A Random Comment

On May 22, 12:15*pm, "birdog" wrote:
Just got around to reviewing all the comments under "Simulators". I guess it
was inevitable that it ended up as disagreements with MX. While I don't want
to get involved with that dead end, I have had an experience that kind of
parallels.

As I mentioned before, after I lost my medical, I tried to stay close to
aviation (to no avail) by trying radio control and simulation. During my
brief sojurn in radio control, I joined a "flying" club that was quite
active. But more than a few radiologists, when they found out that I was a
licensed pilot, kinda sulled up - not actually defensive - just avoided me
as much as possible. I think they all wanted to be pilots, but for some
reason - finances (althought some of those models were more expensive than
some of our early planes), the wife, inertia, etc. I think the final straw
for me when I saw a picture in one of their magazines showing a modeler with
helmet, goggles and scarf, landing a model biplane.

I think this kinda helps explain MX.

There's a difference between simulate and stimulate: I choose M20J
over MSFS for stimulation of the aviation variety. Some pilots use
desk or laptop computer based simulators to improve a subset of their
skills, some non-pilots use them for other purposes, but you can't
commit aviation on a desk top simulator -- that is a fantasy world.
The confusion and argument here has to do with the difference between
subset skill improvement (unusual attitude recovery decoupled from
sensory input comes to mind, although aviators, not desktop simulated
aviators, understand overcoming sensory inputs is a large part of
unusual attitude recovery in the clouds) as opposed to gaming a
flight.

One area that would probably be useful is to simulate entering and
executing holding patterns with differing winds-- do the math in your
head, cross the fix within a few seconds of the 'expect further
clearance' time. Many of us might benefit from doing that for an hour
or two. Ditto NDB approaches with random winds. It saves the time and
cost of flying a real airplane, and I guess you can start out a few
miles from the marker time after time, without negotiating with
approach.

Of course I can't remember the last time I was given a "hold, expect
further clearance at" and the real world PITA about NDBs isn't the
flying of them -- it's the friggin communication -- little airports
in valleys, no line of sight to the center's antenna.

I don't buy into the idea of simulated approaches into new airports as
especially useful: There's very little difference from decision height
to the threshold on the ILSs I use.and a glance at the airport diagram
tells me how far from the threshold I should plan on touching down to
make the turn-off to the FBO I want to use. The most important part
of an approach, especially in the clouds, is formally brief yourself
(it helps if there are PX, you can brief them too) on what you're
going to do, especially if it's to near minimums, what to look for,
what will happen if you don't see the airport, that sort of thing. I
instruct the person in the right seat to say "You are visual" if (s)he
clearly sees the airport when we are well above minimums. I try very
hard not to peek until well within the reported ceiling/visibility, an
extra pair of eyes tends to make transition from instruments to visual
and then back again to instruments not as likely (although it's not a
big deal, is it?)