On May 15, 7:17 pm, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Certainly you will agree that, all things being equal, it is good to
learn as much as one can on the ground before getting into the cockpit?
There is no substitute for manual practice, but manual practice is
going to happen anyway. Why wait until getting into the cockpit
before learning things that can be learned on the ground?

And why do all these flight schols have simulators?

There's a right way and several wrong ways to do just about
anything. Would you like to go under the knife wielded by a surgeon
who learned his craft on a surgery simulator? Ride in a bus driven by
a guy who learned to drive on a desktop sim?
We sometimes get students who have lots of sim time. MSFS
time. Those students can have a lot of bad habits to break, and many
things to learn over again the right way. Engine operation, various
maneuvers, and instrument scans are just a few of the problem areas.
The sim, despite what some claim, is not very accurate. Some
proponents of the sim try to tell us that the airplane must be wrong
if it isn't the same as the sim! Further, there are no physical
sensations, and those alone can confuse the experienced simmer when he
gets into the real thing. Scares some of them.
Instructors are taught, as part of their training, the Seven
Learning Factors. The second of those is Primacy, which says that
first impressions, things seen first, are the longest-lasting, and so
they had better be right the first time. A guy fooling with a sim on
his own is not likely to get things right the first time, maybe never,
and is busy developing a handicap. See the Learning factors he
http://www.tc.gc.ca/civilaviation/ge...tI/Factors.htm

We use sims in flight training. The big difference is that the
student is under the tutelage of an instructor who has spent
considerable time learning things the right way himself, and
understands the importance of the student's learning things properly.
The student already has actual flight time when he sits at the sim and
so understands much more about what he's doing. And why it needs to be
done a certain way. If he doesn't do thing right, he'll not pass the
flight tests and will likely be an incompetent pilot.

Dan