Are Home Flight Sims helpful in PPL training MS Flight Simulator / Xplane ?

I suspect they could be helpful for an IFR rating, but did anyone find sims helpful in training for the basic PPL? One instructors says great idea,, another says sims tend you have the new student looking too much at the instruments and not enough at visual references.

Serious responses only please.. seems like endless egos and wisecracks all the time in this forum.. It's unfortunate really..

I find that they aren't. If anything they're sometimes detrimental, besides possibly getting the potential student interested in flying in the first place. They just don't provide the right feel and tend to give people the bad habit of keeping their head inside too much. Biggest problem is usually the lack of rudder pedals, and a decent yoke/ stick set up, but even if you spend the money, it still doesn't give one the same feel.

A big NO.

Whenever I get one of those sim wizards,
first thing I have to do is cover up all the
instruments to force them to

LOOK OUTSIDE

I know you're trying to help, but it's twice
as hard to teach someone when the first
thing you have to do, is unteach the bad
habits they've already got.

A PC sim is a neat tool for IFR procedure
training. Please don't confuse it with an
airplane. You wouldn't confuse a blowup
doll with your prom date, would you?

Colonel Sanders wrote:You wouldn't confuse a blowup
doll with your prom date, would you?

That depends ... on how lonely you feel.

Cheers Matey .... yes, they can be helpful to a degree ..... BUT .... in my opinion, need to used in conjunction with actual training rather than "just funnin' around." As the good Colonel stated, they can be harmful to you if you just blunder forward and engage in self-taught stuff that has to be beaten out of you later.

These programs are far more sophisticated than the certified Flight Training Devices of a couple of decades ago, which could be used to log time toward licences or ratings.

The picture below is of an ATC 510 "sim" that was able to be used as a teaching aid and log time ....... may as well be a dinosaur wallowing in the tar pits compared to the state of the art on the PC of today.

73 de from an ex VE3, VE4, VE5, VE7, and VY1 AR SK

Here's a Op Ed piece written in August 1976 issue of Flying Magazine addressing the topic "Training Tools, Or Toys?" when it comes to usefulness in flight training.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=5pLFHBE ... rs&f=false

Colonel Sanders wrote:A big NO.

Whenever I get one of those sim wizards,
first thing I have to do is cover up all the
instruments to force them to

LOOK OUTSIDE

I know you're trying to help, but it's twice
as hard to teach someone when the first
thing you have to do, is unteach the bad
habits they've already got.

A PC sim is a neat tool for IFR procedure
training. Please don't confuse it with an
airplane. You wouldn't confuse a blowup
doll with your prom date, would you?

+1, I give my student $hit for using flight sim to much, too many bad habits start in FS.

I find that they help teach things like the 5-Ts for IFR approaches. You can just keep resetting your position and just keep repeating it. Doing the same thing in real life would take hours and a thick wallet. That said I hate sims and always prefer the real thing.

Colonel Sanders wrote:A big NO.
You wouldn't confuse a blowup
doll with your prom date, would you?

Wicked!

The only thing I found it useful for was practicing the procedures on forced approaches (e.g.: Setting up glide, trying to restart) as in the plane, I was rushing everything.

Obviously one cannot really practice the most important part of the forced approach (Landing safely in the right spot) in a sim, but for getting the procedures straight in your head, I thought it was useful.

I'm going to risk the wrath of those more expert than me. Yes MS FSX was useful to me in my PPL training. But I'll also say there are a crapload of caviats.

First I have a full cockpit, rudder pedals, throttle quadrant, switch panel and both yoke and stick to simulate the airplane I'm flying at the moment. I place the quadrant and switch panel in the appropriate places for the particular airplane as well.

The key for me is the 'TrackIR' unit. It's an IR sensor mounted on the monitor, and a set of reflectors on the headset or hat. It makes the view on the monitor follow your head movements, (six axis) making for a realistic experience. Additionally I use only the virtual cockpit view, never using the 2D panel fixed to the bottom of the monitor. I also have a second monitor where I open the ATC text screen, radios etc. I also have a USB sound card for a headset. I've set up airplane sound to the main computer speakers and voice sound to the headset. I don't have to force myself to look outside the airplane, I just find it perfectly natural to do so. However I think this setup would also be useful to "catch oneself" staring at the panel and break that habit.

I found it useful for picking up cues with crosswinds, as in understanding that with a certain magnitude and direction of wind you have to turn early or late from base to final and aim the nose in 'this' direction to track runway centerline. The magnitude of these ideas are different in the actual airplane, but the intelectual 'this is what happens' is useful. also I found when flying cross country it's much easier to pick up bodies of water and roads than towns and landmarks on the charts, this turned out to be true in the air as well.

Practicing procedures, instrument flying, have also been mentioned. I also find the ability to pause inflight to collect oneself usefull when doing new exersises. As I repeated the exersise the pauses got shorter till I was doing things in real time, which got me up to speed in the airplane. This is true mostly when playing with IFR, setting up radios and navigators, but applied for me to a couple of things in VFR PPL training as well.

The biggest thing to realize is to understand the limitations of a flight sim. The graphics are good but near ground are not good enough to really detect how far you are off the runway. The most obvious thing, you're totally removed from the seat-of-pants feel of the airplane. You're physical senses are totally divorced in the sim, and are fundamental in the airplane. Understanding these limitations will make the sim a useful tool. Not understanding these limitations will make the sim a hinderance in your training.

Cheers
Gerry
130 odd hours PPL

Anything that gets and keeps people interested in and thinking about GA at times other than those 2 hours a week which is all most people can afford to spend in a real airplane (and that, only when the weather allows) has got to be a good thing.

photofly wrote:Anything that gets and keeps people interested in and thinking about GA at times other than those 2 hours a week which is all most people can afford to spend in a real airplane (and that, only when the weather allows) has got to be a good thing.

+1

Another good case for the 'Like' button.