On Jul 5, 11:04*am, Mike Ash wrote:
In article
,



*a wrote:
On Jul 4, 11:14*pm, Mike Ash wrote:
In article ,

*Mxsmanic wrote:
See

http://www.flyingmag.com/safety/trai...ht-simulations

Hmmm, $58,800.... For that much, I could buy my glider outright (no
partnership) and pay for about 8 years of flying it. I think I'll
pass....

It is neat to see this tech become more commoditized, though.

It will be interesting to see how many hours get logged onto these at
a moderately busy flight school -- it could drive the price per hour
pretty low and still offer a nice ROI.

Right, it's obviously aimed at schools that can rent it out to students.
I imagine it could become pretty cheap in that setting. I also imagine a
few rich crazy people will end up with installations in their homes.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

Had a funny thought: will the schools offer a dry rate (bring your own
extension cord)?

The reality is, use would have to be pretty high, for 2000 hour rental
years -- that's 40 hours a week, the device alone would have to earn
$10 an hour for a 3 year payback, and that contributes nothing for
space and instruction time. A more realistic use rate might be 500
hours a year, device charges $40 an hour for a 3 year payback (more or
less a 30% ROI, not a bad target for high risk ventures). I think I'll
keep my checkbook unopened.

On the other hand, there are things I'd like to do in my airplane and
would happily pay a few hundred dollars to try them in a realistic
simulator.

Speaking of realistic sims, those of you who fly unpressurized with
O2, do try to get to a place where you can experience hypoxia under
supervision. The experience may be enough for you to decide to stay at
12k or under unless there's an emergency. Well, 15 or 16k if you're a
lot younger than me --and that would not be hard to be!