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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 o
by 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 agoWhy aren't those part of the sim?
- ericpauley 6y agoWhile 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 agoVastly 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 agoThanks 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.