Pushing that button on the yoke and talking to ATC can be nerve-wracking when you’re just starting out, and sometimes longer for many students. You can use this app to gain a ton of confidence AND surprise your instructor once you start your flying lessons.

**This isn’t an Ad.** We just think this app is an extremely valuable tool for our students’ learning curve with radio communications.

You can do the first couple of lessons for free. We highly recommend checking it out.

One of our students came in a while back and mentioned how much the AR Sim app from Plane English helped him become so much more confident confident in his radio calls to air traffic control, so we decided to check it out ourselves. Here’s a short list of reasons why we think this is not just a good tool but a GREAT one for our students who are starting their journey in aviation.

If you haven’t learned the ICAO alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) yet and how to properly say numbers (10,000 = ‘One-zero thousand’, Runway 32 = ‘Runway Three-Two”) in aviation, the first couple of lessons are free go over these smaller details of how pilots speak on the radio.
Repetition is so important to grooving your coms and it’s really difficult to have the number of reps you need if you’re only practicing while flying.
Coms are often a major source of anxiety for flight students and this app can alleviate a lot of these issues.
It uses voice recognition software, so you’re getting highly realistic practice that’s easily mirrored when you’re in the cockpit and managing plenty of other tasks.
Putting in this effort before you’re up there will allow you to focus more effectively on the other aspects of flight that you’re learning and should contribute to a faster learning process that saves you money.
They have now added Instrument radio lessons, so this isn’t just for our new PPL students!
FAA Wings credits can be earned from some of the lessons in the app, which is a great added feature.

This is not a comprehensive list of the benefits of using the AR Sim app, but we highly encourage you to download it and try it out. If you haven’t studied aviation coms before your first flight lesson, the learning curve can catch some students off-guard. There’s simply no need to struggle when there is a tool like this at your disposal. Is it free? No, it’s a subscription-based platform, like many things these days. But if you consider the cost associated with learning all of this in the air, the expense quickly seems irrelevant. Have a look for yourselves and let us know if you’ve had a good experience with it!