Busiest Soaring Operations?

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On Aug 1, 7:13 pm, "Vaughn Simon"
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I talked with Brad about adapting his sim
to teaching aerotow

While a sim may be useful for teaching procedural skills, I am very
pessimistic
about their ability to teach stick and rudder skills.

Vaughn

im not thinking about it to teach stick and rudder skills. it would
be a great tool to teach pilots how to maintain position on tow.
possible could even be adapted to teach thermal centering techniques,
as well as crosswind landings. aerotow is arguably the most difficult
thing to learn for soaring pilots, particularly pilots transitioning
from powered flying with no aerobatic or formation experience. lots
of tows are spent simply trying to maintain position and there is a
lot of money to be saved by using a sim to teach this skill.

coordinated turns and all that other stick and rudder stuff is best
left for the air.


Any glider simulator can be used by an instructor as an "animated white
board" to illustrate what a maneuver should look like to the student.
Condor Competition flight Simulator can even be used to illustrate the
aerodynamics of a maneuver.

If the simulated cockpit is well set up with rudder pedals, separate spoiler
controls and a projector, there can be real value to letting a student fly
it. I'm not so sure about a desktop PC with the typical "twist the stick
for rudder" joystick.

A lot of the value is just getting the student to use his eyes correctly.
The " look here and see this" kind of lesson works well. Pausing the sim on
final approach to let the student analyze approach errors is one use.

Bill Daniels