that a CFI would correct. For example, if you're not flying a landing pattern, your landing procedure is wrong. So use a real 172 checklist, POH and flight maneuver procedures. Also how to handle ballooned landings. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot that used MSFS for 20 years.
timothyb89 6y ago
I'm about halfway toward a PPL myself and have been trying to practice with a simulator. My biggest complaint is that control inputs seem to be almost completely different from the real thing. Maybe it's the hardware I'm using, maybe it's my own lack of experience, probably some combination of the two... but it's been a mixed bag for me, largely due to the controller situation. For example, I explicitly stopped using a supposedly more realistic yoke controller in favor of a HOTAS joystick because I repeatedly found that I just _can't_ translate the physical inputs to a real plane. Yoke controllers in particular seem hard to get right (or maybe mine is just bad), but more generally, PC controller axes have a surprisingly low resolution (just 256 steps on an axis) making them wildly less precise than real thing, plus there's no force feedback. Using a completely different (and more precise) type of controller seems to help keep my brain from drawing conclusions it shouldn't. Simulators _do_ seem helpful for more abstract stuff, like going through checklists, practicing maneuvers, experimenting... so long as you're very intentional about what you're trying to learn. I think I benefited some from practicing ground reference maneuvers [0] in X-Plane with a VR headset, for example, since they're largely visual and aren't tightly tied to physical inputs. On the other hand, practicing stalls in the simulator has probably lost me a decent amount of time in the air with my CFI trying to un-learn the wrong ideas I picked up, due to both control differences and (I think) simulation differences. [0] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/airplane_handbook/media/08_afh_ch6.pdf https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...
- njitram 6y ago
  Looked at that in the past, for a more realistic experience you probably have to buy yokes like https://www.brunner-innovation.swiss/product/cls-e-ng-yoke/ https://www.brunner-innovation.swiss/product/cls-e-ng-yoke/, which have more steps and do have force feedback. Unfortunately they are quite expensive ($1000 and up..)

Uncoordinated flight (roughly, not being turned in the direction you're flying) feels very weird when you're experiencing it for real. It's also an ingredient of a deadly spin if you let other things also get out of control. On a sim, you won't experience much more than a certain dial reading a certain reading, and the plane will more or less fly as expected. It's important to learn coordinated flight "by the seat of your pants" to have the habit of adjusting the rudder ingrained in your muscle memory. There are other feelings, such as buffeting before a stall, that you'll miss on a sim. But flight training is very explicit about those situations, so you'll learn them when transitioning to a real plane. Avoiding uncoordinated flight is something that pervades your whole flight experience; it might be hard to retrofit it onto a sim-trained student. There are other habits, but that's the most notable one when I'm comparing the two environments.

lonelappde 6y ago
Why aren't those part of the sim?
- ericpauley 6y ago
  While there is an instrument on panels that shows when turns are coordinated (a turn coordinator), fixating on it isn't really possible, and it's better to develop a feel for what coordinated flight is like, and be able to adjust automatically. Replicating this feeling in a sim is difficult because it's the interactions of motion and rotation that cause flight to be coordinated or not.
  - briandear 6y ago
    Vastly disagree. I am an instrument rated pilot about to take a commercial checkride and using the seat of the pants to determine coordination is a very bad idea. The turn coordinator is part of your instrument scan and “stepping on the ball” is a fundamental skill that you learn during primary training. In the clouds, you can be in an uncoordinated turn and not “feel” it because your inner ear is doing one thing, your eyes are doing another and using “feel” is a great way to crash. The FAA specifically advises to not fly by the seat of your pants due to the dangers of spacial disorientation. Teaching pilots to listen at all to physical sensations is teaching them how to die. Not hyperbole, but fact. VFR pilots can and should trust their eyes and look outside, but any CFI trying to train coordination through “feeling” is setting the student up for a very dangerous habit. Your inner ear lies to you. The majority of the airmanship training you get in the instrument rating is designed specifically to teach you how to ignore your body. https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/SpatialD.pdf https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media... https://www.aviation-accidents.net/tag/spatial-disorientation/ https://www.aviation-accidents.net/tag/spatial-disorientatio...
    - ericpauley 6y ago
      Thanks for the insightful reply, certainly not meaning to diminish the importance of trusting your instruments. For what it's worth, a turn coordinator isn't required equipment for VFR flying, and in either case (whether helpful or harmful), the inability of a simulator to faithfully reproduce turning forces seems like a weakness.

redis_mlc 6y ago

- no PC simulator feels anything like a real small airplane, but that's not really the main issue, which is: - learning flying yourself means you will probably learn the wrong procedures, that a CFI would correct. For example, if you're not flying a landing pattern, your landing procedure is wrong. So use a real 172 checklist, POH and flight maneuver procedures. Also how to handle ballooned landings. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot that used MSFS for 20 years.

timothyb89 6y ago

I'm about halfway toward a PPL myself and have been trying to practice with a simulator. My biggest complaint is that control inputs seem to be almost completely different from the real thing. Maybe it's the hardware I'm using, maybe it's my own lack of experience, probably some combination of the two... but it's been a mixed bag for me, largely due to the controller situation. For example, I explicitly stopped using a supposedly more realistic yoke controller in favor of a HOTAS joystick because I repeatedly found that I just _can't_ translate the physical inputs to a real plane. Yoke controllers in particular seem hard to get right (or maybe mine is just bad), but more generally, PC controller axes have a surprisingly low resolution (just 256 steps on an axis) making them wildly less precise than real thing, plus there's no force feedback. Using a completely different (and more precise) type of controller seems to help keep my brain from drawing conclusions it shouldn't. Simulators _do_ seem helpful for more abstract stuff, like going through checklists, practicing maneuvers, experimenting... so long as you're very intentional about what you're trying to learn. I think I benefited some from practicing ground reference maneuvers [0] in X-Plane with a VR headset, for example, since they're largely visual and aren't tightly tied to physical inputs. On the other hand, practicing stalls in the simulator has probably lost me a decent amount of time in the air with my CFI trying to un-learn the wrong ideas I picked up, due to both control differences and (I think) simulation differences. [0] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/airplane_handbook/media/08_afh_ch6.pdf https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...

njitram 6y ago
Looked at that in the past, for a more realistic experience you probably have to buy yokes like https://www.brunner-innovation.swiss/product/cls-e-ng-yoke/ https://www.brunner-innovation.swiss/product/cls-e-ng-yoke/, which have more steps and do have force feedback. Unfortunately they are quite expensive ($1000 and up..)