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Train Like You Fly, Fly Like You Train

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Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Modern flight simulators are crucial for IFR pilot training, accurately replicating challenging scenarios like ILS approaches to minimums and complex circling approaches due to advanced visual displays.
  • The author recounts a rare real-world ILS approach to minimums, highlighting the precision required, the vital role of automation and specific runway lighting, and the learning experience gained.
  • In-cockpit Nexrad radar systems provide invaluable long-range weather planning capabilities, enabling pilots to strategically avoid widespread weather systems and make informed routing decisions during IFR flights.
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In more than 30 years of flying I have flown only a handful of ILS approaches with the weather right at minimums. The same is true for most pilots. I think the reason is that the weather seldom cooperates. Fog frequently drops the visibility well below the required minimums, but mist, drizzle and rain usually cut visibility close to a mile instead of the half-mile that is the standard minimum on an ILS.

Because the weather is so fickle, training in the most sophisticated simulators is the best IFR practice a pilot can get. The newest visual displays do a nearly perfect job of simulating what a real ILS approach in minimum visibility looks like. That wasn’t true even a few years ago, when even the best simulator visual displays tended to have you popping out of the obscuration into reasonable visibility. That kind of “breaking out” doesn’t happen in real airplanes when the weather is at minimums.

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