Sims

[TO024]

Do computer flight sims really help with your instrument scan? A lot or a little?

TO024

 

[garf12]

I personally dont think so. I think the most it helps is just getting a basic idea of how stuff works. Like how to track a VOR and just basic procedures.

 

[midlifeflyer]

Yes. A lot.

Couple of reasons. (I assume you're talking about a PC-based sim like Microsoft Flight Simulator). A lot of what makes the sim different from an airplane is what makes it so effective. For starters, you have no biofeedback. When you fly an airplane you can feel the changes take place. You lose a lot of that in a PC sim. You need to scan better or things will change without you. Another is that the PC sim tends to be less stable than an airplane, so you have to pay more attention. It becomes impossible to change frequencies and fly even a simple approach within tolerances without a good scan.

 

[unreal]

I'm with Midlife: they help a ton.

Recently a friend of mine took a month off from flying for personal reasons. His first flight back was slated to be DME arcs, holds, and other scan-intensive items. I literally sat him down on MSFS and had him run through a few scan exercises to prepare. He went flying the next day and did very well.

I'm a big fan of flight simulators for instrument work as long as they're used correctly.

 

[D_G]

Microsoft Flightsim is great for learning and keeping your instrument scan sharp.

 

[midlifeflyer]

TO024,

I just noticed that you are a student pilot. That's great! But let me add this to my post.

The amount of instrument reference work you do at the private pilot level is pretty small. Those three hours of instruction can sometimes seem to take forever, but most students are being taught a pretty basic scan that is designed for =maybe= being able to get out of trouble, not for flying for continued periods. With such minimal instruction, there is a small danger of practicing the wrong thing. Not that big a deal, but it's there.

If you don't already have one, the other thing that I talk about with my primary students is that while MSFS works well for developing a scan and, as garf said, learning basic instrument procedures, I wouldn't necessarily go out and buy it if this was the only reasons for getting one. I don't think that the benefit at this stage outweighs the MSFS learning curve. I'm not much of a gamer myself, and I found getting used to the program to take a while - much harder than flying an airplane.

 

[Ryan]

MSFS works great.

After 12 months of instruction I finally got my instr ticket. I only had 45 hours of instruction though over those 12 months, so that means I was flying at most once a week. I was however using MSFS almost everyday. I would practice all the local approaches, holdings, entry patterns, etc. over and over. By the time I got to my check ride I had all the approach plates down cold, knew all the frequencies by heart and procedures memorized.

I agree with the other guys that you have to actually fly to get the "feel" of instrument flying but MSFS sure does help.

 

[Lead Sled]

FWIW, I have a little different take when it comes to the value of programs like MSFS. Let's see if I remember this correctly, when it comes to teaching and learning, the law of primacy deals with things first learned being best remembered. If those first things happen to be wrong, then the student has a bunch of catch up ball to play. I think that the simulator games on the market can be pretty realistic, but there is also a very great danger of putting yourself in a situation where you teach yourself - and then repeatedly reinforce - improper and incorrect ideas, principles, techniques, etc. The result is that it often takes lot of extra time (read extra $$$) helping them to unlearn all of the bad habits s/he has developed. This is not to say that the sim games can't be used to some advantage, they can when their use is adequately supervised.

That being said, my personal advice for all of you who hope to become pilots one day is rather than spend 100's of hours playing games on the computer, spend the time flipping burgers or whatever to earn money for real flight instruction.

Lead Sled

 

[Cat Driver]

Help me out here, because I am sort of dense.

If someone uses flight sim and develops a "scan" whatever a "scan" is and that person can drive the thing wherever he/ she wants it to go, and as we all know keeping one of those flight sims going where you want it to go is more difficult than in an airplane has that person not developed a functional " scan " ?

Be gentle with me now, because I really can't figure out some of these ideas, opinions or whatever they are.

Cat Driver

 

[MarineGrunt]

MSFS helped me out BIG TIME during my instrument training. Not so much with the scan, but with learning the ADF and flying approaches. Saved me a lot of frustration in the airplane as well as money. It is a must have for any instrument student.