Stupid Sim Tricks

[rchcfi]

All,

Curious as to some stories of precarious, brainfartish, or funny sim stories you might want to share. I'll start:

Last week at Flight Safety I was doing the ole' LOC 27 circle to 18R at KMEM. My instructor put a L CHIP light on outside the FAF. As that is an amber light I continued the approach and while circling, kind of forgot it was illuminated. I was a little too high on the circle, and since I wasn't going to land in the TDZ I elected to go around. (What was I thinking!) Back up in the clouds and in my left 270 to re-establish myself outbound on the missed, he failed the left engine. As soon as it happened I remember the old saying: "If you give your instructor the opportunity, he will be more than happy to fail something". And rather than continuing with the syllabus, he had me fly all the way out and do the VOR back to 18R on that SE. I think he failed something else, but at that point I was already pissed at myself for letting that happen.

Also, just after taking off form KOKC, he failed my hydraulics. I asked to return to the airport, and no surprise it was now below landing mins.! Then on the way to KDUC the HSI and heading indicator mysteriously failed. So now I'm flying looking at the co-pilot's instruments. I asked to be vectored to an airport that was VFR, but it seemed as the entire country was IFR. So I had to shoot the VOR into KDUC with no flaps and possibly no brakes partial panel. Many beers were consumed that night!

Let's hear 'em.

 

[Flying Illini]

A couple years ago in the Falcon 10 sim at SimuFlite. We had some sim time remaining and asked our instructor to get tough on us at KASE. My partner and I swapped seats on each scenario. On the third one, he was flying. To depart KASE. Snowing, high winds, bad stuff...stuff you would never depart into in reality. Well, we brief it, take off with engine anti-ice on, wings on at gear-up. Instructor fails engine shortly after V1, partner flies it great. He fails something else, I don't remember what. Well, with all anti-ice on we were just going to make second segment, no room for error (see where this is going?). Well, the second thing that he failed, he did so right as I put the gear up...which means that I was distracted by it and failed to turn on the wings (story is getting ominous now). We are climbing OK, can make out mountains as they come into view through the snow (we are also in mod turbulence)...but the VSI needle keeps falling...1000fpm, 800fpm, 500fpm, airspeed is staying the same...mountains are getting closer and it doesn't look like we will clear them anymore. That's when I say, OH SH*T, THE WINGS!! and flip them on. Too late. VSI is saying -300fpm now...we're about to "become the mountain." So, as casual as everyday conversation, I said, "well, might as well put the gear down," and I did (you know, to absorb the impact!). 10 seconds later we impacted the mountain and it is now known as Falcon Peak. Pretty obvious, I forgot to turn the wings on and we iced up and died. It sucked...the instructor finally managed to get us to kill ourselves. My partner and I learned a valuable lesson that day.

 

[SCT]

Funny and true sim story told by a certian TUS FS instuctor.

He was giving a recurrent to two experienced 604 pilots that had been thru the program several times. They had requested the sim instuctor make the recurrent very challenging.

The crew was at altitude doing airwork or something. All morning the instructor had said he had been feeling bad. And as the sim session progressed the worse he felt. He said he felt clammy, started to have chest pains and numbness in his arm. He was going to stop the sim but collapsed onto the floor infront of the console. Meanwhile the two pilots are concentrating on the task at hand and they don't even notice him on the floor. He finally reaches up and puts the sim on freeze. The crew look over at each other and then back at the guy on the floor grabbing his chest. Being the highly trained crew that they were, they immediately excess the situation has a passenger w/ a medical emergency............and they initiate an emergency descent with the sim and start running the checklists and notifying ATC!!

The instuctor finally gets their attention and tells them he is not faking. The crew then jumps out of their seats gets on the emergency phone to notify the front desk to call 911 and then stops the sim.

It turned out it was not a heart attack and the FS guy was ok after going to the hospital. Funny story, in that the crew thought the instuctor was just running a scenario!

My story: At recurrent, flying a single engine ILS to minimums. Coming up on DH, the tubes black out and the whole sim pitches down 30-40' degrees suddenly. I imediately think that I've set the wrong DH, crashed the sim and flunked my 135 ride! But it was just a thunderstorm that knocked the electric out to the building.

 

[ozpilot]

Years ago when I was doing my recurrent ride at Comair, we finished the ride about 20 minutes early.

The instructor asked me if I wanted to try something with the remaining time. I asked him to put us over Cincinnati and then throw everything at us! About 10 minutes later as we were shooting the approach, my cell phone rang. I though what the 'ell and answered it.

It was a friend of mine who happend to be a FA at Comair. She asked "Whats up?", and of course I replied "Well right now where on final for 18L. The left engine has failed, the right one is on fire, we have no hydraulics, the co-pilot is frantically trying to pump down the gear and all our electrics have failed!"

Not knowing we were in the sim, she simply asked "Am I calling at a bad time?"

:laugh:

 

[rchcfi]

My funny story comes from Simuflite last year when I was going for my CE500 type.

Anyway, I was in the left seat and lined up for departure. I started the takeoff roll. Co-pilot announces V1, rotate. I gently start to pull back, but nothing. The aircraft is firmly planted on the runway screaming along passing 120 KIAS. I state "Abort, abort, abort" and reject the takeoff thinking he failed my flight controls. Well, as I am aborting, the sim instructor leans forward and says "Why are you aborting?" He hadn't failed anything. The sim just broke.

 

[91100 100 set]

During upgrade training on the Dash a few years back, the instructor threw us the Horizon accident. If I recall, what happened to those guys was an improperly installed fuel filter (it was put in backwards?) caused an explosion and engine fire that dumped both hydraulics systems. Additionally, the explosion blew the engine nacelle open, so the fire bottles essentially could not do their job (the agent was just blown out before it could snuff the fire).

We were at the end of our session with a few minutes left. Just flying around, with VFR weather, a few miles from Philly with my partner doing the flying. Left engine fire. Alright, I've done this enough times the last few days, lets do it again. As I'm starting the memory items, my partner says, "having a little trouble here...". He's got the wheel almost full right, struggling with both hands. I look down at the PFCS, no rudder deflection, no spoilers, then glance at the hydraulics, nothing there either.

Our instructor had said in passing a few days earlier that he might throw this scenario at us if there was time, but I completely forgotten until this point, so I was pretty surprised.

So I get the engine secured and of course the fire bottles don't work, so we are fighting an airplane with one engine, and only ailerons to counter it. It took about 10 degrees of bank to hold heading without the rudder, and those ten degrees took way more muscle without the spoilers. And of course, 10 degrees is really hurting the performance, so it took that much more power on the good side to keep us flying, which only made the control issues worse.

We have to get the plane on the ground. There's 27R and 27L, about 10 miles ahead. FO is still flying, but he's got to do the manual gear extension on his side, so we switch. It took both hands on the wheel to control to heading. He gets the gear down and I'm sorta lined up with 27L. Get it down on the pavement, but now we have no directional control. No hydraulics, so there is no nosewheel steering, no rudder (no cable backup on the Dash), and no differential brakes. We were actually able to kinda keep it on the pavement with a little power and beta from the good engine, but it wasn't pretty. Got it stopped with the parking brake accumulator, but I managed to blow some tires doing it.

So we get it stopped and slump down in the seats. The instructor says "WELL?...". "$hit, we've still got an engine on fire! We need to evacuate out the floor level exit on the right side...".

Kinda interesting, and very educational.

 

[91100 100 set]

Another one, shorter this time.

A few years ago, again on the Dash, we jump in the sim for recurrent. Off we go. Climbing out, the VSI starts to drop. Airspeed dropping. Max power, pitch for V2, as I'm thinking the instructor is a real ass for not even letting us get our "sea legs" before throwing us a ringer. And we crash.

The instructor says he didn't do anything, must be a sim problem. So we go do it again. Same thing, we crash.

By now, the instructor is zipping through menus on his panel. We hear a muffled "sons of bitches..." from behind us. Apparently the previous crew boobytrapped us with an impossible windshear that he didn't catch.

 

[Lilah]

The instructor says he didn't do anything, must be a sim problem. So we go do it again. Same thing, we crash.

EXACT same story here (including the crashes), somebody left the Pan Am NOLA scenario loaded.

Lilah

 

[Flyerjosh]

A few years back I was doing recurrent in the CRJ and the instructor caused a runaway trim right after rotation. It was a nose down runaway, and for whatever reason, hitting the trim disconnect didnt' work. Sucker ran the tail the whole way into the nose down position.

It's flyable, but only with both pilots pulling (we actually had the non-flying guy put his feet up on the foot rests... Certainly wouldn't want it to happen in real life, but a good opportunity to utilize CRM and coordination.

 

[Lostdog65]

Shorts 360 Sim at FSI LaGuardia.

My leg, we rotate and the whole thing pitches forward left then back left. We are, literally, facing up. I look back over my shoulder and the instructor, a very heavy weight kinda guy, is sprawled against the back trying to reach the phone.

Finally get a hold of maint and they come out. Hydraulics had failed as the instructor had set up a V1 cut. Went out at the exact same time as I rotated and the engine quit. I asked if we'd been hit by an RPG and was this the Baghdad One Departure (this was after 9/11 and our attack on Iraq). Instructor thought it was funny...maint wasn't amused.

Eric

 

[Flyerjosh]

Just thought of another one... Last year when I was doing my upgrade/type rating, I had arrived early to the sim to hopefully get into the box a bit early.

I found the sim up on motion with another crew that had been added to the schedule. Apparently they were doing an alternate gear extension or ADG pull or something like that. The FO was transitioning from a different plane where the particular button/handle to pull was at the bottom/rear of the center console. Instead of grabbing the correct handle, he pushed the "emergency shutdown" button for the simulator. Sucker came falling down off of motion (I guess the button opened up all of the hydraulic valves and shut off all of the power).

Took the sim tech 45 minutes to get everything back up and running again and looked like the crew got quite a jolt...

 

[some_dude]

Falcon 50, at Simuflite. I was taking a 135 check from the program manager at the time, who was notoriously thorough. He was multitasking, of course, and had a trainee running the sim panel.

I did the airwork, which was all fine, and "ATC" told us to descend to XXX and that traffic was a 757 at 12 o'clock. Okay, I guess that's how we're doing the unusual attitudes, no problem. I gripped the yoke, the airplane rolled...

and went completely out of control! I think we were in a flat spin. The altimeter was unwinding, I couldn't get the nose down or the wings level. The other pilot (a guy who had been flying Falcon 50s for 20 years) said "Let me try!" so I gave the controls to him.

The altimeter unwound and unwound, and thunk! We crashed. Now, in my mind, I'm thinking, jeez, what did I do wrong? And worse, I've flunked my 135 check, now I'll have to stay here another day and get retrained, and I'm really not happy about this.

The examiner leans forward, says, "Okay, that was great, I'm resetting you at 7,000 descending, get ready to fly." I'm dumbfounded. The rest of the checkride was uneventful.

At the break, I asked the examiner what the deal was. "Oh yeah," he says, "There's a bug in the sim software, and I forgot to tell the new guy about it. If you set the upset to put the airplane at exactly 90 degrees of bank, the software glitches and the aircraft becomes uncontrollable. Nothing you could have done."

 

[FN FAL]

All,

Curious as to some stories of precarious, brainfartish, or funny sim stories you might want to share. I'll start:

Last week at Flight Safety I was doing the ole' LOC 27 circle to 18R at KMEM. My instructor put a L CHIP light on outside the FAF...

That approach must be popular, that's one that we see in training as well as the check ride. Except they have us do the ILS 27 circle to 18R.

 

[Lrjtcaptain]

Nice and simple....simcom SDL. final day, sim instructor hadn't killed me yet....


Last day, all was well, take off out of KORL and get in the clouds, dual engine failure, hydro failure etc...only thing that worked was my airspeed indicator and my mag compass. Put it down on a road.....didn't crash, but he informed me I hit a fuel truck on I4 and I was dead

MK

 

[JediNein]

Good one Ozpilot!

Sitting instructor station on this one, high time FTD/sim instructor has me giving him an IPC. We'll go out and do the circling approach in-flight, later. The guy has spent the last 20 years programming and flying this particular FTD.

On the initial climb, he's nicely settled into the instruments, and follows the instruction to contact departure, already bored and complacent. 'Departure' tells him , "N142MA, Tower advises you were trailing smoke on takeoff. State intentions."

He checks his gages to see oil pressure dropping rapidly and oil temp rising steadily.

It was a long while before he could stand after that session, and that was just one approach.

Does anyone get the San Diego Brown Field departure at night in the sim?

Fly SAFE!
Jedi Nein

 

[great cornholio]

Flight Safety Beech 1900 sim. Instructor thought it would be fun to put us above KDEN at 10,000ft and lock up our controls and had us try to land with just diff power. It was kinda tricky but I managed to hit the grass inbetween the runway and taxiway. Other time I was a few thousand feet above KLGA and sim instuctor starts yelling stuff and pulls both T-Handles (Cockpit door usually open on the 1900 so he was a crazy pax). My sim partner was first and we ended up crashing into the approach lights of 22 and into flushing bay. In real life if we werent dead then being in flushing bay would have made us want to be dead. Reset the sim both engines still flammed out so now its my turn. I had towed and flown gliders and messed with the props they would come in and out of feather (not sure if it would work in real life) so I used to props like spoilers and managed to hit the runway.

Nothing too crazy happened while I was in the EMB 145 or the J-41 sims.

One sim instructor told me a story about a guy who jumped out of the sim once. I guess he messed up on something and thought he was gonna fail his ride so instead of doing that he (while still on motion and "in the air") unbuckles his harness jumps out of his seat runs to the back of the sim opens the door and jumps out. Story is he kept running till outside of Flight Safety and the sim instructor never saw him agian.

 

[91100 100 set]

Another one...

We were doing some initial training on the Dash at FlightSafety in Toronto. Sitting in the briefing room before session one, we were discussed some of the particulars and differences from that sim to one in Charlotte. Just as we were finishing up, we hear a huge bang from the sim bay. We get up, and half expect to see the sim laying on it's side, busted off the jacks, sparks flying and hydraulic fluid squirting everywhere. It was loud enough that I thought the sim had to have come off it's mounts.

At that, the instructor adds, "oh yeah, make sure your belt is tight for real and don't leave the rings open on your Jepps unless you want to play 54-plate-pick-up..." Apparently that sim had to tendency to crash.

 

[Gorilla]

As mentioned already, hydraulic malfunctions (of the SIM, not the scenario) can be spectacular. B777 sim, I think it was Seattle, and the instructor was doing the standard safety brief - "here's the rope ladder, fire extinguisher, emergency stop, yada yada..." We ignore him as usual... who needs to know that stuff?

At some point, the "airplane" begins to buck like a mechanical bull at Billy Bob's or some other country bar. "Holy S---! What is this, a turbulence scenario?" We look back at the instructor; he is pale, and hanging on for dear life. The sim ends up 40 degrees nose low, and we evacuate via the emergency door. Another crew on the outside witnessed everything. "that's quite a scenario - I hope we don't get it!"

 

[rfresh]

Sometimes we sim instructors are amazed:

I was instructing in an MD-90 simulator and we were doing a TO with the Captain flying. Right after liftoff I gave him a left engine fire. The aircraft was about 50 feet high with the LEFT engine fire handle illuminated and at that point the Captain commands the F/O to pull the fire handle. So, the F/O reaches forward and grabs the RIGHT engine fire handle and pulls it all the way out!! This is an un-reversable action as the engine is now shutdown and cannot be undone. I guess in a panic, the F/O realizes his error and pushes the fire handle back in (as if the engine will restart again) and then, trying to make good on his first error, reaches over and now pulls the LEFT engine fire handle out!! Even with the left engine on fire, it is still producing some thrust. So, at about 100 feet altitude, both engines have now been shutdown and the Capt lets it sink back down to the runway in a controlled crash!!

Yeah, hard to believe this really did happen!!

 

[Gorilla]

Just curious, aren't the pilots taught at your carrier to get oral confirmation from the other guy that "Yeah, that's the affected fire handle/fuel lever" before actuating it? I thought that was pretty much standard these days. Or was it just a nervous, shoot from the hip FO?