I thought that I was being productive!

Flying is expensive so I thought if I purchased Flight Simulation Yoke, Pedals, throttle and Played Flight sims while doing an ONLINE ground school from an accredited online school that I would be ahead of the game when starting my real life lessons and in return more productive and with a better understanding.

I have now went to two schools to inquire about full time lessons and when i mention i have already completed ground school and I have been using flight simulators I get a look of disgust and in one case they started belittling me saying well if you aren't going to take are ground school i am not going to train you and that flight simulators aren't real life and that now he has to deal with all my bad habits.

Now id like to say I planned on taking the schools ground school anyways I just feel now i would understand and grasp things easier.
I also didn't and do not claim to know what I am doing because of a flight sim game, I mentioned these things casually while the potential instructors were telling me about the min requirements and what the actual average is and to expect to spend more then the numbers written down.
I mentioned I was aware of that and i have been trying to be productive by self learning on the flight sim and i told them about the online ground school.

Anyways I was felt very unwelcome at both schools and I am fairly shy so i don't think it was my attitude hah I was actually very confused and felt stupid for bringing those things up.

So did i waste my time and money or where they just hoping to soak up all my money?

The ground school is no problem, but there’s about zero chance that playing flight sim will benefit you even slightly when it comes to learning to fly. Did you buy the Transport Canada flight training manual or another real training manual, and start with the early exercises? What training regime did you engage in, in using the simulator to learn, and how did you measure your progress? You would be an unusual student indeed if you had taught yourself the subtle but necessary skills you learn in the early lessons, and even more unusual if you had done it without the complex cues provided by a real airplane.

If a real student turns up and says, hey, I’ve worked through exercises five, six and seven on my sim, and power on stalls are just wild, then I know things are going to go well. If they tell me about their prowess on IL Sturmovik, or the fabulous scenery pack they downloaded so they can buzz the St. Louis arch - not so much. Only you know what happened here.

It depends on how the conversation went, but It’s a warning sign for an instructor when they are trying to teach you something important - hours requirements etc - that you immediately jump in with why you’re special or different. Again it depends on how the conversation went, but there’s going to be a lot of the instructor teaching and you learning, in your future, if you become a pilot, and maybe they didn’t feel that got off on the right foot with you trying to tell them that your flight sim experience is going to help, when they know it isn’t.

On the other side of the coin, it’s a good sign that you’re keen, and have initiative, and they should recognize that. It’s easier to turn someone who’s keen, but going in the wrong direction, into a great student, than someone who’s lazy or entitled.

There is a lot of very poor customer service in the flight training industry, and there are also a lot of students who think that since they are paying a lot of money they should get their egos stroked like they would at a very expensive spa. It’s very hard to tell from a description where things lie here.

However - since you are the customer - you should keep looking until you find somewhere you feel comfortable.

I did not mean to come across any type of way and i don't think i did but point taken.
Although I still think it helps with understanding the instruments and procedures.
Of course it is not like real life but I would think understanding what everything does and why on and in the same type of aircraft i would be using is a benefit. Plus all the theory from ground school, I would think I would be +1 over knowing nothing.
And the game does have PPL lessons and yes not the same as real life but the procedures on paper are the same.
They also have a simulator so idk lol
Next place i go, i will keep it to myself and if ground school and the sim work helps me grasp things easier then great i will look like I am picking up quickly.

I don't see anything wrong with taking an online ground school from a credible school personally (I did so for my CPL heh), but I think mentioning that you flight sim can annoy a certain group of instructors. I think the bad rep of flight sims come from people who walk into a flight school thinking that their thousands of hours on their PC simulator makes them competent, although instructors who don't tolerate it may sometimes have ego problems themselves. In any case, I would suggest you try not to mention it to an instructor next time unless you know he/she can tolerate it, because it can get you off on the wrong footing.

One of the things instilled in instructors is to teach their students primacy: learning how to do something the right way the first time. Flight sims are good for learning, but they can certainly teach you bad habits (like not looking outside and being overly fixated on your instruments), which breaks this primacy concept. Personally, I think the instructor should have treated you with a little bit more courtesy as an interested customer, but this is kind of the way things are.

Back when I was instructing some years back, I allowed my students to knock themselves out with flight sims so long as they realize that it's not a substitute for real-life flying and what the dangers are. In the end, they are good training tools that can complements learning, and it saves both the students' money, and the instructors' time. Even in the airlines, I know plenty of colleagues who use personal flight sims to help keep their skills up, or to prepare for their next ride, or to understand the difficulties of their next sector.

Just realize that there is a lot that go into the very basics of flying, and that flight sims cannot replace the real world learning that goes into teaching you these basics. You can use your sim to practice and explore, but don't let it override your real-world learning. Also avoid getting ahead of yourself. It will save your life one day.

If you got benefit from it, learned a bit, and had a bit of fun in wasn't a waste...

Re: flight sim, if you go on to do IFR training, I found it hugely helpful just loading up a basic IFR panel and fly all the lessons, approaches/holds/missed approaches/etc I was doing in training on MS sim ahead of time.

Pissed off the instructor/owner, who couldn't soak me for more on the "flight simulator" POS the flight school had at 50bucks an hour or something, because I had all the lessons worked out already... saved me money for sure.

Good luck.

Since you don't have any feel for the plane flight sims make you preoccupied with the instruments rather than looking outside like you're supposed to. This is a hard habit to break when you get in a real plane.

...laura

To give you a little perspective... I work on Level D flight simulators and I had 1000+ hours of experience in them at the time when I went to do my PPL. Even in a full motion simulator with proper control loading and flight dynamics more realistic than you can get at home it was quite a big set back because of all the bad habits I had developed.

On the flip side, the simulator has been incredibly helpful for learning instrument procedures but you need to learn the basics in a real airplane, there's no subsitute.

altiplano wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:09 am
Re: flight sim, if you go on to do IFR training, I found it hugely helpful just loading up a basic IFR panel and fly all the lessons, approaches/holds/missed approaches/etc I was doing in training on MS sim ahead of time.

Endorse.

Flying an approach accurately on flight sim, using a keyboard and inputting some gusty winds, is far harder than the real thing --

altiplano wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:09 am Pissed off the instructor/owner, who couldn't soak me for more on the "flight simulator" POS the flight school had at 50bucks an hour or something, because I had all the lessons worked out already... saved me money for sure.

I'm sure you were a joy to teach. Not having you around as long very likely took some of the sting out of it for the instructor/owner after making the mistake of taking you on as a student in the first place.

5x5 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:13 am

altiplano wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:09 am Pissed off the instructor/owner, who couldn't soak me for more on the "flight simulator" POS the flight school had at 50bucks an hour or something, because I had all the lessons worked out already... saved me money for sure.

I'm sure you were a joy to teach. Not having you around as long very likely took some of the sting out of it for the instructor/owner after making the mistake of taking you on as a student in the first place.

Yeah, I was a fucking joy to teach. I came to every lesson ready, prepared, and wanting to progress... I wasn't some kid getting my licenses paid by my parents and money to blow... I was working, paying my way, and paying for my flying with nothing to fall back on... every dollar counted.

We had a laugh about it that I smoked through that stuff, that he couldn't get more easy money out of me...

In fact that same guy offered me job a couple years later, so he clearly thought little of me...

Do you think spending remedial time in a "simulator" at a buck a minute is worthwhile? The reason schools do that is so they aren't wasting time in a multi in the air trying to walk you through your hold entries or whatever while you just try to manage the basics... if you get it, you move on, if you don't, you pay for more sim before you see an airplane... and it's easy money for the schools...

I don't know why you come at me with insults? I'm not talking to you in the first place, and I'm making a fair recommendation to a newb just coming up...

You should check your attitude because you haven't got a clue.

altiplano wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:27 pm
I came to every lesson ready, prepared, and wanting to progress... I wasn't some kid getting my licenses paid by my parents and money to blow... I was working, paying my way, and paying for my flying with nothing to fall back on... every dollar counted.

Double endorse.

Life for way too many is the Bank of Mom and Dad, or Bank of government grants to party in school. You know being a pilot isn't a right? Very little is a right.

Now let's bring in guaranteed income to sit on ones butt playing call of duty........

Don't begin to get any of that.

rookiepilot wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:57 pm Bank of government grants to party in school.

As a past leech of those funds, I can confirm they were awesome.

lownslow wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 4:09 pm

rookiepilot wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:57 pm Bank of government grants to party in school.

As a past leech of those funds, I can confirm they were awesome.

Points for honesty and humour.

Homeless Dog wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2019 1:48 am So did i waste my time and money or where they just hoping to soak up all my money?

No... or maybe. To both questions. It's complicated.

Some schools/instructors will knowingly take you for a ride and soak up a bunch of your money and some will do it accidentally. Others will take an unprepared student flying (which ain't free) because the student demands it, only to be blamed for wasting time and money later. Who wastes money and how is a whole other discussion unto itself.

Did you screw yourself up with sim time? Maybe a little, but it should mostly be fixable with the right attitude. The reason it isn't entirely reversible is because of the learning factor of primacy: that which is learned first forms the strongest impression. So if you taught something to yourself, but you taught it wrong, you will have to fight against the nature of your own memory to get it straight. There are aviation tidbits I misunderstood when I started twenty years go that I still have to think extra hard about today in order to be confident in my answer. Where this will probably manifest with you is that a home simulator (and really every simulator) focuses on the instruments while a good VFR pilot focuses on everything but the instruments. I could talk for days on the subject but the simple reason for that is that the performance of the airplane is very much anchored to its flight attitude relative to the horizon. In a sim you find yourself using the artificial horizon, a small three inch gauge front and centre, while in real life you want to reference the actual horizon as it surrounds you and can be seen in your peripheral vision as well. The other reason to look outside is because that's where the stuff is that you can hit, whether it's something you want to hit like a runway, or otherwise.

The other thing is that every instructor at some point has had a student that refuses to learn. They already know everything (spoiler alert: they don't) and nine times out of ten they're a sim ace. Continue to approach your training with humility, accept that you may be wrong about things, and try not to bring past baggage to your lessons. If your instructor teaches something that you understood differently from prior experience, you'll want to approach it more like "I thought it was like _______, and how is that wrong or different from what you're saying," rather than, "Nope. Wrong. I've always done it this other way."

Hope that's some help.

I think for the initial PPL, a simulator like P3D or X-Plane, won't be overly useful. For your instrument rating on the other hand, they will be incredibly useful. As others stated, practicing IFR procedures on a flightsim CAN be hugely beneficial. When ever I develop LOFT training scenarios, I run them first on a flightsim at home, prior to bringing them to the larger more expensive sims. I've found this to save me oodles of time, and allows for me to write notes and plan events much easier then if I had been doing it in a Class D. I don't find the flying overly realistic at home, but it does allow to see how things will look, workout, where holds should be, when engines should fail, which missed approaches are more heavy cognitively, that sort of thing.

PS

What the others have said... Most instructors cringe a bit when they see a student flying too much on a Flight Sim program unless they're learning IFR procedures. The problem is that a sim program teaches you to look mainly at instruments rather than the beautiful horizon outside, and often the student doesn't know how to scan and interpret instruments effectively yet, and usually have learned some hard habits to break. I can't count how many times I've used my map to cover a student's instruments when I noticed he didn't know how to Trim the aircraft or could not hold a heading. Ab-initio students need to learn how to interpret the horizon they see outside first, and above all else before other complexities are added to their training. That's why Attitudes and Movements is one of the first lessons... it's the foundation.

Now.. for IFR practice, that's different. The Sims can be very very handy as long as you've been taught already how to do a proper scan of your instruments and use the Attitude Indicator effectively. (again, emphasis on the artificial attitude)

This coming from a guy who's told over 200 students to "look outside more"

Hey

I don't think that it is a waste of time. I started my flight training after 5 years 'playing around' with my flight simulator. The transition from computer 'flying' to the real thing was actually pretty easy for me. I was happy to see that I was already quite familiar with the aircraft instruments and avionics, radio communications and airspace layout etc I believe that the transition was fairly easy because I knew that real flying has anything to do with flight simulation. You can't say 'oh I know how to stall, I practised 1000x on my PC'. Yes, your plane will stall in your sim, but you won't! Not being able to feel the REAL physics and aerodynamics that surround your airplane and body significantly lower the use of FS for learning how to fly. I have seen at least a dozen of guys that they struggled so much breaking habits induced by the over use (or misuse) of their personal flight simulators. An example that perplexed me is this private pilot landing his Cessna through his instruments, checking the A/S indicator, AH, VSI and Altimeter every 2 seconds instead of looking outside and learn how to really feel that plane and land it without any instruments in sight.

Flight Simulators are a GREAT tool for IFR training. Being able to shoot any approach you want, analyze your path and spot mistakes, play with the weather, simulate instruments failures, or simply prepare for your next flight test/check-ride is an invaluable resource. I know a lot of active pilots using it in a regular basis, as a tool to keep their skills, plan their next sector or simply have fun! And being able to connect to Foreflight makes it even better. I learned how to use Foreflight connecting it to my sim. Way better to figuring it out up in the air.

Personally I believe that flight simulation has been a part of me becoming a pilot. I don't blame it as a bad habit maker. It is just a learning tool. For example I don't do NDB APPs in real life on a daily basis, so a way to keep my skills sharp is taking my virtual aircraft for a ride and shoot a NDB app down to minimums, go missed and do some NDB holding... and I'm having fun because there is no pressure of fuel consumption because the best thing of flight simulation is that the...FUEL IS FREE!!

I think the only person who can really answer the question of whether time and money were wasted is you. Did you enjoy playing flight sim? What else would you have done with the time and money?

Groundschool is like any academic course in that a good instructor can certainly accelerate the process but most people can learn the material even without formal instruction. It really doesn’t matter which groundschool you take as long as the knowledge is there. With all flightschools in Canada having to comply with TC regs it’s a wash.

As to the flight sim, nobody knows for sure whether it works, and every student is different. I’ve had some strong students who are avid flight sim players, X-plane 11 in VR (occulus?), and they seem to think it helps them. I’ve had others who have never done it and are equally strong. I’ve had individuals in both groups who have failed out of training. If you think it helps, then use it.

The USAF is currently running studies on the efficacy of VR gaming, particularly for teaching formation. I’m very interested how that turns out.

I found my flight sim useful for AFTER I completed a lesson. Mainly getting the order of systems down. (I.e.- downwind checks, carb heat, landing light etc.)
Aside from that, it wasn’t overly similar to actually flying.

Useful, yes. But not realistic enough to make any FI be happy about it.

Go find an instructor and school you like, use the sim to get your head wrapped around what they’re teaching you and have fun!

I don't believe you've wasted anything. You gained experience, in my perspective. This showed you what's right for you and what's not. I assume you're still young, so don't stress too much about it. Money will always come back. We live in an era where we can easily make money from our phones. You just need to invest in some financial education, and there you go! Either way, back to your story: perhaps you'll find another school. You thought the simulators were a good idea, there was no one to tell you otherwise. Their loss!