Do Simulators Help With PPL? If You Don’t Think So, Check Out THIS Kid…
Those of us who have taken up flight training have probably researched this and come away with extremely mixed opinions on the matter. Home sim for Private Pilot? “Shouldn’t do it because you won’t get the right feel for landing…” “You won’t get a good feel for the wind…” etc. These opinions might even be right! Can it help at all and is it even worth the investment? Well, anyone who has continued past PPL and onto instrument training knows that it can be VERY helpful at that phase. But what about the very earliest steps?
If Lucas’s ability to land an actual plane without help on his SECOND try is any indication (see the LewDix Aviation Video below), it might cause you to reconsider what you might be missing if you believed what you were told about home sims (and full-motion sims like ours!). Watch the video below and see our thoughts on WHY sims can be helpful before you ever get near an actual training airplane.
IMPRESSIVE, no? Can you do exactly what Lucas did by simming at home and translating it to your first flight lesson? Maaaaaaybe. Here’s the thing… We have to revisit the slight misnomer that “Practice Makes Perfect”. This adage is only true if you’re practicing perfectly. It should be stated that, “PERFECT Practice Makes Perfect.” If you’re not practicing the right things the right way, you’re generally just grooving your ability to do something incorrectly. Here’s how to make simulators work for you and save you time and money with your training (a topic we’re always looking to bring to the forefront).
Perfect PROCEDURES Make Perfect
So what’s Lucas’s secret? It’s probably that he paid very specific attention to the flight lessons that are available within programs like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. There are steps that you follow in every phase of flying in a landing pattern, and they’re all important.
Where are you?
What’s your speed?
Where do you make your turns?
What are your flap settings?
NOW what should your airspeed be?
… and then some
If you’ve gone through these steps with your instructor, you already know that it can this be an overwhelming amount of information to internalize. And THAT’s where flying patterns in the sim can save you so much time, but there’s no free lunch. You have to review, memorize, and get to the point with these steps where it’s second-nature in order to conduct proficient, safe, GOOD traffic patterns.
There’s an art to the learning of these skills and chair flying plays a huge role. We will be doing a separate piece on the art of chair flying, so stay tuned.
Can a Sim Help Me With These Steps?
Ab. So. Lutely. But the question is, “How diligent are you going to be with memorizing each phase of a traffic pattern?” Sure, you can just hop in, set it to easy mode, and bang around as if it doesn’t matter because it’s just a game. If you want to become a private or commercial pilot, we would recommend not treating anything to do with aviation as if it’s just a game but to be earnest about wringing every ounce of training benefit from these simulators because there’s a lot to be had if you’re willing to put in the effort.
Every airplane is different from rotation speed, flap settings, and so forth, but what isn’t usually different is traffic patterns. It’s the same at KDSM in the sim and in real life. If you can master being in a climb while also turning to a new heading or still being in a turn when you come to traffic pattern altitude and need to level off and change your power settings without ever having set foot in a plane, you’re already training your brain for the sort of multitasking that needs to take place in flight. And if you can do that without the added stress and distraction of actual traffic controllers giving you instructions, it’ll be all that much easier when you do encounter it in actual flight.
And Another Thing About Lucas…
If you made it to the end, and we REALLY hope you did, you’ll see Lucas make a perfect, complicated radio call with the ground controller, which further amazed Lew Dix. This isn’t something that he was just naturally good at, we guarantee it. Might as well tease yet another post that’ll be upcoming about an app called AR Sim from Plane English and how it can help you become proficient (or at least nearly so) with your radio work before you’re ever plugging in a headset to make your first call to clearance delivery or the local CTAF.
There are so many challenges to confront during training that we feel compelled to help you ‘cheat’ any which way you can in order to save yourself time and, in some cases, a lot of frustration. We’d love to hear your thoughts about simulators and if they’ve helped you so far, so follow our social media accounts (links in footer) and drop a comment on the thread associated with this post. See you in the skies!