Simcom

[cosmotheassman]

Does anyone have any thoughts on using simcom for Hawker recurrent training? Likes or dislikes??

 

[pilot370]

Our company goes there for KA300 recurrent and me and another guy in our company hate going there. They are geared towards the owner/operator of aircraft, the manuals are hapazard at best, the checklist are incomplete just to name a few. Oh and I forgot, they're cheap too! I am afraid we will be going there for our Hawker recurrent also. We normally go to Simuflite in DFW. Not looking forward to it, but at least it's in Florida and you get free pizza on wed or is it tues? oh and don't forget that bright yellow t-shirt you get too!

 

[irapilot]

You get what you pay for



You get what you pay for - and SimCom is cheap, ergo you don't get much. It is a haven for cheapo operators who don’t want to spend much and pilots who don’t feel they “need” the training but have to get it for insurance reasons. Also they get a clientele of pilots who do not want to be looked at very hard and they get what they want – a slide through. Not that FSI and Simuflight don’t have their “slide through guys” but SimCom – pretty sad.

 

[cvoav8r]

Dtto. You get what you pay for. Just look where your Fortune 100/500 operators, fractionals and some small airlines send their people. That is where the standard is being set. How do you want to be viewed?

 

[421Driver]

One thing to add, DON'T go to Recurrent Training Center near CMI. It is far worse than Simcom. Same "slide-thru" and "insurance training."

 

[BigPappa]

Ok,ok! Just before you go on:

I just went through the Hawker 800 XP recurrent at Simcom and can tell you that the training was GREAT! Did my Intitial at flight safety and can tell you that the sim instructor we had was almost clueless when it came to prepping us. I really don't believe that for $30,000 at FSI we learned much better or more than at Simcom for half that! The only thing that was different was the fact that FSI had a Collins Proline 21 Sim Level D(which was broken most of time), and Simcom had a Honeywell Level C.

I would not say you could go wrong by going to Simcom.

 

[Headwind]

Been to all three several times and feel I got good training at each. I feel that Sim Com is as good as SF or FSI. Each time at Sim Com the instructors had experience in type. At FSI sometimes they did, sometimes not. FSI cost more, lots more. Sometimes you don't have a choice, but for a Citation w/o EFIS Sim Com would be my choice.

HEADWIND

 

[Throttlebender]

I've been to simcom twice for the navajo, and I enjoyed it. I think that it boils down to the instructors you get and what you want out of it. If you go in and want to learn, ask questions, and challenge yourself then you'll be fine. They may or may not be too laid back in their approach to teaching( I don't have a frame of reference with the other schools) but I felt that I got what I put into it.

 

[DAS at 10/250]

I thought the SimCom Navajo Initial was a good course. But, it was my first formal school. I can give ya a FSI/SimCom comparison after the end of the month when I finish recurrent at Lakeland.

 

[irapilot]

Ok - except for headwind look at the total times of the positive responses. Not trying to bash you guys – just pointing out that if you stick around in this career for a while you will see things from a different perspective. I have been to all three and have had good and bad experiences at all, the most consistent poor quality training existed at SimCom. The depth is not there at SimCom and the FTDs are not anything but procedure trainers.

To be fair, they are the best and only choice for some low end, out of production aircraft and some single turbo-props. They also have a few awesome instructors, no doubt. But as I said before you get what you pay for.