Just been to FSP and extremely disappointed to not get a recommendation. I haven't seen many posts from people who didn't make it, so I'm posting about my experience in the hope it might help other people get through.
The main reason I didn't perform well enough, was simple. I never reached a point where the controls and readouts became natural. As examples, I frequently used the wrong rudder pedal to balance, and would sometimes trim in the wrong direction... I'd think "
throttle lower" and push forward, or vice versa... I'd even think "
smooth inputs" then act like the stick was a 4-way control! Learning the material, was not a problem and I spent many, many hours chair flying (with distractions). But, the airborne environment never "clicked" for me. The most frustrating thing was, I really felt that as soon as I was at ease in the cockpit, everything would fall into place and I'd breeze through all subsequent sorties. I could feel that breakthrough point getting closer, especially on the first flight of each day. I obviously never reached it. Put another way, I didn't adapt quickly enough, which is one of the big things they're screening for.
Another major reason I didn't perform well... I was so worried about failure, I failed. As one of my instructors noted, "
The only thing you need to do is relax". Instead, I'd make one mistake and think "
Oh man! Oh $#!^! Don't screw this up! You only get one shot at this!"... a pretty non-relaxing thought, which usually spawned a series of mistakes. The only way I could imagine relaxing up there was to try and convince myself that being an army chopper pilot wouldn't actually be the most awesome job in the world. However, I stubbornly refused to believe such delusional nonsense, and thereby continued to stress myself into oblivion.
Based on my experience, my main advice would be to repeat advice already given in this thread. That is, get up there and get a few hours of experience at the controls of a plane. At the very least, buy a full suite of aircraft controls for your PC so that you can fly sims and become familiar using stick, rudder and throttle controls. I'd flown many hours on PC simulators, but only with a joystick and keyboard
Also, when people say the workload at FSP is intense, they are not kidding. There were 3 days, where I had 2 flights per day. Processing, reviewing and assimilating what you've learnt on a sortie takes time, and you may only get 2-3 hours to do it. There's not much you can do about that situation except to always study/chair-fly your next 2 sorties... but, you should already know that, by now.
One final bit of advice is to be absolutely sure your helmet fits properly! I tried my helmet on for a few minutes and I didn't notice there was a bit of extra pressure from the forehead pad. About halfway through my first sortie, that slight pressure had created a splitting headache... the headache gave rise to nausea, and some sudden vomiting which I barely managed to swallow (yum!
). The rest of my lesson was a blur of pain and nausea. I didn't even think to inform my instructor how I was feeling and just kept trying to move my helmet around to reduce the pain, while listening to what he was saying. The worst part though, was that it wrecked me for the rest of the day. I barely managed an hour of study before collapsing into bed around 8pm. Bizarrely, I felt really good the next day... which helped balance my lack of prep for those 2 sorties
Anyway, I hope that all helps! Personally, I would've taken the advice of having 6-8 hours of lessons before FSP, except I just don't have the money... the last of my savings went on vision correction surgery. I also stupidly took a 1-hour helicopter lesson, which would've been far more wisely spent on 4 hours of fixed-wing lessons. I seriously considered saving for lessons, but I believed further delay would mean missing the July intake at Duntroon... given the ol' 20/20 hindsight, I should've been patient and aimed for the Jan 2013 intake.