Training & Sims

Most instrument trips end with one approach and one landing, after which you go about your day. For those times when one approach doesn’t result in a touchdown, the choices are: A second approach, or a diversion, hopefully somewhere with coffee and cookies. The common protocol is to decide that ahead of time, based on […]

What do operations of any two aircraft, be they a heavy Boeing 777 or the tiniest piston-engine light sport aircraft, have in common? Checklists, of course. These straightforward, functional documents provide guidance for each standard phase of flight, from firing up the engines, to cruise flight, to shutting it down. Specialized checklists also help crews […]

Exploring new places with your airplane can be fun, but sometimes that requires being comfortable with operations you don’t do often. It can also mean flying in conditions you’d consider challenging. Or, all of the above. In that case, previous experience is a plus. The more recent, the better. Even then, “recent” is a judgement […]

You can fly a lot of IFR these days without encountering anything but GPS approaches with LPV minimums. In this challenge, you’ll fly departures and approaches at two airports where the procedures required are anything but standard. Better brief them well so the gotchas don’t getcha. Use whatever airplane you like for this challenge, as […]

You can think of your sim like a desktop operating system: By itself, it’s not extremely useful; only when you install third-party applications on top of it are you truly enabled to do real work. Same is true for X-Plane. The fact is most simulators rely on a vast array of third-party add-ons to provide […]

In the opening phases of World War II, our country was feverishly training pilots for war. Thousands of cadets earned coveted US Army Air Corps wings. Six months later, half were dead. Investigation revealed that deaths attributable to VFR into IMC far exceeded combat losses. IMC was more dangerous than the enemy. Realizing this, the […]

These Sim Challenges have been accused of creating “gotchas” to catch the unsuspecting—and rightly so. That’s part of the game. So we decided it was only fair to spool up a bit different challenge. The gotchas here are largely ones in the venn diagram of conflict where good ol’ fashion procedure design meets 21st-century execution. […]

Flying in the system is about, well, flying, and not so much about checking the boxes of 14 CFR Part 91-fill-in-the-blank. Yet the rules are always in the background, directing your tasks. You (usually) don’t check the regulations; moreover, they’re in different places in the rulebook, or in a different book altogether. And, they’re in […]

Last time in this series on building a home simulator we said that Part Three would discuss adding third-party extensions to your basic sim. We’re going to keep that topic as “next time” and instead jump into a debate about how far you should, or need, to take your project. An argument is made that […]

There’s an old joke about the retired airline pilot who checks out in a Cessna 172 after years of flying heavy iron. The pilot calls Tower from the hold short line saying, “I’ve lost my first officer, have only basic functioning equipment, and I’m down to one engine … I’d like to declare an emergency […]