5 ms·

I have about 2000 hours of flight simulator time starting from when it first came out. I really miss Meigs field. I signed up for private pilot lessons. The f

by daly 3y ago

I have about 2000 hours of flight simulator time starting from when it first came out. I really miss Meigs field. I signed up for private pilot lessons. The first day with the instructor I did a walk around inspection, started the plane, talked to the tower, did a taxi and takeoff. The instructor let me fly for a while then put me "under the hood" so I couldn't see, said "It's my airplane", took control and flipped it all around, and then said "Your plane". The flight controls were all I could see. I could see that I was in a dive with rotation so I cut the throttle, centered the stick and kicked opposite rudder until the rotation stopped then regained level flight. The flight instructor said that was "pretty good but could be better". I asked him if this was a first-day test for a private pilot's license. He was shocked. He thought I was going for an instrument rating. I pointed out that this was my first time ever in a small plane and first time ever as an actual pilot. The lessons got easier after that :-) So, yeah, if you spend a year's worth of time in the sim it will help a lot.

rubyron 3y ago
As I was reading this, I was mentally preparing my reply to call BS on your story, as no instructor would do this on your first lesson. Glad to see the twist at the end - great story!
- pc86 3y ago
  Almost as unbelievable as a CFII confusing someone who had never stepped foot in a small plane before with someone going for an instrument rating?
  - jcrites 3y ago
    Yeah, it’s a cool story but not really believable. * A student in an instrument flight is doing 99.9% of the work. The instructor is really there as a guide. The instructor will expect a student to do almost everything, from taxiing the plane, to taking off, to the radios. There’s no way that the instructor will pilot the plane into the air for the student. Even PPL students on their very first lesson can taxi the airplane and be guided through takeoff. Why would an instrument student sit passively by? * Any instructor worth their salt would review the student’s logbook, and his would’ve been empty or he wouldn’t even have one. I can’t see this happening even as the result of some kind of massive mixup. * An instructor meeting a new student for the first time, for instrument flight, and instructor doesn’t even ask how many flight hours the student has? What training or experience they have? I’ve trained with a number of instructors, and none has taken me in an airplane without asking these kind of basic questions. Flying in a simulator also doesn’t generally prepare you for the preflight (walk-around). Anyone going for their instrument rating would know how to do this solo — and the instructor would expect the student to do it most likely (maybe not for instrument lessons?) — whereas someone who hasn’t stepped foot in a plane wouldn’t know how to do it at all. Are you really going to know how to check fuel levels and oil levels from the simulator? I doubt it. (There are some highly realistic simulator mods that get close though, and can simulate the preflight too.) * The original story does not use accurate terminology. (A CFII that I asked about this story wrote: “When you give the controls to a student you don’t let them aimlessly wonder under the hood you give a radial to follow or some nav aid - no one aimlessly wanders for instrument training. Dude doesn’t know basic terminology either: Anyone worth two cents would say pull the throttle, rolled out of the bank stepped on the rudder to remove the yaw.”) I’ve taken flight lessons but don’t have a PPL. I also have a lot of simulator time in DCS/MSX/XPlane.
- sidlls 3y ago
  I’m skeptical. To the point where I’ll happily call BS. Taxiing and flying a real plane is substantially different from flying MS flight sim. The physical responses of the plane to control inputs, thrust, and external forces can only be approximated by an actual physical simulator, not a desktop video game. There are other problems with the narrative, too. Instructors will generally get a much better idea of where the student is in their training and brief them pre-flight on the maneuvers to be practiced during the training flight. The instructor would have reviewed the trainee’s logbook, which should contain notes from prior training flights as well. Unless this instructor was exceptionally careless, he’d have discovered the commenter’s inexperience pre-flight. Also, the abnormal attitude/configuration the instructor put the plane in and the recovery described sounds dangerously close to a spin. It’s unlikely an instructor would choose this as the first hooded maneuver for a new instrument rating trainee.
cubicle67 3y ago
Yeah, nah, no way this can be taken at face value. If you've never flown before, this would be apparent to your instructor before you'd even got in the plane. I haven't flown for a while, but three things jump immediately to mind - The absence of your log book - Not knowing how to do a walk around inspection (yeah, I'm calling bs on that too) - Banter with the instructor
- TheBlight 3y ago
  Sims can be good for some things, especially learning avionics systems. But you can't replicate bouncing around in a single piston engine plane with the noise and sensations. If you haven't ever done it before you're not going to competently instantly fly the aircraft.
  - nomel 3y ago
    Meh, I landed the plane my first intro flight out, just from dicking around as a kid, on sims. There are people with thousands of hours of vr sim experience.
    - Matheus28 3y ago
      I hate to break it to you, but the CFI was on the controls as well.
      - nomel 3y ago
        Thanks, but beings that both of us understood the concept of self preservation, we were both aware that him having his hands on the controls was required. As you’re probably aware, I could easily feel his inputs, including the times that he helped. I turned, he helped align, and I did the tail end of the decent and touchdown. He helped keep it down once down. But, I think you’ve missed the point of what I’m saying.
        Matheus28 3y ago
        I assumed you're saying someone with exclusively sim experience could do a decent landing on the first try (that is: on center line, no bounces, not too hard, no floating for thousands of feet) & without much help. Please correct if my assumption is wrong. I just don't think that's possible. Most CFIs will be making inputs to make sure the landing doesn't endanger anyone. The student won't even realize it's the instructor making these corrections as they'll think it's the wind acting upon the control surfaces that are pushing the controls a bit. What I'm essentially saying is that the instructor was helping you way more than you think he was. Sims don't really teach how to make good landings because you don't feel how hard the landing was.
sidlls 3y ago
People reading the parent comment should be skeptical. It’s very likely at minimum an embellishment. More likely it’s simply a blatant fiction. Don’t be “that guy”: years of playing desktop flight sim does not prepare a person for even the most basic maneuvering in a real plane, whether on the ground or in the air. I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior.
- jrockway 3y ago
  > I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior. How dangerous is it to hire a CFI to give you flight lessons? They'll take you up with 0 hours of experience. They'll take you up to do your ATP cert. If the guy was like "I just found an airplane laying around in my garage and I started flying towards Japan and dropped the bomb the won WWII", that's probably dangerous and fabricated. If you know how to do a preflight inspection before, then you probably watched someone on YouTube do it before, which is basically flight training minus the FAA certification. The big idea is that if you do something wrong, your instructor is there to correct it. If you have that, you aren't being unsafe.
  - sidlls 3y ago
    It's not dangerous to hire a CFI to give lessons. Arrogance (even if it's unintentional) about one's own competence is dangerous in the pilot seat, even with a CFI in the other seat to monitor and try to take over if/when this person does something dangerous. Imagine a trainee filled with the OP's nonsense in his head thinking he can recover from a spin forcing the CFI having to fight him for control of the airplane, for example. Or maybe he lies and says he has more experience than he does, and the CFI fails to do his diligence (e.g. checking the trainee's logbook): even merely starting the engine can be a disaster waiting to unfold, much the more so taxiing or, god forbid luck get the trainee that far, takeoff.
    - j4yav 3y ago
      The whole comment history is suspicious, they portray themselves as an expert in literally any topic
quickthrower2 3y ago
[dead]
subhro 3y ago
Sounds very fishy. > The instructor let me fly for a while then put me "under the hood" so I couldn't see, said "It's my airplane", took control and flipped it all around, and then said "Your plane". The flight controls were all I could see. I could see that I was in a dive with rotation so I cut the throttle, centered the stick and kicked opposite rudder until the rotation stopped then regained level flight. That is a weird way of explaining what happened and I find it extremely hard to believe this was written by a pilot. I would have never used the word rotation and dive. They mean very different things from what the author is trying to explain. If I was writing this, I would have said, "I was put in a spin and I did blah to recover". Also, there is a very important piece of PARE missing in that commentary, the "P". It is extremely hard, if not impossible to come out of a fully developed "spin", not "rotation", without pulling power even in training aircrafts. I call this unadulterated bullshit.
bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
Other commenters are pointing out that MS flight sim alone can't prepare you for flying, and I'm thinking... what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? Surely they would've known that it was your first lesson and you had no real-life flying experience? I can't imagine them just guessing what you were there for based on your ability to taxi and take off.
- NavinF 3y ago
  > what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? All of them? I booked a discovery flight right after high school with zero experience and my instructor handed me the controls before takeoff. He took the controls for the first landing and did all the talking on the radio, but besides that everything else was under my control including the first takeoff and second landing. That one line ("He thought I was going for an instrument rating") is obviously bullshit, but this is also the kinda stuff I tell my friends when I'm teaching them something new and want them to feel like they're doing great on day 1. So I'm pretty sure GP isn't making up the whole story. He's just naive enough to take the CFI's praise literally
  - sidlls 3y ago
    Could you kindly list the clubs/schools these instructors are at? I want to add them to an “avoid at all costs” list.
    - NavinF 3y ago
      Again, this is normal at just about every flying club. Taking off is as easy as pulling the stick back and it's pretty much impossible to mess up during flight because training aircraft are all naturally stable. The CFI just needs to look for traffic and work the radio
      - sidlls 3y ago
        They key part you're missing is the "without checking prior experience." I taxiid, performed a takeoff, and most of the landing approach on my first training flight, too. The instructor briefed me thoroughly before the flight, inspected my logbook, etc. Every instructor I had after that checked my logbook and the school's internal note keeping system for notes during the pre-flight brief (I'd bet many did before then, too). It is absolutely not normal for a flight instructor to not do these things.
dmitrygr 3y ago
100% bullshit. No amount of flight sim prepares you for how a real plane feels or how to handle it. Down-voted for bullshitting people without a warning and potentially endangering people source: 11 years of flying experience
buryat 3y ago
Your first day of flight lessons? Reminds me of my first day, except I was blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, flying a helicopter in a hurricane. Instructor said, "It's your chopper," and jumped out with a parachute. Managed to land it on a moving train. The train conductor, who turned out to be the President, offered me a job on the spot.
- oblio 3y ago
  And your real name is... Albert Einstein.
kjs3 3y ago
Was that before or after you married Morgan Fairchild? Yeah, that's the ticket!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by daly 3y ago

rubyron 3y ago

As I was reading this, I was mentally preparing my reply to call BS on your story, as no instructor would do this on your first lesson. Glad to see the twist at the end - great story!

pc86 3y ago
Almost as unbelievable as a CFII confusing someone who had never stepped foot in a small plane before with someone going for an instrument rating?
- jcrites 3y ago
  Yeah, it’s a cool story but not really believable. * A student in an instrument flight is doing 99.9% of the work. The instructor is really there as a guide. The instructor will expect a student to do almost everything, from taxiing the plane, to taking off, to the radios. There’s no way that the instructor will pilot the plane into the air for the student. Even PPL students on their very first lesson can taxi the airplane and be guided through takeoff. Why would an instrument student sit passively by? * Any instructor worth their salt would review the student’s logbook, and his would’ve been empty or he wouldn’t even have one. I can’t see this happening even as the result of some kind of massive mixup. * An instructor meeting a new student for the first time, for instrument flight, and instructor doesn’t even ask how many flight hours the student has? What training or experience they have? I’ve trained with a number of instructors, and none has taken me in an airplane without asking these kind of basic questions. Flying in a simulator also doesn’t generally prepare you for the preflight (walk-around). Anyone going for their instrument rating would know how to do this solo — and the instructor would expect the student to do it most likely (maybe not for instrument lessons?) — whereas someone who hasn’t stepped foot in a plane wouldn’t know how to do it at all. Are you really going to know how to check fuel levels and oil levels from the simulator? I doubt it. (There are some highly realistic simulator mods that get close though, and can simulate the preflight too.) * The original story does not use accurate terminology. (A CFII that I asked about this story wrote: “When you give the controls to a student you don’t let them aimlessly wonder under the hood you give a radial to follow or some nav aid - no one aimlessly wanders for instrument training. Dude doesn’t know basic terminology either: Anyone worth two cents would say pull the throttle, rolled out of the bank stepped on the rudder to remove the yaw.”) I’ve taken flight lessons but don’t have a PPL. I also have a lot of simulator time in DCS/MSX/XPlane.
sidlls 3y ago
I’m skeptical. To the point where I’ll happily call BS. Taxiing and flying a real plane is substantially different from flying MS flight sim. The physical responses of the plane to control inputs, thrust, and external forces can only be approximated by an actual physical simulator, not a desktop video game. There are other problems with the narrative, too. Instructors will generally get a much better idea of where the student is in their training and brief them pre-flight on the maneuvers to be practiced during the training flight. The instructor would have reviewed the trainee’s logbook, which should contain notes from prior training flights as well. Unless this instructor was exceptionally careless, he’d have discovered the commenter’s inexperience pre-flight. Also, the abnormal attitude/configuration the instructor put the plane in and the recovery described sounds dangerously close to a spin. It’s unlikely an instructor would choose this as the first hooded maneuver for a new instrument rating trainee.

cubicle67 3y ago

Yeah, nah, no way this can be taken at face value. If you've never flown before, this would be apparent to your instructor before you'd even got in the plane. I haven't flown for a while, but three things jump immediately to mind - The absence of your log book - Not knowing how to do a walk around inspection (yeah, I'm calling bs on that too) - Banter with the instructor

TheBlight 3y ago
Sims can be good for some things, especially learning avionics systems. But you can't replicate bouncing around in a single piston engine plane with the noise and sensations. If you haven't ever done it before you're not going to competently instantly fly the aircraft.
- nomel 3y ago
  Meh, I landed the plane my first intro flight out, just from dicking around as a kid, on sims. There are people with thousands of hours of vr sim experience.
  - Matheus28 3y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but the CFI was on the controls as well.
    - nomel 3y ago
      Thanks, but beings that both of us understood the concept of self preservation, we were both aware that him having his hands on the controls was required. As you’re probably aware, I could easily feel his inputs, including the times that he helped. I turned, he helped align, and I did the tail end of the decent and touchdown. He helped keep it down once down. But, I think you’ve missed the point of what I’m saying.
      - Matheus28 3y ago
        I assumed you're saying someone with exclusively sim experience could do a decent landing on the first try (that is: on center line, no bounces, not too hard, no floating for thousands of feet) & without much help. Please correct if my assumption is wrong. I just don't think that's possible. Most CFIs will be making inputs to make sure the landing doesn't endanger anyone. The student won't even realize it's the instructor making these corrections as they'll think it's the wind acting upon the control surfaces that are pushing the controls a bit. What I'm essentially saying is that the instructor was helping you way more than you think he was. Sims don't really teach how to make good landings because you don't feel how hard the landing was.

sidlls 3y ago

People reading the parent comment should be skeptical. It’s very likely at minimum an embellishment. More likely it’s simply a blatant fiction. Don’t be “that guy”: years of playing desktop flight sim does not prepare a person for even the most basic maneuvering in a real plane, whether on the ground or in the air. I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior.

jrockway 3y ago
> I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior. How dangerous is it to hire a CFI to give you flight lessons? They'll take you up with 0 hours of experience. They'll take you up to do your ATP cert. If the guy was like "I just found an airplane laying around in my garage and I started flying towards Japan and dropped the bomb the won WWII", that's probably dangerous and fabricated. If you know how to do a preflight inspection before, then you probably watched someone on YouTube do it before, which is basically flight training minus the FAA certification. The big idea is that if you do something wrong, your instructor is there to correct it. If you have that, you aren't being unsafe.
- sidlls 3y ago
  It's not dangerous to hire a CFI to give lessons. Arrogance (even if it's unintentional) about one's own competence is dangerous in the pilot seat, even with a CFI in the other seat to monitor and try to take over if/when this person does something dangerous. Imagine a trainee filled with the OP's nonsense in his head thinking he can recover from a spin forcing the CFI having to fight him for control of the airplane, for example. Or maybe he lies and says he has more experience than he does, and the CFI fails to do his diligence (e.g. checking the trainee's logbook): even merely starting the engine can be a disaster waiting to unfold, much the more so taxiing or, god forbid luck get the trainee that far, takeoff.
  - j4yav 3y ago
    The whole comment history is suspicious, they portray themselves as an expert in literally any topic

quickthrower2 3y ago

[dead]

subhro 3y ago

Sounds very fishy. > The instructor let me fly for a while then put me "under the hood" so I couldn't see, said "It's my airplane", took control and flipped it all around, and then said "Your plane". The flight controls were all I could see. I could see that I was in a dive with rotation so I cut the throttle, centered the stick and kicked opposite rudder until the rotation stopped then regained level flight. That is a weird way of explaining what happened and I find it extremely hard to believe this was written by a pilot. I would have never used the word rotation and dive. They mean very different things from what the author is trying to explain. If I was writing this, I would have said, "I was put in a spin and I did blah to recover". Also, there is a very important piece of PARE missing in that commentary, the "P". It is extremely hard, if not impossible to come out of a fully developed "spin", not "rotation", without pulling power even in training aircrafts. I call this unadulterated bullshit.

bobbylarrybobby 3y ago

Other commenters are pointing out that MS flight sim alone can't prepare you for flying, and I'm thinking... what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? Surely they would've known that it was your first lesson and you had no real-life flying experience? I can't imagine them just guessing what you were there for based on your ability to taxi and take off.

NavinF 3y ago
> what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? All of them? I booked a discovery flight right after high school with zero experience and my instructor handed me the controls before takeoff. He took the controls for the first landing and did all the talking on the radio, but besides that everything else was under my control including the first takeoff and second landing. That one line ("He thought I was going for an instrument rating") is obviously bullshit, but this is also the kinda stuff I tell my friends when I'm teaching them something new and want them to feel like they're doing great on day 1. So I'm pretty sure GP isn't making up the whole story. He's just naive enough to take the CFI's praise literally
- sidlls 3y ago
  Could you kindly list the clubs/schools these instructors are at? I want to add them to an “avoid at all costs” list.
  - NavinF 3y ago
    Again, this is normal at just about every flying club. Taking off is as easy as pulling the stick back and it's pretty much impossible to mess up during flight because training aircraft are all naturally stable. The CFI just needs to look for traffic and work the radio
    - sidlls 3y ago
      They key part you're missing is the "without checking prior experience." I taxiid, performed a takeoff, and most of the landing approach on my first training flight, too. The instructor briefed me thoroughly before the flight, inspected my logbook, etc. Every instructor I had after that checked my logbook and the school's internal note keeping system for notes during the pre-flight brief (I'd bet many did before then, too). It is absolutely not normal for a flight instructor to not do these things.

dmitrygr 3y ago

100% bullshit. No amount of flight sim prepares you for how a real plane feels or how to handle it. Down-voted for bullshitting people without a warning and potentially endangering people source: 11 years of flying experience

buryat 3y ago

Your first day of flight lessons? Reminds me of my first day, except I was blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, flying a helicopter in a hurricane. Instructor said, "It's your chopper," and jumped out with a parachute. Managed to land it on a moving train. The train conductor, who turned out to be the President, offered me a job on the spot.

oblio 3y ago
And your real name is... Albert Einstein.

kjs3 3y ago

Was that before or after you married Morgan Fairchild? Yeah, that's the ticket!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]