Hello. New member here.

The simulator training is absolutely of value. Why do you think simulator training is mandatory for many aircraft. I had not flown a glider in 12-14 years before I got back into the sport,and had not flown for 7 years at all. Before I took a tow I did some condor training and it absolutely helped! First tow on condor felt like one of my first tows ever, had trouble maintaining position (and I have been trained in formation flying). Open your mind you will learn and have fun.

As for spin training never tried that in a sim, spins are easy though but important to be comfortable with.



On Tuesday, October 25, 2016 at 5:43:08 AM UTC-7, JJJ wrote:
;930909 Wrote:

JJJ

Welcome back to soaring.

You may want to consider using computer-based glider flight simulation
(a.k.a. Condor) to augment your training.

I would be happy to help you get started.

You can contact me via my website: gliderCFI.com

Cheers, SRM

Okay, I spent a few minutes skimming your site. I imagine I'll take a
more detailed look later. I also googled Condor and found some other
stuff on it.

To be honest, I'm a bit skeptical about how much one could accomplish
sitting at home flying a sim -- however, I say that having exactly ZERO
experience trying it. And several of the student pilots in my club have
suggested it to me too. But, for example, can any amount of sim spin
training prepare one for real live spin training in a real live
aircraft?

-- J. J.
=======================




--
JJJ

Okay, thank you Scott, Bruce, and Jonathan for your encouraging remarks
about sims. I'll think more about that now. Can it simulate a Grob 103?

-- Minimum equipment is as large a screen as you have access to
-- and a good joystick with twist control for rudder and sufficient
-- buttons and/or levers for airbrakes, trim, quickly changing
-- the direction of view. Optional: buttons for flaps/undercarriage.
-- A lot of people (including me) use Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (about $35)

I would definitely need a bit more investment. All I have are five
older PC's that I'm absolutely certain could not support any modern
graphics-intensive app. I'm sure I would insist on having real
rudder pedals. Okay, true confession: I did too play with a sim once,
about 15 years ago, for about 20 minutes, with twist control for the
rudder, and I absolutely didn't get it. I crashed every flight within
a minute or two because of that.

Does a decent set-up of joystick and pedals include realistic tactile
feed-back? It seems to me that would be essential in order to develop
any kind of "muscle memory". That's another reason for real pedals too.

-- At my club we have an old Cirrus cockpit with all the standard controls
-- (stick, rudder, trim, airbrakes, tow release, undercarriage) connected
-- to Condor, a small LCD display as the instrument panel, and a huge
-- corporate surplus projection TV for the scenery.

Now there's a thought! That sounds neat-o. My club has a Blanik L-13,
the only function of which anymore is to keep its trailer from blowing
away in the wind. I should suggest to TPTB that we look into getting
a set-up like this.

Are there really computer interfaces available to connect the real
controls of a real glider to a computer? Or was it a home-built job
by some electronics engineer in your club? (If the latter, well, we
probably have that talent in our club too. One of my instructors,
for example, is a retired physicist/programmer.) And can Condor
interface to all that?

-- The simulator training is absolutely of value. Why do you think
-- simulator training is mandatory for many aircraft. I had not flown
-- a glider in 12-14 years before I got back into the sport,and had
-- not flown for 7 years at all. Before I took a tow I did some condor
-- training and it absolutely helped! First tow on condor felt like one
-- of my first tows ever, had trouble maintaining position (and I have
-- been trained in formation flying). Open your mind you will learn and
-- have fun.
--
-- As for spin training never tried that in a sim, spins are easy
-- though but important to be comfortable with.

Doesn't professional sim training take place in a real simulated cockpit,
surrounded by all the mechanical machinery of a carnival ride? I've seen
those, but never flown one. Can a home-style sim do all that?

I'd still be skeptical about that. Can any home-style sim reproduce
the experience of seeing the firmament spinning around your head while
you sit in a real cockpit? (I only did one or two spin and recoveries,
and that was 40 years ago in the 2-33 -- I remember it being neither
difficult nor scary. But I also remember very explicitly how my
instructor's training technique caused that to be the case.) Or the
sensation of stalling or pushing over, or G's in a steep turn (let alone the
feeling of a steep uncoordinated turn), or the turbulence of wind gradient
on tow?

-- J. J.
================================

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 9:43:09 AM UTC+3, JJJ wrote:
Okay, thank you Scott, Bruce, and Jonathan for your encouraging remarks
about sims. I'll think more about that now. Can it simulate a Grob
103?

-- Minimum equipment is as large a screen as you have access to
-- and a good joystick with twist control for rudder and sufficient
-- buttons and/or levers for airbrakes, trim, quickly changing
-- the direction of view. Optional: buttons for flaps/undercarriage.
-- A lot of people (including me) use Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (about
$35)

I would definitely need a bit more investment. All I have are five
older PC's that I'm absolutely certain could not support any modern
graphics-intensive app.

Condor is actually pretty old at this point. Their site says you need a 1 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 64 MB video card with DirectX 7.

Of course more is better :-)

Does a decent set-up of joystick and pedals include realistic tactile
feed-back? It seems to me that would be essential in order to develop
any kind of "muscle memory". That's another reason for real pedals too.

I don't think that's important. Simple spring centering is enough. It's not like real glider controls give you steering wheel kick back from road bumps. Speed-sensitive spring force might be useful, but there are also plenty of gliders where the control forces don't change a lot (e.g. the flying tail types such as Cirrus, Janus). It doesn't hurt to be able to fly them without relying on control force as a cue.


-- At my club we have an old Cirrus cockpit with all the standard
controls
-- (stick, rudder, trim, airbrakes, tow release, undercarriage)
connected
-- to Condor, a small LCD display as the instrument panel, and a huge
-- corporate surplus projection TV for the scenery.

Now there's a thought! That sounds neat-o. My club has a Blanik L-13,
the only function of which anymore is to keep its trailer from blowing
away in the wind. I should suggest to TPTB that we look into getting
a set-up like this.

Are there really computer interfaces available to connect the real
controls of a real glider to a computer? Or was it a home-built job
by some electronics engineer in your club? (If the latter, well, we
probably have that talent in our club too. One of my instructors,
for example, is a retired physicist/programmer.) And can Condor
interface to all that?

All mature PC flight SIM programs (e.g. Condor, MS FS, XPLane) can interface to external controls and instruments. Usually via a serial ("COM") port, or simulated serial port over USB.

A $25 Arduino Uno has six analogue inputs (converts a voltage between 0 and 5V to a number from 0 - 1023) and a dozen digital inputs/outputs to read simple switches. It can talk to a connected PC by USB serial. It's easy to program, even for someone who has never dealt with microcontollers before. Just read the inputs and send to the PC in the correct format 10 or 20 times a second.

For me, the mechanical part is the hard part! Finding a way to connect linear or rotary potentiometers to the aircraft controls, and centering springs to give some feedback.

If you don't want to take the time to DIY, someone on this group is selling a ready-to-go setup, though without a real glider cockpit:

http://www.gliderbooks.com/training-sim.html

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 9:43:09 AM UTC+3, JJJ wrote:
Okay, thank you Scott, Bruce, and Jonathan for your encouraging remarks
about sims. I'll think more about that now. Can it simulate a Grob
103?

Just noticed this.

No, there's no Grob 103 model. Not really important. The handling feel is more important than the exact performance, and any neutral-ish standard class glider will be near enough e.g. the ASW28 in the included aircraft.

Plane Pack 1 (EUR 10) includes a PW5 which handles nicely and is only a little worse performing than a Grob 103. I sometimes fly it in the online races and do ok because of the handicap :-) PW5s mostly only do slow and short flights because mostly only bad pilots fly them ... it was quite a revelation when one of NZs top std class pilots entered a PW5 competition...

Plane Pack 2 (EUR 15) has a bunch of older "club class" gliders such as Libelle, ASW15, LS4 which are higher performance than the Grob but closer than the built in gliders.

If you want to really practise your rudder coordination then jump in the Nimbus 4 or ASW22!!

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 12:43:09 AM UTC-6, JJJ wrote:
Okay, thank you Scott, Bruce, and Jonathan for your encouraging remarks
about sims. I'll think more about that now. Can it simulate a Grob
103?

-- Minimum equipment is as large a screen as you have access to
-- and a good joystick with twist control for rudder and sufficient
-- buttons and/or levers for airbrakes, trim, quickly changing
-- the direction of view. Optional: buttons for flaps/undercarriage.
-- A lot of people (including me) use Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (about
$35)

I would definitely need a bit more investment. All I have are five
older PC's that I'm absolutely certain could not support any modern
graphics-intensive app. I'm sure I would insist on having real
rudder pedals. Okay, true confession: I did too play with a sim once,
about 15 years ago, for about 20 minutes, with twist control for the
rudder, and I absolutely didn't get it. I crashed every flight within
a minute or two because of that.

Does a decent set-up of joystick and pedals include realistic tactile
feed-back? It seems to me that would be essential in order to develop
any kind of "muscle memory". That's another reason for real pedals too.


-- At my club we have an old Cirrus cockpit with all the standard
controls
-- (stick, rudder, trim, airbrakes, tow release, undercarriage)
connected
-- to Condor, a small LCD display as the instrument panel, and a huge
-- corporate surplus projection TV for the scenery.

Now there's a thought! That sounds neat-o. My club has a Blanik L-13,
the only function of which anymore is to keep its trailer from blowing
away in the wind. I should suggest to TPTB that we look into getting
a set-up like this.

Are there really computer interfaces available to connect the real
controls of a real glider to a computer? Or was it a home-built job
by some electronics engineer in your club? (If the latter, well, we
probably have that talent in our club too. One of my instructors,
for example, is a retired physicist/programmer.) And can Condor
interface to all that?

-- The simulator training is absolutely of value. Why do you think
-- simulator training is mandatory for many aircraft. I had not flown
-- a glider in 12-14 years before I got back into the sport,and had
-- not flown for 7 years at all. Before I took a tow I did some condor
-- training and it absolutely helped! First tow on condor felt like one
-- of my first tows ever, had trouble maintaining position (and I have
-- been trained in formation flying). Open your mind you will learn and
-- have fun.
--
-- As for spin training never tried that in a sim, spins are easy
-- though but important to be comfortable with.

Doesn't professional sim training take place in a real simulated
cockpit,
surrounded by all the mechanical machinery of a carnival ride? I've
seen
those, but never flown one. Can a home-style sim do all that?

I'd still be skeptical about that. Can any home-style sim reproduce
the experience of seeing the firmament spinning around your head while
you sit in a real cockpit? (I only did one or two spin and recoveries,
and that was 40 years ago in the 2-33 -- I remember it being neither
difficult nor scary. But I also remember very explicitly how my
instructor's training technique caused that to be the case.) Or the
sensation of stalling or pushing over, or G's in a steep turn (let alone
the
feeling of a steep uncoordinated turn), or the turbulence of wind
gradient
on tow?

-- J. J.
================================




--
JJJ

At the United Training Center in Denver, most sims were static cockpits. It's an eyeball exercise. The big moving monsters ran about $2500/hour several years ago. I was privileged to fly the 777 sim successfully from takeoff to landing though the instructor had to point out the thrust reversers. Landing 50ft in the air is a tad different also.

Frank Whiteley