Unlock Opportunity for Immersive Learning With RealSimGear

One of my favorite parts of home flight simulation is getting to try new hardware. 

Compared to when I entered the hobby, a pilot now has many more options to choose from when outfitting their sim with the latest flight yoke, avionics system, throttle, and rudder pedals to match their goals and budget. Personally, this era of expanded flight sim hardware choices has culminated in the completion of my own home simulator, a near switch-for-switch replica of a Beechcraft Baron G58 cockpit, complete with a G1000 PFD and MFD built by RealSimGear.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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Although I am very happy with the results, I have always wanted to compare my sim to one the FAA has approved for actual flight training duties in the real world.

I finally had the opportunity to do so in August when I stopped by Mike Goulian Aviation at Hanscom Field (KBED) in Bedford, Massachusetts. The flight school recently took delivery of a RealSimGear SR7x Pro simulator, designed to simulate the Cirrus SR Series G7, complete with an accurately modeled Perspective Touch+ avionics system, simulated Electronic Stability Protection (ESP) system complete with a stick shaker and integrated CAPS handle—just like on the real-world Cirrus SR G7s.

Mike Goulian Aviation is a platinum Cirrus Training Center, so finding a simulator built to replicate the Cirrus SR Series G7 became a top training priority.

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For pilots to be able to log training hours in a flight simulator, manufacturers can seek two different FAA certification levels—each with specific requirements—BATD (Basic Aviation Training Device) or AATD (Advanced Aviation Training Device). 

Depending on where and when you completed your flight training, you may already have some BATD or AATD time in your logbook. If you started in the late 1990s like I did, your sim training was a more rudimentary affair compared to what is available at flight schools today. 

Mike Goulian Aviation has believed in the value of flight simulation for many years, having a dedicated sim room in both of its Massachusetts-based flight school facilities, including one of the first RealSimGear SR7x Pro simulators available in the United States. 

Catering to its clientele who fly Cirrus SR Series G6 and G7(+), the school’s simulators play an important role in both avionics familiarization exercises and IFR training.

Just like in the real world airplanes, RealSimGear (RSG) made sure the avionics system was an accurate replica of the twin 14-inch, high-resolution displays and two secondary display units (SDUs). Both SDUs are where the pilot makes most of the inputs into the avionics system. The SDUs are touchscreens, although there are a few familiar knobs, wheels, and buttons to use for certain functions. 

If you’re familiar with the Cirrus Vision Jet avionics, you’ll recognize the Perspective Touch+ system immediately. To help ease a pilot’s transition from the SR22 into the Vision Jet, Cirrus and Garmin adapted the Perspective Touch+ from the Vision Jet, making it standard in the SR Series for all G7 and G7+ aircraft.

Showing its desire to get the little details right, RSG made sure the bolster switch panel and the feel of the knobs turning on the SDUs felt like a 1:1 ratio replication of the real airplane, which was a noticeable improvement over the company’s previous hardware. 

Keaton Wood, vice president of sales at RSG, noted his team spent many hours researching and testing knobs with the same feel as the real airplane. All of this is done to make sure these details enhanced and didn’t distract from the training experience. 

To deliver an AATD simulator to the market, RealSimGear worked with the FAA to receive a letter of authorization (LOA). The letters are typically valid for up to five years, with the details contained in federal regulations Title 14-CFR 61.4. 

In general, AATD’s must meet a more rigorous design criterion that includes a realistic cockpit representative of the aircraft class it is simulating, a high-fidelity, aircraft-specific aerodynamic model, a representative avionics system, the capability of simulating VFR and IFR conditions, and an instructor’s station that can configure emergency procedures in-sim.

The LOA is a critical element, essentially stating that a school with an FAA-approved flight simulator can charge for instruction provided by a trained CFI, allowing the school a path towards recouping its investment. Since the RSG SR7x Pro simulator has a published starting price of $64,000-plus, it is critical that flight schools can establish a business model that supports investment in the latest flight simulation technology. It is not unusual for some AATDs to cost upward of $100,000-$200,000, making the SR7x more affordable for smaller flight schools.

Companies like RealSimGear are primarily responsible for designing, manufacturing, and integrating flight simulator equipment, the hardware part of the simulator—what the pilot touches and interacts with. The sim is then married to available commercial flight simulation software like X-Plane or Lockheed Martin’s Prepare3d. The team at RSG then works with software partners to ensure the functionality of the Perspective Touch+ avionics looks and—most importantly—operates like it does in the real airplane.

Not only is this a requirement to receive the FAA’s LOA, but pilots, instructors, and flight schools need assurances that the training experience is representative of a real airplane. Even though RSG received its LOA for the SR7x Pro in July, Mike Goulian Aviation agreed to help test the simulator, putting it through its paces and providing feedback to help dial in the last details. 

One noticeable difference between my home flight simulator and the RSG SR7x Pro at Mike Goulian Aviation was the three 65-inch OLED 4K TVs that ensconced me into the simulator when I sat down in the left seat. Immediately more immersive, the experience of getting to fly with near 180 degrees of peripheral vision positively added to the realism and allowed for both VFR and IFR training.

If I were going to begin flying the Cirrus SR22 G7 in the real world, it would be a no-brainer to sit in the RSG SR7x and learn as much as possible about how to control the main displays from the SDUs before I started burning 100LL. 

Hands-On With SR7x Pro

With only a few hours of logbook time in a real Cirrus SR22 G7, I immediately felt at home sitting in the RSG SR7x Pro. 

Preparing to fly the simulator, I used the combined wheel/button on the bolster panel to run through the checklist displayed on the right half of the primary display. Resting my index finger on the wheel and clicking through each item was easy—just like the real airplane.

With takeoff power set, I pushed on the right rudder to maintain the centerline of the runway. Once in the air, I found that maneuvers like steep turns were all the more effective as I could easily use my peripheral vision to aid me while keeping my head straight, focused on the point where the engine cowling met the horizon. 

As I have experienced with other triple-screen simulators, I got just a whiff of simulated movement in my inner ear. Not vertigo, but enough so that I had to remind myself that the sim was stationary. The moment didn’t last long and was a reminder that the immersion I was experiencing was real.

Up at altitude, my instructor had me fly power-on and power-off stalls. First, I tried the stalls with the ESP system on, and as I pulled the control stick up to a nose-high attitude, it buzzed and vibrated in my hand, warning me that I had activated the ESP system. I didn’t know the G7’s stick shaker was built into the SR7x until that moment, and it was a welcome addition to the experience.

For the next stall, I deactivated the ESP system and flew deeper into the maneuver than before. Then, we tried a spin—which is not allowed in the real-world airplane—and it was confidence building to practice the recovery in the low-stress environment of the SR7x. Watching the world spin across the 195 inches of 4K HD TV screens was an eye-opener, leaving me feeling grateful that I could have this experience safely in the simulator.

Like steep turns, a spin really shows off the advantages of a large display, something that a single screen just can’t do. The simulator was also a useful place to practice stalls, especially if I was a brand-new student pilot.

Another major advantage of RSG’s triple screens was the near-realistic view of the airport while in the pattern on left base for the runway. Again, glancing out my left window allowed me to sight my relative position so that I could make an accurate turn to final. Comparing that to my home flight simulator with only one main screen, I often make an educated guess on when to begin my turn but typically overshoot it, rolling out to the right of final approach and having to fly back toward runway centerline, interrupting my stabilized descent. This time, my approach to landing was stable, and I hand-flew the airplane down to an… almost landing.

With my instructor’s patient guidance on when to reduce power, I began an embarrassing series of pilot-induced oscillations. After two attempts to land, I was running out of available runway, so I applied full throttle and went around for another lap in the pattern. Listening more intently to my instructor, I made the next landing without incident. Having the triple screens feeding me information in my peripheral vision during my landing flare was another benefit of the SR7x’s usefulness as a day-VFR training tool. 

The forgiving environment of a flight simulator allows a pilot to go beyond standard training maneuvers, giving a rusty aviator like me an experience that I couldn’t have in a real airplane. While cruising between two airports, my instructor surprised me by starting to fail various avionics systems on the Perspective Touch+, starting with one of the two AHRS systems. While I was clicking through the checklists to the emergency procedures, he failed the next series of systems.

In a short time, all of the airplane’s systems were in the process of shutting down. After the engine stopped, my airplane suffered a control surface failure and I was no longer able to control its direction of travel. The simulated emergency quickly left me fully task saturated, and my only option was to pull the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) handle. 

Having never tried it before, I was surprised at the 45 pounds of force required to activate it. Holding the handle with my right hand, and squeezing my left hand around my right forearm, I pulled sharply down, and the chute deployed just in time for the airplane to right itself and settle into a horizontal attitude just as we reached the digital forest below.

With the three TVs providing the visuals, the CAPS deployment was worth the price of admission and was as close as I want to get to a real-life situation. It was useful to see it all from the pilot’s seat, giving me a strong impression of what the event might look like in the real world. The SR22 bobbed and swung under the full airframe parachute in a realistic movement that reminded me of watching NASA’s Apollo Command Module slowing down before splashing into the ocean.

Using the simulator’s full set of failure modes, the parachute was truly the last option I had before the airplane would have crashed. In real life, I’d like to think that I would have pulled the CAPS handle much sooner. I’d recommend experiencing it in sim to any Cirrus pilot.

With time left for an IFR approach, my instructor quickly changed a few parameters, and in seconds, my broken airplane had been reset into the midst of a thick cloud bank with summer rain streaming across the windscreen and over the left window. My instructor gave me vectors for the ILS at Runway 16 at KPSM (Portsmouth International Airport in New Hampshire), having placed the airplane a few miles away from the final approach fix of PUDYE.

Using the approach plate on ForeFlight, I punched in the minimums for the approach on the SDU. I did not know where my instructor set the bottom of the cloud deck, but I had my thumb over the autopilot disconnect button so that if the approach lights came into view, I would fly the airplane down to a full-stop landing. 

Glancing forward into the murky digital sky and back down to my instruments on the primary display, I had about 200 feet before reaching the approach minimums. In my peripheral vision, I noticed the cloud deck beginning to break up off my left wing—gray wisps of clouds giving way to dark green land below. The digital details of a few cars traversing a roadway through a forest added a touch of realism.

Looking forward, I descended below the clouds, and the medium intensity lights of the approach lighting system pointed me forward toward the runway. I disconnected the autopilot and adjusted the trim and throttle, converting the descent into a satisfying landing.

With that, my first loggable flight simulator time on an AATD came to a close. It was an effective and busy hour practicing both VFR and IFR maneuvers and multiple landings.   

Using the RealSimGear SR7x provided me with a unique opportunity to take a lesson from a flight instructor and log the hours toward my flight training goals in my real logbook. Besides helping to knock off the rust and practicing approaches, an additional benefit of the RSG SR7x was the opportunity to learn the basic operations of the Perspective Touch+ system.

Even as a novice, I could tell how capable and impressive the system is. Pairing the simulator with a knowledgeable instructor allowed me to train beyond what could have been accomplished in a ground lesson sitting in the real airplane. 

Flying the Perspective Touch+ in RSG SR7x allowed me to experience what the primary and multifunction displays look like in operation. And when I inevitably made input mistakes, my instructor could simply pause the simulator, and we could take a moment to talk, helping prevent the fatiguing effects of task saturation.  

When it comes to getting back into the groove of VFR flying or logging real IFR training hours, the RSG SR7x AATD is the level of quality I want to experience when I am at a flight school paying for real instruction. Flying training maneuvers that I could only experience in the simulator, seated in the SR7x’s accurate and immersive cockpit, is something I won’t soon forget and helps me feel all the more prepared for my next real-world flight.

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This column first appeared in the November Issue 964 of the FLYING print edition.