What Rob says is important: DON'T train yourself to be a specialist for half a dozen or so approaches on known training & testing routes. You have to be a generalist ie be able to do any approach that happens to be at the end of one of your (future) many & varied flights.
Ditto the use of an old PC sim. I used one on a Commodore 64 at the school & at home. It had no scenery, just a basic instrument panel. The goal isn't to use it to learn to fly but instead to 'pre learn' those instrument skills that don't need an a/c at $$$$/min. eg interpreting the plates, intuitive ADF orientation, procedures & some general techniques etc etc etc. You don't need fancy scenery or realistic instrument panel pictures or throttle levers for this.
Once these skill are learnt then you won't have to learn them from scratch while you're learning to cope with the variabilities of the aircraft environment. It's a form of 'chaining', to use 'education speak'.
Last edited by Tinstaafl; 15th December 2004 at 15:08.