Both Instructor And Student Find Sims A Valuable Learning Tool

By: Maria Morrison

The EAA Pilot Proficiency Center features flight simulators that have a variety of pre-programmed scenarios. Volunteer flight instructors have been working in the center during the week of AirVenture, instructing students in four-hour shifts. I spent an hour in the simulator, doing both an IFR and VFR flight, and found it to be a great educational tool.

For the student, the flight starts by choosing one of the programed simulations. There are degrees of difficulty for IFR and VFR, as well as three additional scenarios recently added. These were taken directly from accident reports regarding accelerated stalls, controlled flight into terrain, and strong crosswinds. One particularly helpful aspect to me was PilotEdge, the program that lets students in the simulator talk to a live controller that is employed to act exactly as they would in a real setting.

Neil Morrison, a 35-year CFI, worked as one of volunteer instructors. Although he had prior experience instructing in the Boeing 747 simulator for his airline job, he had no experience in any similar GA sims. Neil has an appreciation for simulators because of the ability for students to experience situations that they could or would not in an aircraft. For IFR training, simulators allow the instructor to decide the weather as well. He said he was impressed not only with the simulator, but also with the CloudAhoy debriefing program, which he said was “phenomenal.”

Morrison also mentioned that “whether it’s desktop or a full-motion, simulators do have limitations.” Because the student is just sitting at a desk, they cannot feel movement of the airplane and adjust to it. Additionally, the simulator is a generic representation of an airplane or its avionics (although those in the Pilot Proficiency Center are modeled after a Cessna 172). Mainly, however, simulators are a “great tool for instrument training” because, without being able to sense movement, students must perfect their scan of instruments. “It forces you to become skilled at dividing your attention.”

The simulator is constantly logging data from the student that it then uses in the debrief. After the flight in complete, a student can see their exact flight path, replay the flight, and look at a graph of altitude and airspeed. It also breaks the flight down into different maneuvers and phases that can be looked at in greater detail. In a future version, a CFI assistant will rate the maneuvers so a student can see the analysis of their flying even if an instructor is not present. Over the week, the sims in the Pilot Proficiency Center logged over 500 hours. “Simulators are the future,” said Morrison, “so we need to get proficient in them.”

(Image provided by the author)

FMI: www.eaa.org/airventure/place/-eaa%20pilot%20proficiency%20center?id=6B784D48A9314DF3839B8C096E0F6CD0