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Old November 19th 18, 07:47 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
son_of_flubber
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Default Glider Simulator Training at the USAFA

On Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 5:05:35 PM UTC-5, wrote:
In the summer of 2018, the United States Air Force Academy began using Mach 0.1 Simulated Glider Cockpits as part of their "Glider Airmanship" course.


Back to the merits of glider simulator training...

Student pilots pay for the majority of aerotows at most clubs. This cash flow keeps the club afloat. If we used simulators to train up students with fewer aerotows, then we would need to recruit more students, or the cash flow would suffer and aerotow rates would go up. Everybody would pay more for each tow, but students would still provide most of the cash flow. Certificated pilots would pay more, maybe a lot more.

How do we use simulator training to recruit and retain more pilots? Reducing the overall cost and duration of primary training will marginally increase the number of pilots, but I'd like to think that we could use Condor to potentially recruit even more pilots. I don't know exactly how though.