Thread: Glider Simulator Training at the USAFA
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Old November 19th 18, 01:32 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Giaco
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Default Glider Simulator Training at the USAFA
On Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 10:30:25 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 6:30:26 PM UTC-8, Giaco wrote:
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. The data collected from the course shows that the solo rate for students who completed the course in 2018 was more than double the solo rate of the previous two years.

To see a full article about the program, send us an email to and we will email you a copy.

How does this differ from the simulators that they have been using since 2008? They have had condor hooked up to all the controls on a wrecked L-23 fuselage with head tracking for a number of years, and I thought they implemented simulator time as part of the curriculum as far back as 2009-2010....

I am not sure what you are referring to. The people I worked with didn't mention any other use of glider sims at the Air Force Academy other than some brief experimentation with Condor using a table top joystick. In this program, each of the 340 students in the glider course trained for several hours on one of eight Mach 0.1 Simulated Glider Cockpits, using custom lesson scenarios I developed for Condor 2.
- Russell Holtz

Interesting... We were actively using it for teaching basic airmanship (AM-251...461 is instructor upgrade course). I found it incredibly helpful for students on pattern and landing, especially given that they could see and feel actual cockpit controls, and we could pause the sim to talk through a landing step by step.

Not Knocking the Mach 0.1, it just came as a surprise, as they already had arguably the best setup I'd ever seen for Condor sim flying. I was one of those cadets that taught for 3 years and then went out to Black Forest for my CFI-G...and the rest is history. I have applied many of their best practices to help drive a bit more expediency and safety into club operations (they don't have to be opposites, just ask UH!).
G7