A Flight Training Device, such as the one you had demonstrated to you, is
harder to fly than the actual airplane when it is working perfectly. The
airplane is a pretty forgiving thing, short term...you can let go of the
controls and it will maintain trimmed pitch and bank for awhile. The FTD, on
the other hand, forces you to scan properly and stay on top of the
situation. This is a good thing.

Having said that, I think you got a lousy demonstration...don't know whether
to blame the box or the instructor.

Bob Gardner

"RM" wrote in message
om...
I just went over to one of the local flight schools and asked to see
their simulator. The owner was kind enough to allow an instructor to
give me a demonstration, which turned into a free 20 minutes or so on
the thing.

I can't say as I was terribly impressed. The most obvious problem was that
it crashed twice. No, I didn't fly it into the ground. Once it just froze
and the PC needed to be rebooted. The second time the instructor was
fooling
with the GPS settings while I chased the ADF needle around until we
apparently flew into a black hole and everything disappeared. That was
the end of the session.

Besides these software flaws, the simulator just didn't handle much like
an airplane.

Does anyone think these things really have value as a training device?
It's hard to see it. Maybe the real simulators, Frasca or whatever, are
better. I had thought that getting an instrument rating at a school with
a simulator would be a real advantage, but perhaps that was wishful
thinking.

This also brings up questions about using Pocket PC based machines to
replace paper charts. I'd as soon go skydiving without a parachute as
depend on Microsoft software in the cockpit.