OT. Real life easier than FSX

[dandog]

Hello All,

Thanks to my lovely wife, I just completed 1.9 hours of my 40 towards a PPL. I must say that that flying in real life is easier than flight sim COF or FSX. Thanks to FSX and this forum for making my real life adventure that much more enjoyable. However, my CFI does have XPlane, not FSX or FS9. He did not make fun of my admission of being a MS Flight Sim junkie.

Daniel

 

[mfitch]

Indeed in a real small plane you can feel a great deal in addition to the visual and instruments. Keep enjoying the process. In a couple weeks I will be starting instrument ground school to continue my training.

 

[calypsos]

A lot of the difference is down to spacial awareness, even more evident if you ever go for a rotary wing PPL!
IFR flying is what MSFS is better at simulating as it's just a matter of numbers.....and PC's are good at that!

 

[Francois]

Yes, a well known fact. Fortunately I meet more and more real life pilots who ALSO like FS(X) and confirm its usefulness for many parts of flight training, albeit it no substitute.

 

[expat]

Glad to hear your feedback. I am, despite my wife, painfully slowly builiding dual time toward a PPL (at this rate by the time I am 93) doing training when I am over in Florida and may actually solo in a month or so, depending on my instructor's mood. There is no question among real pilots familiar with FS that it is a help with respect to real flying.

Along with IFR it also helps for getting familiar with airport surroundings in VFR very well. Also just the operation of avionics: my instructor (ex USMC) was not familiar with MS and was blown away when, without prompting, he watched me set up the Garmin 430's and also later we had a Avidyne glass cockpit Warrior which he also could not believe I knew how to use, more or less. Some things, for me personally, are less easy IRL, like using the radios and speaking to the tower naturally (i.e. without being nervous or tongue tied).

 

[Mathias]

In real life you do a lot of those little corrections with the butt, so to speak, whereas in FS you always react on something you see on your 21' screen.
Makes it harder to fly intuitive without that butt feel.

 

[TeaSea]

Yep, easier in real life.....on the other hand when you screw up for real you don't get to hit the "reset" button.

I found FS9 and FSX especially helpful working my IFR ticket.

 

[Bone]

Some of it is, and most of it isn't...but then my frame of reference isn't about joyriding in a Cessna or Piper. That's pretty easy, if we're going to just generalize.

 

[kilo delta]

Have you tried the PMDG NGX, Bone? Maybe you could lobby them to do an RJ?

 

[Bjoern]

Maybe you could lobby them to do an RJ?

Why would he want to do that? He gets to fly the real thing day after day.


Also, Aerosoft already has a CRJ in the works.

 

[Lotus]

I fully agree that FS can be amazingly helpful throughout flight training, and well afterwards, it certainly was for me, and continues to be. Indeed, in many ways real flying is much easier. Real aircraft are much more forgiving of small mistakes, but less forgiving of large ones I think, hehe.

FS training can also have one other amazing and entirely unexpected side effect though, when it comes to emergencies.

I got my PPL in 2002, after about 13 years of almost daily flight sim use. During one very memorable flight, about 15 hours after getting my license, I experienced a complete electrical failure.... at night. One moment everything was fine, the next I was in complete darkness. No radios, no lights, nada.

For a relatively new pilot this is quite an experience to go through! Obviously my tension shot up immediately, but I turned on the flashlight that I hung around my neck on every night flight, and ran through the checklist. I cycled the master and battery switches several times, but to no avail. It became very clear to me that my electrics were not coming back. Happily the engine was continuing to run nicely and I had about 3 hours of fuel on board. Unhappily I was flying a Piper Arrow 3 with retractable gear, and would have no way to know if the gear was down and locked without the indicator lights. It also didn't help that I had my girlfriend and her best friend on board.

As I struggled to come to grips with this situation, something in my mind radically altered almost instantly. To this day I still can't properly describe how the mental change occurred, but my mind suddenly convinced itself that I was in flight sim, not in a real aircraft with two rather concerned passengers on board. The moment that change occurred all of my worry and tension vanished completely, and I was able to get on with the business of flying the plane with a cool head.

Since I had no transponder or radios (did not have a portable nav/comm at the time, but I do now!) I decided the only course of action was to orbit near my home airport and watch the traffic pattern and try to find a way to fit myself in. Without a transponder or radio, in pitch darkness, the tower wouldn't really know who or what I was. I performed the prescribed 120 degree turns in triangle formation several times and waited for a light gun signal, but none came over a 10 min period, so I decided that I had best get the thing on the ground somehow. I observed the planes in the pattern and slotted myself in closely behind one on downwind. The real butt clenching moment was lowering the gear. I thought I felt the nose pitch down and the wind noise increase slightly, but there was still no way to be sure without indicator lights, since in the Arrow you can't see any part of the gear at all.

The approach was certainly interesting, with the flashlight between my teeth illuminating the airspeed indicator and the flare was one of the smoothest and longest I've ever done, waiting for the inevitable crunch of prop vs pavement, but it never came. I was greeted with the surprising and very relieving chirp of the main wheels being whipped up to speed on the ground.

And then the most bizarre thing happened. The moment the nose gear touched down all the electrics came back on! If it wasn't such a dangerous situation it would have been hilarious. Murphy at his best. I quickly braked off the runway and tuned in to the tower frequency, only to land in the middle of a serious verbal reaming from them. After they stopped yelling at me I explained my situation and decisions. There was a long pause, after which they said "Under the circumstances, well done. Taxi to parking." I discovered from the mechanic the next day that the problem was caused by a broken grounding strap between the battery and airframe, due to metal fatigue caused by engine vibration, and that the jolt of the nose gear touching down had reconnected it slightly, allowing the alternator to function again.

Anyway, as soon as I shut the plane down and whipped off the seat belt, the FS world vanished, and the real world came back with a vengeance, along with a fair bit of shaking from the loss of adrenaline. I figured it was best that my girlfriend drive me home from that point, but not before we stopped at a bar and got me thoroughly trashed.

So, long story short, extensive FS training can have one lovely and remarkable side effect, one which I hope to never need again, but I'm glad it's there. I also religiously check the condition of the grounding strap before every flight now.

Flight Simulator has had a special place in my heart from that day on.

Cheers,

-Mike

 

[Barnes]

I agree - anyone who can master a flight from A to B in FSX is well on the way to being a real life PPL A or H

Well done all those who are going through the real flight training.

 

[Bone]

Have you tried the PMDG NGX, Bone?

Nope. But I have considered getting it.

Why would he want to do that? He gets to fly the real thing day after day.

Well, I usually try to keep it at just four days a week, but they're long and tiring days. Anyone who thinks FS is harder than real life needs to do one of my days at work, they'll get their @ss kicked.

FS training can also have one other amazing and entirely unexpected side effect though, when it comes to emergencies.

something in my mind radically altered almost instantly. To this day I still can't properly describe how the mental change occurred, but my mind suddenly convinced itself that I was in flight sim, not in a real aircraft with two rather concerned passengers on board. The moment that change occurred all of my worry and tension vanished completely, and I was able to get on with the business of flying the plane with a cool head.

So, long story short, extensive FS training can have one lovely and remarkable side effect, one which I hope to never need again, but I'm glad it's there. I also religiously check the condition of the grounding strap before every flight now.

Flight Simulator has had a special place in my heart from that day on.

Cheers,

-Mike

After all, FS is a flight simulator, and what you experienced in situational confidence is one of the reasons simulators exist. Repition of procedures/tasks/emergencies under controlled circumstances (ie, in the sim) builds within you the ability to handle the real life events in the same way, and with a favorable outcome. Good job, BTW.

I think FSX is an incredible tool, and I feel very fortunate that it exists and that there are people who work tirelessly to make it better. I don't ever want to be without it. As good as it is, though, it still isn't flying. The physical world effects and random chaos make a huge difference.

 

[PilatusTurbo]

I, too, must subscribe to, and agree with this notion. :d It is easier in many ways; far better sense of motion, ease of awareness (head turning and peripheral vision), and a far greater requirement of heavy involvement. However, real flying has its difficulties. The sim and RL have ups and downs; obviously sim flying is not real flying. When I started learning to fly, though, even my father (a sim hater-thinks they're largely useless and teach bad habits) admitted that that sim with those pedals must've helped you know how to taxi a taildragger. Never had issues knowing how to use toebrakes, and never once came close to ground looping it.

I have never flown a helicopter, but years ago while learning to hover in the sim, I theorized that it must be a bit easier in real life. For the reasons mentioned above, at least, a small bit easier. Yes, helicopter hovering has been equated by heli pilots to trying to balance on top of a unicycle whilst on top of a basketball. However, hovering in the sim was just a damn headache, and still is quite difficult. In real life, you'd have your inner ear letting you know you're about to start drifting to the left or wherever, but in the sim, it's ALL eyeball perception. I've seen real heli pilots, after a lot of training, being able to hold a hover like a static object in the air. I challenge anyone to do this in the sim; I practiced this for many hours in FS9, and still can not hold a 100% static hover.

Sim flying is cool, because it's cheap, but it's no where near the real thing. Real flying is cool because it's something Da Vinci would've killed to do, and one of the most memorable things you can get to do in life. :ernae:

EDIT: Also, agreed on its usefulness for IFR. However, I use the simulator to keep my radio work sharp, since I've not flown since 2007. How, you ask? I turn off the pilot voice, and when I'm doing ATC stuff, I do not read the little script. I'll start the ship up, listen to ATIS, and tune to ground. It'll show the options to taxi to wherever, and I'll choose what I want to do with the numbers above. As soon as I hit the number with my choice, I'll close the window and actually speak the radio stuff. When I'm done, I hear back from ATC as if I'd really just radioed them; it's a remarkably useful radio training tool.

"Deer Valley Ground, Piper Two-Five Foxtrot Romeo, request taxi to the active with Tango, north departure."

"Piper Two-Five Foxtrot Romeo, Deer Valley Ground, taxi to and hold short runway seven left, via Alpha."

"Taxi to, hold short runway seven left, Piper Two-Five Foxtrot Romeo."

It's that easy, because I've been doing it in the sim since 2007. It took much longer to type that 'transcript' than it actually took me to imagine and plot out ATC comms. :ernae:

 

[PRB]

I keep hearing this and I don't get it. FS completely screwed up my ability to fly real planes, it seems. My brain cannot come to terms with “if you're low, increase power, if your fast, pull back on the stick” etc. In FS my brain thinks in opposite terms, but I end up doing the same thing. In FS, if I'm low, I pull up (duh) but I also know, without even thinking about it, that I will require an associated adjustment in power... They work together. But every time I try to learn to fly real planes, it seems I'm expected to “disconnect” the two responses and apply them individually, and it doesn't work. It's like the “rubbing your tummy and patting your head” problem. Why the heck is that? And, FS planes don't respond like real ones in several important ways. In real planes, increasing the power really does make you rise, much more so than in FS, so the real life technique does make sense. Try controlling your glide slope with just power in any FS plane. The response lags too much, it's sluggish. A real plane responds instantly. Try stepping on the rudder in a real plane as see what happens. It doesn't yaw, it rolls. Well, it yaws and rolls, but its almost like it rolls better with the rudder. Fliger747's F7F Tigercat and the MILVIZ F-5 are only FS plane that capture this effect well. Ok, so all this “expert” analysis is from a few hours in a Piper Cherokee. I'm sure I could “break though” to the light bulb moment with more practice, and money...

 

[olderndirt]

As a forty some year general aviation pilot - flight sim is good on procedures but not so good on flying.

 

[ryanbatc]

FS training can also have one other amazing and entirely unexpected side effect though, when it comes to emergencies...

Neat story Mike... so when do we hear about that new project ?

 

[napamule]

I think MS simulator can help develop your confidence in light of what must be one the most dangerous things you might want to do - FLY. When you learn WHAT to do to achieve a result (ie: land a 'sim object' that weighs tons) you gain the ability to cope with unusual 'scenarios' (weather, bird strikes, etc). Staying CALM is half the trick (performing while under fire). Keeping your cool implys you know what is happening and what to do. You loose your cool and bad things happen. Calm-cool-and collected. (Think landing Airbus in Hudson River...).

Flight Simulator has helped me with my freeware driving (4 lane traffic all going 80 mph and changing lanes, competeing, cutting people off, etc). I just stay calm-cool-and collected, stay in my lane, and ignore the morons. I stay with traffic and before you know it you are at your destination. Rested, relaxed, and smiling-NOT all stressed out.

You say: 'Try controlling your glide slope with just power in any FS plane.' It can be done IF you use your pitch trim to control your vertical descent, as you are NOT going to do it by using your throttle alone (ie: your have OTHER things to do while on approach which doesn't allow you to commit 100% of attention to the elevator and/or the throttle)). Use pitch trim instead. My 2 cents.
Chuck B
Napamule

 

[warchild]

As a forty some year general aviation pilot - flight sim is good on procedures but not so good on flying.

been working on that .. problem is, you really dont have the "butt" feeling to go by. also, no matter how well you do the math, getting the base fluight model to match the actual aircraft is difficult at best. I dont think many fde engineers really put that much into it simply because it can take over a year to develope a good flight model, and even then, if the fde engineer hasnt flown the plane, we really dont know if its accurate or not.. We do our best, but, that will always leave something to be desired no matter how good we are..
Pam

 

[BrittMac]

Nice to hear how much FS can help. I really need to beef up my instrument knowledge/skills in FS. I started out as one of those "seat of the pants" FS flyers years ago, but don't get me wrong, I always used the primary instruments. Just never learned all the GPS units, G1000's, and some Nav instruments.

I will be starting my quest for my PPL this year, after years of waiting for the "right time". My goal last year was to save up a chunk of change that would enable me to carry through most, if not all, of the training without having to stop for months at a time to rebuild funds to fly more. There are still many hurdles to jump, but I am gonna do it one way or another. Just wish I could have done this 15+ years ago.

Ya know, back in the 90's, my parents said they would get me a car or flying lessons. No brainer, right? I wanted the lessons. I got neither(not that I was a bad boy or anything, just didn't happen). Sucks, because back then it was no where near the cost it is now.