Helicopter sim training?

[mat777]

Greetings all.

I was chatting to a friend of mine the other day who knows a university professor or somesuch involved with simulators. According to my friend, this pal of his has just designed the worlds first flight simulator for training helicopter pilots. I dont know whether to believe him - on the one hand I would have thought with the proliferation of fixed wing simulators there would be a few rotary one too. Then again, I also know how hard it must be to model the physics of how a helicopter flies/beats the air into submission.

I was told by said friend that it would now be possible to go from wet behind the ears to fully competent in flying a heli without leaving the ground. Is this true? I presume it would lower the cost of rotary training considerably.

[havick]

Proper SIM training is actually more expensive than flying the real aircraft (in a lot of cases). The main difference being you can practice emergencies that you wouldn't be able to in the real aircraft (without the likelyhood of damaging it), that multiplies the value of the training.

Rotary sims have been around for many years. Try, CAE, Flightsafety, SAS just to name a few.

[ShyTorque]

Your friend is a few decades behind the times. I was instructing in a 3 axis helicopter sim in 1986.

[aegir]

You can find many rotary sim all over the world, also FFS level D. In that sims, one flight hours it's equal to one hour in the real helicoter, from rules point of view.
In addition, as havick told you, in the sim you can simulate different emergency without any danger for you or for the helicopter.

[parasite drag]

"has just designed the worlds first flight simulator for training helicopter pilots"

Classic !

[HueyDog]

Amazing what new technology these professors can come up with. CAE and Flight Safety will really be impressed to hear about this.

[tottigol]

So, here let me get this tint fly on a fishing line over that pond and how many nibbles I get out of it.
How many more are going to have a go at this?:E

[richiem]

The first statement is incorrect, as other comments have shown. Your last statement may have legs. Unlike fixed wing simulators there is currently no such thing as a Zero Flight Time helicopter simulator. It says on you profile that you are 20 yrs old, so you may just live long enough for the ZFT design to get EASA approval.

[FairWeatherFlyer]

I presume it would lower the cost of rotary training considerably.

Only if the (certified?) sim is cheaper than the real thing!

(BTW, ignore the abuse, that's just the standard joy of internet forums.)

[Thomas coupling]

Havick, tell me which sim is more expensive than the real McCoy, please?
The new level B++ S92 sim is expected to do ALL training except for the LPC. That means flying everything on the sim except for the 90 minute check ride prior to being type rated - no?

[havick]

Thomas Coupling - I suppose I should be a little more accurate in my statement, it was a little bit of a broad brush. It's all about context.

In the case of the company I work for training in a B412 is cheaper than travelling to the SIM (Australia - Sweden).

We use the SIM anyway for the obvious training value, but it certainly isn't cheaper.

[Shawn Coyle]

Typical ratio in the FW world is one sim per 30 airframes.
Lots more and safer training could be done in the 'sim' if we had the political will and the ability to look at what can be done in a 'sim'.
Hopefully the new RAeS / ICAO study will provide a way forward.

havick:
And if we didn't have a sim, what would the cost be for sending people somewhere for the groundschool and training time on the real helicopter? Given the utlization rate of a sim (20 hrs /day), the scheduling time for people to get training on a real helicopter would be horrendous. It needs to be a side-by-side comparison.

[havick]

Shawn. I'm simply highlighting that the SIM isn't always cheaper. Having spoken with the beancounters it isn't in our scenario.

I'm an advocate for using the SIM as much as possible.

Shawn, would a full motion SIM require the same hardware whether it's a Jetranger or a B412? ie. What;s a CAE sim cost? A hell of a lot more than a Jetranger. To tie this back in with the originators post with this in mind, it would be cheaper to learn in the aircraft (if we're talking ab-initio and comparing them side by side).

[Shawn Coyle]

Havick:
The current problem is the hangup with the requirement for motion to get any training credits at all. Motion is vastly over-rated, but you can't get any authorities to listen to that argument. It appears to make little sense to use a sim that costs $2000 per hour when the real helicopter is $700 per hour (as I was told a current light twin sim costs) and there's not many new emergencies you can do only in the sim. However, once we break the requirement for motion, the price (purchase and operating) comes down by a factor of about 10.
Even if the sim / FTD is the same price as the real aircraft, the improvements in training benefits are huge - safety, time, training value, scenario based training, etc.
Perhaps the new requirements will help.

[Thomas coupling]

Because sims are electrical beasts, it doesn't matter what type they reflect - they are expensive to build and maintain...BUT....
They run for years and normally the money saved in flying the real McCoy can be offset by the cost of the sim (it's not additional training/testing).
The bigger helos are definitely more expensive than the sim equivalent, without question. And some of these "Ro-Ro" simulators are very very competitive.
But without question, to train properly you need to instill confidence in the driver for all eventualities and that means practicing EOL's / tail rotor failures / hydraulics failures / fires etc etc. Something that is impossible to do when airborne.
Havick - You need to look at the big picture, not just australasia.

In the Uk the latest cut backs with the military (SDSR) 2010, stated that by 2015, 25% of all flying training will take place in a sim and come 2025: 50%.
It is without question - the future.

[Basil_Fawlty]

Thomas coupling,

You are quite right, we seem bound to "fly" these things even more in the future....Felt quite uneasy with these projected systems, withthe parallax effect... Heard anything about the newest helo sims installed in Europe & US ?

[John Farley]

Motion is vastly over-rated, but you can't get any authorities to listen to that argument.

Boy oh boy is that not the truth.

Whenever I am asked to look at a sim I start with motion off. That way I KNOW I have less cues than in the real world and that life will be harder and this will likely show as a tendency to overcontrol.

With motion on I know that there wil be some incorrect cues and possibly some FALSE ones (by that I mean cues that help me fly that will NOT be there in the real world. Dangerous stuff). Years ago I was asked to fly a NASSA motion base with a hovering model. I taught myself to hover it with my eyes shut just by zeroing the motion base noises.

[Lonewolf_50]

If you already know how to fly a helicopter, a sim is a nice way to augment trainng/time/skills/response to emergency.

If you don't already know, your chances of picking up bad habits, and not knowing that they are bad habits (negative training, we used to call it) goes up.

That won't serve you well when you fly your first helicopter that isn't a sim.

[Thomas coupling]

Lonewolf - except for one thing. ALL prospective helicopter pilots still continue to fly their first basic machine - for real. Correct me anyone, if I am wrong, but we haven't yet gone down the road of our FW folks where you could technically fly from start to finish prior to going live - in the sim.
So a helicopter pilot flying in a sim, will almost certainly know how the real thing feels, I would suggest.
Motion is critical to the pilots feedback in my experience. Without it, they notice most of the time.
Parallax hasn't been a major issue for most either, especially these wrap round bubble out of the window projections.

[havick]

Thomas coupling - Of course I can see past our region.

Going back to the originators post, a full motion sim will be more expensive than learning to fly in an ab-initio type aircraft.

I answered your specific question and gave you an example. It is more expensive for us to goto the sim than it is fly the real aircraft. We still goto the sim even though it is more expensive for the obvious training benefits.

I agree that SIMS are the way fo the future, however for the time being they remain more expensive in quite a few examples. That's not to say it's not worth spending the money.

[Shawn Coyle]

Lonewolf:
Respectfully, I disagree with your premise that if you haven't already flown a helicopter that you'll pick up bad habits in the sim.
Only if you're taught badly, and without understanding of the limitations of the sim. I know of several people who learned to fly a helicopter in a low-end, no motion device that didn't even qualify as a FTD, and were able to do nearly everything necessary to pass a private pilot flight test the first time they got into a real helicopter. It can be done.