Victoria Flying Club Is Leading The Way in Local Flight Training After 70 Years

Adding a seaplane rating to your pilot certificate is the ambition of many pilots, and to help pilots move in that direction an ambitious technical upgrade to current equipment has lead the Victoria Flying Club to unveil the world’s first Full-Motion Seaplane Training Device.

The VFC Chief Flight Instructor, Graham Palmer, is pleased with the new developments. “With the technical savvy and expertise of VFC member Peter Lagergren blazing the way, we have made several advances within the flight training world. Through accurate aerodynamic software calibration improvements, Peter has enhanced the fidelity and performance capabilities of all aircraft configurations we offer. With the augmented visual graphic software created by Don Grovestine, VFC’s FMX provides the most advanced and realistic experience possible. Additionally, through several software and hardware reconfigurations, VFC’s FMX has become the world’s first ‘Full Motion Seaplane Flight Training Device’.”

The Redbird FMX is currently the only Transport Canada Certified Simulator of its kind on Vancouver Island, providing synthetic training realism for Private, Night, Commercial, and Instrument Pilots. And now, for the first time ever, the Victoria Flying Club’s Redbird FMX offers a Seaplane training option, currently unavailable anywhere else in the world.

This development will expand the Victoria Flying Club’s already successful Seaplane training program offered at the Victoria Airport’s Seaplane Base at nearby Patricia Bay. With the addition of a Seaplane-capable simulator, pilots training towards a Seaplane Rating can benefit from several simulated water handling scenarios including all forms of water taxiing and docking under a multitude of conditions, in addition to gaining practice with take-offs and landings. Full-motion Seaplane simulation has never been done before, and the advances made by VFC have caught the attention of the developers at Redbird. In turn, VFC has agreed to assist in beta testing Redbird’s development of a “Wide Area Augmentation Service” (WASS), a technology found within modern aircraft GPS systems.

The Victoria Flying Club, located at the Victoria International Airport, has been training professional and recreational pilots since 1946. Local and international students receive instruction on a standardized fleet of Cessna 172S Model aircraft.

(Image by Heath Moffatt Photography furnished by VFC)

FMI: www.flyvfc.com