Flight Sim Coach (FSC) is an online training service started by Mike Catalfamo, a former airline pilot and Boeing engineer. Mike concluded long ago that many of the skills we need to master as pilots don’t necessarily require an actual airplane—emergency procedures, ATC communication, and pretty much most of IFR training can be all (or at least partly) accomplished in a simulator provided a knowledgeable instructor is in the “right seat” to guide you. So much the better if that simulator is at home. But here’s the rub: How many CFIIs are both great instructors and savvy flight simmers?
Enter Flight Sim Coach
That’s where FSC comes in: All the FSC CFIIs are not only professional pilots but avid simmers too; they’ve gone through the same journey you’ve gone through (or you’re about to undertake) and understand the various “simisms” you’ll encounter. They also know how to work around most of those issues.
You’re probably thinking at this point that FSC is some kind of glorified online ground school. And initially, I thought that too. But after spending a little over three hours with two different FSC instructors, I can assure you it’s much more than that.
Part of their secret sauce is that the service comes with a bit of software called “FSC Link” that makes the experience far more engaging and consistent with what you might expect from a professional sim training center you might use to get a new type or satisfy insurance requirements. It comes in the form of a plug in for both X-Plane and FS2020 that allows one of their instructors to both monitor the current status of your flight as well as inject failures into it. The idea is to emulate the same style of formal, scenario-based training pro pilots have to go through to stay current—but on a home system.
Yes, you can try to use X-Plane’s built-in “Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)” option that will, depending on the number of hours you zonk in, probabilistically fail a system during flight. But it’s not the same: FSC Link allows an instructor to inject havoc into a flight at exactly the worst possible times to stress some proverbial point. And, at the end of the day, that’s what you really want, so you can evaluate your performance as well as get constructive feedback and learn.
Lost In Paso Robles
My first flight was with Mike, who asked me a few basic questions about my background and personal goals before planning our one-and-a-half-hour session. After a little deliberation, we decided on some holding pattern exercises around the Morrow Bay (MQO) VOR followed by an instrument flight on the PilotEdge network from Paso Robles (KPRB) to Santa Maria, California (KSMX) at night with ceilings around 1000 feet AGL and two SM visibility. I choose to fly the route under X-Plane 12 in a Diamond DA40 with round dials and a GNS 530.
We then logged into Zoom where I shared my screen with both XP12 and FSC Link running. At that point, Mike had me bring up the map to drag my DA40 near the VOR where I would start the flight in the air flying toward it. And after about a minute or so, I was settled in, flying, and had my scan going. Mike proceeded to act as ATC and gave me a hold instruction. I then confidently used the old trick of placing my thumb and forefinger near the HSI to determine it would be a parallel entry, and hand flew the hold. I also informed ATC that I was not only in the hold but that my life was now going in circles. We then paused the sim and debriefed.
Even though I flew this hold well, there was still a lot to talk about: Did I have to fly one-minute legs? No, I could have asked for distance-based legs. Did I have to use the VOR? Well, I could have treated MQO as just a GPS waypoint and made judicious use of the OBS knob. How could I have compensated for different winds? Should I have timed my inbound legs? What are those five T’s again? You get the idea. Despite the fact that I was sitting in my office, I was getting a real, honest-to-goodness flight lesson with a great, down-to-earth professional pilot and CFII. Sweet.
My flight out of KPRB was a lot more eventful. After filing on PilotEdge, I got the PASO ROBLES TWO ODP which I had to brief and setup. I then proceeded to call Oakland Center to get my release and off I went. Outside of a small sim issue that caused my GPS to not sequence correctly, I joined the ODP and all was good. Until my engine started to randomly rev up and down intermittently that is—just as I entered the soup. You see where this is going.
The good news is I noticed it immediately and declared without hesitation. The bad news is that I hadn’t programmed an approach to get back in. To make matters worse, I wasn’t sure if I should do a 180 and head back to Paso Robles since San Luis Obispo (KSBP) was literally right in front of me. This was my shortcoming for not briefing what I would do if things went wrong, which of course they did at the worst possible time. At some point, Mike asked me to log out of PilotEdge and pause the sim so we could debrief. Suffice it to say, we had a lot to talk about. Try to accomplish all that on a real flight. Wait—better yet, don’t.
A Quick Jaunt
My next session was with Alan Edwards, ATP/CFII and one of the nicest instructors you’re ever going to meet. With over 30 years of instructing and flying under his belt, Alan has a real passion for both teaching and flight sim. (In fact, he owns a certified BATD at home both for personal and professional use).
Alan gave me a more familiar scenario this time, with me flying out of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, (KHZL) on my way back to my home airport of Readington, New Jersey, (N51), at dusk with a 1500 foot-ceiling and three SM of visibility, to fly the VOR 4 approach.
But before we got to the flying part, Alan wanted to discuss the approach and some of its nuances: It’s straight-in, right? Sorta, more like a right-base. And where is that FAF? (It doesn’t have one.) What about the VDP? Can I use it? (Maybe.) Must I use the VOR or may I use my GPS? I chose to fly the whole procedure using the GPS while monitoring the VOR on NAV2. What are my minimums? What do I do when I go missed? Climb and turn immediately.
Again, I found my preflight conversation with Alan extremely valuable as it allowed me to discuss how I would brief and fly this approach in real-life but on the sim. Thankfully, Alan spared me from a spontaneous engine fire during my flight, and I flew the approach, landed safety, and we debriefed. Mission accomplished.
Simming With Purpose
If you’ve gotten this far, then you’re probably asking yourself whether FSC is right for you. Obviously, if you’re an instrument student or just rusty, I would run, not walk, over to FSC and take a few lessons. Even though it won’t replace quality time with your CFII in the air, FSC can certainly supplement it on the ground ultimately saving you both time and money.
At a minimum, FSC can help you build and optimize your home sim—a great option if you don’t want to do it yourself or just aren’t technically inclined and want to focus on flying.
But for the proficient, FSC’s value proposition shifts, and is more about bringing a certain rigor to your simming that can be difficult to develop on your own, especially if you’re just going through the motions, flying the same old approaches every few weeks. FSC can even tailor their training programs to meet your specific needs since they are entirely system agnostic. Over the years their CFIIs have worked with a myriad array of sims ranging from the pedestrian keyboard and mouse setups all the way to those extensive rigs you see on YouTube. It doesn’t matter.
If there is one point I want you to fly away with it’s this: Take your simming seriously—don’t just do your “six in six.” We live in a golden age of flight sim where home systems can far surpass a basic certified rig at your local FBO. If you need a little help from the good folks over at FSC to formalize a training regimen, so be it. It will make you a better pilot. That, I can guarantee.
Alexander Sack is an instrument-rated, commercial pilot who lives to study approach charts, Skew-T diagrams, and of course, flying his home-built simulator as much as possible. In order to support those questionable endeavors, he spends his day as a Senior Software Engineer wrangling big data.
