Computer Flight Simulators
AOPA has an interesting article (Membership Required) about real pilots using computer based flight simulators to keep sharp and even assist flight training.
I had logged about 150 hours of flight simulator time in X-Plane before taking my first “real” flight lesson. Much like the article said, I did have occasional challenges during my flight training while fixating too much on certain instruments and not looking outside for reference enough. This was most noticeable during flight maneuvers such as s-turns, steep turns, and turns about a point. Once I broke that habit my learning started to progress rapidly and everything started to “click”.
However other aspects of the training process were dramatically accelerated. Radio based navigation including tracking to and from VORs, tracking NDBs came extremely easy. Heck, I could intercept a localizer and fly an ILS approach to minimums in the simulator before my first day as a student pilot in a “real” plane.
Overall I think my simulator time (while not being official, logged time) was an asset to my private pilot training and will become invaluable when I start to work on my instrument training. You certainly can’t teach yourself a new sport like learning to ski just by reading a book. There is too much “feel” and muscle memory involved. Flying is the same way although reading Stick and Rudder would be a good start.
Even if you have a yoke and rudder pedals connected to your computer you won’t learn to fly by flying a simulator. However learning aircraft instrumentation and radio based navigation is a different story. Those skills relay on knowledge as opposed to “feel” and therefore can effectively be taught in a simulator.
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