With a wonderful sim setup at home, my friend is working on his instrument rating. Unfortunately, he doesn’t use it that often—maybe a few hours a month if he’s lucky. The reason? He claims it takes him a little under an hour, maybe more, before he gets to fly it. He must turn on his computer, check the weather, plan a flight, preflight the plane, sump fuel, do all the checklists … you get the idea.
The problem here is he’s trying to fly instead of sim. He’s treating the sim as if it were his real plane, which it clearly isn’t. I see this a lot, particularly with real pilots just starting out their instrument training or non-pilot simmers trying to feel like real pilots.
But replicating the real world is what simming is all about? Well, actually, if you’ve been paying close attention, it isn’t.
Maximizing ROI
Don’t get me wrong, you should absolutely treat every virtual flight as if it were a real one, but only up to a point. The first question you have to ask yourself is how much utility do you get in performing a virtual preflight? I’m going to claim not a whole lot; a real preflight is a very sensory experience (maybe outside of taste, hopefully!), and your sim isn’t going to emulate most common issues you’ll find in the real world anyway (I’ve yet to hear someone complain about a virtual bird’s nest in the sim as a safety-of-flight issue). The same is true for performing a run-up. Again, even if you do find a bad virtual mag, the corrective action isn’t a teaching moment, it’s a mouse click. Move on.
If you want to practice checklists, then by all means, go through your standard flows and do the checklist but just understand that anything related to the plane itself has very little utility in the sim.
Instead, your focus should squarely be on checklist items that include things like getting and copying your clearance (think PilotEdge or VATSIM), setting up your panel’s FMS, analyzing that rat’s nest of a taxi diagram, and really talking to yourself through a) how you’re going to take off and b) what you’re going to do about four hundred feet AGL (give or take) thereafter. That’s where your sim’s value really starts to shine.
But It Still Doesn’t Feel Right
Many detractors will point out that simming at home doesn’t feel like the real thing, so what’s the point? Again, this thinking is misguided. Sure, striving for high flight fidelity is an admirable goal, and many simmers obsess over it. But it’s a futile one, since you aren’t building a Level-D airline-grade sim. Instead, you’re just trying to keep your “plane brain” sharp during your downtime. True story: I did my instrument rating with an all round-dial, GNS 400-equipped panel but trained in the sim with a GNS 530 based one, only to fly real family cross-country flights with a GTN 650 and glass. If anything, a little variety helped me stay sharp than just relying on the GTN’s automation (not complaining).
Familiar Is The Enemy
Another pitfall real pilots make is assuming that simming is all about approaches. Believe it or not, flying approaches in the sim has very little value for most seasoned instrument pilots who fly them on a weekly basis. But how often do you fly a SID? A STAR? An ODP? A charted visual? A non-published hold over mountainous terrain at night? Or even a full-procedure approach own nav? Right.
Somewhat counterintuitively, one of the least useful activities you can do is load up at your home airport with real weather, plan a flight you’ve flown a zillion times, and fly it in the sim. Don’t do that.
Instead, you want to leverage the fact that on any given day, you can fly in highly complex airspace with varying weather conditions from the comfort of your home. The goal here is to create a heavy workload environment where you really get to flex your ADM muscles without spending a drop of 100LL or risking your life in the process.
Like An Onion
As an East Coast pilot, my concept of mountains is a lot different from that of my West-Coast friends. So, when I sat down at my sim in a Piper Arrow at the Palm Springs International Airport (KPSP) staring at the CATHEDRAL ONE departure procedure, panic ensued. As you can see from the chart, “there be dragons” in the form of high mountainous terrain practically in all directions except the southeast (aren’t we in the desert?). You don’t really have to be a TERPs specialist to understand why this SID was designed the way it was—clearly, the gist of this procedure is to keep you to the southeast as you climb to a safe IFR altitude. If I’m taking off from RWY 31L, the minimum climb gradient is 386 feet per NM which at 100 knots is 643 FPM—no issue for the Arrow (or even a 172 for that matter) with a field elevation just under 500 FT.
Be that as it may, a SID like this makes for some fantastic sim fodder since you can fly it in a variety of different ways depending on your plane’s panel and performance (and your tolerance for pain). In the Arrow, I first “cheated” and used a GTN 750/650 RealityXP combo under VMC. The idea here was to just fly the procedure to get a feel for it. Consequently, I loaded up the CATHERDRAL ONE and just flew the magenta while bathing in all that virtual mountainous ortho glory. Uneventful.
Now, let’s add another layer of complexity: Same panel but no GPS. I dialed-in PSP R-268 in the 750’s nav and fed that to the HSI. I set the TRM R-322 in the 650’s nav respectively. I then cross-filled both PSP and TRM frequencies in each unit’s standby nav frequency as a backup. Before even touching the sim, I mentally followed how I was going to fly straight out on departure heading 310 and let the needle on the 750 come in. If you’re comfortable with a bearing pointer (RMI), and you should be, you can use those to ease your workload a bit.
Once the CDI needle centers to indicate I’m crossing the PSP R-268, I’ll make an immediate climbing right turn while turning the knob, so the arrow points back to PSP. After the needle switches to FROM, I’ve crossed PSP and can turn slightly to intercept PSP R-104 and wait for the 650’s needle now (on a separate nav head or that bearing pointer) to center to identify EMRUD.
Finally, another climbing right turn while turning the knob, so the arrow points back TO PSP again. When I reach PSP I enter the hold, DIRECT entry, right turns. Of course, putting on my Jeff Van West hat, am I going to make my IFR cruising altitude by the time I get back to the PSP? Only one way to find out.
The takeaway here is that by virtually flying a complex SID like this one, I’m developing a cognitive workflow that I’ll be able to apply in real flying. Note that I’m layering different skill sets as I go: first flight planning and briefing, then a little buttonology, then tracking VORs, then a hold, etc. I could now, if I wanted to, connect to the PilotEdge network and fly it with live ATC for yet another layer. That’s the beauty of flight sim.
What’s The Scenario?
Well, as you know (or should), this very publication offers many scenario-based articles like the one above that are designed to be flown in the sim. Don’t just skim over them; fly them. You don’t even have to fly every leg; pick one that piques your interest and just fly it. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve personally done this and after setting up the scenario in the sim started to visibly sweat. (My wife once thought my office was too hot. I assured her it was the ODP.)
Another option is to join a network like PilotEdge. One of its many benefits outside of providing professional ATC service for sims is it forces the issue: There’s a very good chance you’ve never flown in at least one of its major coverage areas, all of which present a myriad of challenges from the insanely complex Los Angeles airspace to Denver’s high DA. And I assure you, there’s a nightmare scenario lurking in every TEC route you file. Leverage it.
Finally, as I talked about at length before, hiring the good folks over at FlightSim Coach for a few sessions can get you started on this journey immediately and help you develop your own scenario-based training curriculum going forward. You’ll be one-on-one with a highly trained, super-friendly professional whose sole mission in life is to help you improve your flying through sim. Can’t beat that.
Skill Issues
Look, I get it, it’s hard enough to find time to stay current, let alone stay proficient. But knowing how to effectively use your sim can really take you to the next level. Simming isn’t about flying, it’s about purposeful training to fill in the gaps your initial rating may have missed or refresh some skills you let atrophy simply due to opportunity. Sim with purpose. This is the way.
This story originally appeared in IFR Magazine.
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