AviationBanter - View Single Post

**Michael Ash** · February 10th 08, 05:03 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting,rec.aviation.student

In rec.aviation.student wrote:
My primary instructor for the PPL has an aerobatic endorsement (or
whatever the technical name is) on her CFI cert. She has been doing
aerobatics for many years. I had used MSFS before taking lessons from
her. On our first flight she acted surprised and wanted to know how
long I'd been flying. It was all straight and level but I understood
things like the how the VOR stuff worked, how to trim, use the radios,
and that the throttle was the up/down control (ie, throttle back to
descend), etc. I told her I'd learned all that in the simulator. Later
she came to my house for dinner once, and for fun she wanted to try
the simulator. She couldn't do it at all, or course, because the
control inputs are completely different as was how you view "the world
outside". So she stalled out trying to land and crashed, she couldn't
do a snap roll "correctly", and the loop was impossible. The whole
time she just laughed her a$$ off.

Nice story. I had a similar experience to yours. Not the part with the
instructor flying the sim, but showing up for lessons with a bunch of sim
flying done first. I was pretty young at the time and hadn't gone as far
with it as you had, and I was flying really primitive sims (anyone
remember Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer?) but it had a similar
effect. I was good at simulator-type stuff, had no trouble reading the
instruments or holding altitude while staring at them, but it had really
conditioned me to keep my head down and I had a hard time developing the
habit of looking outside.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software