In 1985 a teacher of computer science joined the foreign educational establishment where I was working and he asked me what "this flying thing" was all about - I had about 2000 instructional hours at the time. I gave him a disc (a 5.25 inch one - remember those!) with a copy of Microsoft's FS 2 on it so he could find out about flying. I gave him a bit of a brief as well. Every lunchtime he practiced as you would with a computer game until he could (with his keyboard) attain some semblence of control. Then I introduced him to radio nav - VOR's and the ILS.
At one point he saved his position on the glide slope, 10 miles away from the ILS runway at Meigs field and practiced trying to keep the ILS needles in the middle (on his keyboard). Eventually we both came back to the U.K. on leave. I asked him whether he would like to put into practice what he had learned to which he agreed.
Our first trip was in the Club C152 and part of the pre flight brief contained such expressions as "push that knob in all the way and you've got F10, pull it out and you've got F0" .
I rarely let a trial lesson student attempt a takeoff but I let him and he was understandably nervous, however within minutes he had learned the differences between a control column and a keyboard, a quick demo sorted out his trimming and he was handling the aircraft as though he had received about 5 hours of instruction. He certainly had sufficient ability to attempt the landing, but the poor visual cues on FS2 contributed to his understandable difficulty with this manoeuvre.
After coffee and a bun, we boarded our full airways Cherokee Warrior for some radio nav. He had no difficulty tracking a VOR radial, executed a proceedure turn at the beacon and achieved a new 'from' radial that I had given him. This was a suitable track to establish on the ILS at a neighbouring field. I have never, never seen a student with 40 minutes experience before establish on an ILS and follow it down to 200' maintining IR tolerances!!
This was in 1985 and computer flight simulators have become much more sophisticated since then. When teaching the IMC rating I always found that those with computer flight sim programs were way ahead of those without in their applied instrument flying skills.
Subsequently I developed a special trial lesson for "computer nerds": Instead of getting them airborne and letting them "have a go" when in level flight in the local area, I used to taxy right to the end of the runway so that they could see the piano keys and the runway number before them. Just the same as the picture on their computer! Then they had a go at the takeoff, climb and did most of the handling. Like my friend from years ago they had obtained enough experience in the 30 minutes they were airborne to attempt a landing and invariably had a very enjoyable trip.
I my opinion computer flight simulators are a very valuable training aid if used correctly, particularly for IMC and I.R. training.
I certainly wish that they had been available when I was training for those ratings back in the mists of time!
P.P.