Dave Butler wrote in message ...
David Banahan wrote:
When I was young I got my license the week I turned 18. I left flying when
I left my first wife. I would like to resume flying, but want to focus on
IFR simulation (most cost effective) at home training before beginning
actual flight training. Any advice would be appreciated to help me develop
a cost effective way to re-learn to fly. Thanks David

Hi Dave, welcome back.

I'm not much of a sim flyer myself, but I'd think the strength of the sims is
developing your scan and hand-eye coordination, not learning procedures. Perhaps
if you already have a basic knowledge of procedures, you can use the sim to
practice them.

Interesting. I just passed my IA checkride with 60 hours in the bird
and maybe 10 in sims, 5 in an AST-300 and 5 on FS2004.

In my case I found it easier (!?!) to do air work in my real 172 than
the digital one in FS04. I have a nice CH yoke and all but no matter
how I fiddled I never got the feel anywhere close- pitch sensitivity
in particular seemed extremely high in the sim and I was boinging my
altitude +/- 500' which I haven't done in the real plane in 40 hours,
even on turbulent days.

OTOH, the procedures seemed quite strong, and I found that I made most
of the same mistakes in the sim that I made in the real lesson. FS04
has interactive ATC which is IMHO accurate enough to be useful (if you
crank the speed and traffic density up all the way) to offer you a
broad range of distractions. The approaches are all built based on
Jeppesen data so they match up very well to the real world. I did not
use any of the canned Rod Machado "lessons" that are included with the
game so I can't comment on their usefulness.

My experience was that FS04 could be a good supplement to actual
lessons, for instance to practice approaches, holding patterns, etc.
But I would be reluctant to use it before having a CFII teach the
basic procedure. I probably could have used it more than I did, but I
already spend all day sitting in front of a computer. YMMV.

Best,
-cwk.