Certified Sim vs. DIY

Okay, weve likely just established that your proficiency needs more than an IPC twice a year. Now, what if you flew those same procedures every month, all the way to real minimums in no guano, Batman, I cant see the runway weather? Do that every month and after a few months youd be much more proficient for that exercise. If you do it in a sim, you dont have to arrange for a safety pilot or an instructor, and you can do it whenever its convenient to your schedule.

Frank Bowlin

Tuesday, September 03, 2019 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Pilots often struggle to maintain true IFR proficiency solely through legal minimums, as consistent, targeted practice—best achieved through simulation—is crucial for actual skill retention.
Certified simulators, while allowing logged time, frequently provide generic aircraft models and basic panels, often failing to accurately replicate the specific avionics and instruments of a pilot's actual, upgraded aircraft.
Building a custom simulator enables precise replication of an individual's aircraft panel and avionics, offering superior and more relevant proficiency training, despite the inability to log the simulated flight hours.
The core decision for pilots is the trade-off between logging hours in a certified simulator (often with less panel realism) and achieving highly specific, effective proficiency training by replicating their own aircraft's panel in a self-built sim.

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Let me start by referring you to my Remarks on page 2 of this issue. To summarize, I thought I had a certified sim coming, but that hasn’t materialized. So, I’ve begun to consider building my own simulator. “But,” you might argue. “You can’t log your time in that so you can’t maintain currency.” You’d be right, but there’s more to the discussion than that.

Do You Need Those Hours?

Let’s dig into the legality-versus-proficiency discussion. Say you fly an older high-performance single, like a Mooney or a Bonanza. You log perhaps 100 or so hours a year. You try to file IFR for most of your flying, but you really don’t get much actual IMC. Chances are you’re neither legal nor proficient six months after your last IPC. You’d like to fix that.