Flight Simulators

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RogerThat

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Roger Mussa
Hello all,
With weather affecting my last few planned flights I thought about home simulators.

Are home flight sims worth it?
Are they realistic enough?
What do you all recommend for in home simulators to keep fresh and practice?
Anything MacBook/Xbox/Playstation compatible preferred.

Im curious to see what is out there, experience and opinions.

Thanks!
 
Sims are good for practicing procedures for IFR training. But for the Private, you don't have the same "feel" as being in the airplane. Plus you spend too much time looking at the instruments, whereas for the Private you need to be looking outside the airplane.
 
Are you going for your Private Pilot License, or are you doing your Instrument Rating?

Edit: I didn't look well enough - you're the fear of turbulence guy.


Yeah, ummm, I'd veto Flight Simulators except for their quality of providing entertainment.
 
Rgbeard said:
Are you going for your Private Pilot License, or are you doing your Instrument Rating?

Edit: I didn't look well enough - you're the fear of turbulence guy.


Yeah, ummm, I'd veto Flight Simulators except for their quality of providing entertainment.
Click to expand...

PPL

I have to update the "turbulence" issue thread. I made a tremendous amount of progress identifying the issue.
Ok for "entertainment" purposes, Ill pass. If it helped my learning curve, then id be interested in exploring.

Thx for the feedback
 
RogerThat said:
PPL

I have to update the "turbulence" issue thread. I made a tremendous amount of progress identifying the issue.
Ok for "entertainment" purposes, Ill pass. If it helped my learning curve, then id be interested in exploring.

Thx for the feedback
Click to expand...
This is a pretty cool tool to see how VOR's work, no need to invest in a sim setup for that:
http://www.luizmonteiro.com/learning_vor_sim.aspx

Scroll down a bit and hit 'play' to make the airplane go, then use WASD keys to bank and pitch after you dial in various OBS values to see how the needle reacts. You can add wind also to see crab angles and such.
 
I think the answer is yes, it would be helpful, if the setup is right. It would be helpful at the PPL stage if the video is good and fast. It will never be like flying the airplane, but it will help. For the IR, it will be fantastic. I just upgraded my home sim with a new laptop, and Honeycomb yoke and throttle quadrant. I use ForeFlight and X-Plane 11. You can set up X-Plane 11 to send your GPS data to a tablet running EFB software, including FF. So, I create a flightplan on the iPad, duplicate it on XP's 530W, and fly. My position, GPS altitude and heading are all displayed on the iPad just as if I were flying. I enter the approach on the iPad and GPS (this is where it differs from real life. I have a Flight Stream, and can send the flightplan including approach procedures from the iPad to the 530W by Blue Tooth.). I have moving map georeferenced display of the aircraft on the iPad, and on XP's 530W.

I find one of the most challenging aspects of instruments is where there is more than zero visibility. When going in between clouds and layers, it can really be disorienting if you're hand flying. In a solid layer, it's a little easier. XP and my laptop do a good job of depicting broken clouds, and give the same disorienting presentation to me. My old laptop just made everything gray.

I also bought the G5 add-ons for XP, and that matches the cockpit set ups. I find it very helpful to practice approaches. For example, I recently flew a practice RNAV 5 in KCBE in severe clear. I was a few dots above the GS, and was startled to look out and be below some cabins on the ridge to my left. I was looking at the bottoms of their decks. When I got home, I set up the sim to fly the same approach, and flew it several times in different weather. Seeing terrain above you on either side is not a big deal to people out west, but for flatlanders it was quite a shock.

So, my answer is yes. But just don't delude yourself into thinking that because can fly a sim you can fly a plane. There is no "Reset" key IRL.
 
I'm not sure how much help a sim is for private pilot or sport. I think in some ways they could teach things incorrectly...and I have quite a bit of sim time over the years.

For RC flying? They're great. I know a couple of people who learned RC heli by sim, and were proficient before they flew actual RC. Some RC sims have the physics good enough to do 3d flight and any aerobatics, they're really great. But full size, light plane, flying visually? I don't think the slow speed physics are good, I don't think the perspective you have is good, and I don't think the "feel", controls or forces, is good. So practicing takeoff, landing, pattern work, ground ref maneuvers, slow flight, I think that may actually be counter-productive in sim. Maybe if you have issues with pilotage, and can use a sim to practice navigation over terrain it could be good? Maybe.

Instrument flying? Completely agree that it would be great practice. Same with using a sim for the GPS unit or other systems. Way easier and cheaper to learn a Garmin on the ground than in the air.
 
For private a VR headset made the flight sim more useful to me and I used it to practice day and night pattern work and XCs.

For instrument I ditched the headset and filled the monitor with the instrument panel and practiced my scan and approach accuracy. Adding an iPad as a second touchscreen monitor was also helpful for the gps interface (much easier than using a mouse).

In both cases I found it VERY helpful for that early part of training. I don’t use it much at all anymore and instead I use a local BATD simulator for IFR practice. I still use the iPad gps trainers though.
 
How did you set up the iPad as a second monitor?
 
LesGawlik said:
How did you set up the iPad as a second monitor?
Click to expand...
I used an app called XDisplay. Then I purchased the GTN650 simulator from https://reality-xp.com/ and then in xplane dragged the 650 to the iPad monitor. Worked great.

The 650 was as close as I could find to the GTN355 in the actual plane. Being able to practice loading and using approaches at home was super helpful and touching buttons on the iPad was just like the real deal. Then I felt much more comfortable with it in the actual plane.
 
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I should mention that I also had Garmin’s 355 simulator on my iPad and that helped with general familiarity but it was the combination of working the gps into my scan and attention budget while “flying” the sim that was the biggest help. I still use the Garmin apps to refresh my memory if I haven’t flown a particular gps model in a while.
 
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For PPL, probably not. For realistic simulation, hand eye coordination - not really IMHO.

For instrument procedures, yes.

My set up is X Plane 11, Reality XP GTN 650 add in running on a second touch screen monitor.
 
HighCountry said:
For private a VR headset made the flight sim more useful to me and I used it to practice day and night pattern work and XCs.

For instrument I ditched the headset and filled the monitor with the instrument panel and practiced my scan and approach accuracy. Adding an iPad as a second touchscreen monitor was also helpful for the gps interface (much easier than using a mouse).

In both cases I found it VERY helpful for that early part of training. I don’t use it much at all anymore and instead I use a local BATD simulator for IFR practice. I still use the iPad gps trainers though.
Click to expand...

Very good idea. I may have to do something similar. Thanks for the pro-tip.
 
Here's another way sims can help, and probably not one you'd think.

Most people just start the sim in the air, or on the runway. But it can be very instructive to start at the ramp, or where you actually park. Some of the things I've found most challenging include taxiing at unlit airports at night. I got pretty frustrated one dark night with only one taxi light 20' to my right.

If you use FF on your iPad, you can use FF's Taxi Route to see where you're going. The graphics are usually good enough that if you've been there before, you can recognize buildings and features. FF or the taxi diagram will display Hot Spots.

If you are planning a trip to an unfamiliar airport, especially a complicated one, pre-flying the route to the point of tie down can be helpul.
 
I've been PPL-cert'ed for 30+ years, although have been inactive for the past 17 of those. Recently, after kids are now grown and income is higher (read: more disposable at hand) I decided to get my 3rd-Class medical and get current again. I now understand why it's been accurately stated that aviation is a "perishable skill". I found my skills a bit rusty but they have quickly come rushing back, happy to say. :) Even to the point that my CFI stated "It's like you never took that break". And I instructed him, going into this, that if you see me doing anything wrong, or feel I need an area to work on, I expect you to tell me.
This leads into my thoughts on home simulators. They work, to a point. Where they fall a little short is the tactile feel of the airplane. For instance, after 17 years, I forgot the force needed on the yoke to hold off a 172 from touching down until the stall warning goes off. A simulator yoke, even the Honeycomb Alpha that I have, doesn't provide that kind of tension. In the airplane, was touching down too soon until I realized what I was doing. My brain was going back to the Honeycomb, but I needed to pull harder. Once I sorted that out, my landings afterwards were much better.
I will say that, in the past 17 years, the avionics platforms have really come alive. As others have stated, the simulator is GREAT for that. I found that I learned the Garmin 430 in the sim long before even stepping back in an airplane with the same GPS. And get this....I taught a fill-in CFI (my regular CFI has been swamped lately) that when you view the frequencies of a nearby airport (in this case the AWOS of our destination airport, some 20 miles away) that you can set that freq into your standby comm by highlighting and selecting it. His statement..."I never knew you could do that!" I got a little joy in teaching a guy, who's 35 years my younger, a new trick. I said "Case in point that you can learn something new every day". My point; I learned that part of the 430 in my sim.
I spoke with several CFII's before I decided to revamp my "sim game" and asked their opinions if they were worth the $$. After all, even if you already have a decent PC, you can still lay out some serious coin on a control yoke, rudder pedals and a throttle quadrant....money that could have easily gone to a few lessons. All of their feedback, however, was a unanimous "definitely worth it" in order to practice what you've learned in the airplane...or even to practice, beforehand, an upcoming lesson, the latter needing a little forethought and coordination between you and your instructor. He/She needs to let you know what your next session will be covering. One CFII told me that the sim is really good at reinforcing the procedures when working on your instrument ticket....which I plan on transitioning into shortly. I have to say, with just over two months with my upgraded home sim, he was 100% correct.
I think they can even help, in that respect, to someone learning the basics in pursuit of their PPL. They can never be a replacement for the airplane...or even the big-boy simulators (ie, Redbird's) but they can help positively reinforce the procedures for getting an airplane into slow flight, MCA, turns about a point, etc. The tactile feel can only come with being in the cockpit.
~Ronbo
 
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