Hi kms,
> Just wondering how many of the pro-pilots here have had experience of the full motion sims available today. I have a couple of questions:-
In a former life the Lynx-simulator in Portland
and now the simulator at Marignane / France (Eurocopter)
1. Did you find the training very useful?
Yepp - had an actual engine problem (including shut down) about two weeks later on a totaly different helicopter, close to MTOW in a very hilly area.
But the steps to solve the problem were nearly the same as in the sim and I wasn't surprised seeing all those red and amber captions while shutting down in flight. The approach to a little airfield went like in training - nicely down in ground effect - and I actually didn't needed all the power allowed with one engine.
2. Did you get to try situations which were not really do-able in the real thing?
Another Yepp - all the nasty things with the tailrotor - from hover to forward flight - seeing, that you have a chance to survive, if you stick to the procedures (bad thing, I have often to operate outside the envelope, where you have a chance - but I know, when I leave the save side...)
Another thing - all the electrical nasty bits and fire in the helicopter.
3. Anyone had a bad experience in a sim?
You think the crashes - it feels not good - but with the right simcrew, they show you, how to avoid in future.
Nice little lesson learnt - even smal problems can kill you - if you don't think and just react.
Being Co-Pilot it started of with Battery hot - well, switched off, no big deal.
There came a generator failure - reset - wouldn't work, so shut it off - no big deal - but good point to head for home - wasn't far, we were in a curcuit.
On final, just selected the gear down, engine fire - no big deal, we're nicely lined up with the runway and we can do a running landing, so my pilot said shut the burning engine down.
Well - and suddenly all the nice colered screens went black, AP and SAS was lost - and evenso the pilot managed to fly to the runway, we crashed.
What had happend - we both assumed, that the fire came from the faulty generator - but it was the other engine. And - the gear wasn't fully extended, before I cut the engine and therefore all the powersupply left.
It would have been easy - just one second of thought - switching on the battery for a minute before shutting down - but who thinks about this bloody batteryswitch, when on fire?
Lesson learnt - react, when one/the engine is gone - but if you don't die immediatly, start to think a second or two, before operating any switches...
4. How often do you think we should be doing recurrency training in sims?
Ones a year 6 to 8 hrs - would be great. And if you calculate with a sharp pencil, you might find, that a simulator isn't that expensive.
Take the hourly costs of a normal training flight - including all maintenance - with the risk of bending or loosing the bird (look through the statistics) and the benefit to the safety for the case to be by a sim trained pilot, you'll might find that the sim hour isn't that expensive.
Especially if you don't order just one or two sessions but instead of that, ordering a higher number for all the pilots and may be even get a contract with the sim for a couple of years.
Bye the way, a sim hour brings at least the benefit of 2 1/2 or more real flying hours.
Greetings Flying Bull