Shawn,
Simulators are a practical and useful thing for some sorts of flying - I would love to have access to even a decent PC simulator to keep some sort of currency in instrument flying these days. However, that is a bit different from the sort of simulator that would be of much use at the basic ab-initio/PPL training level.
When I used to do ab-initio training I would suggest that students spent time in the cockpit with the helicopter in the hangar: there would be some benefit to this and a pretty good hourly rate too ............
Crashondeck
In the self-selecting PPL(H) training world, the only qualification for most students to start is that they want to learn to fly and think they have a big enough bundle of money. It is therefore inevitable that a few will fall into the "very slow" or "unsuitable" category. I think the important thing is for the instructor to keep communicating with the student: being candid about their progress, listening to how the student feels.
People come in all sorts of different ways to learning to fly and are driven by different goals. What you say is right (in my experience), but very occasionally you do get a student who is (effectively) a hopeless case, combined with a large dollop of stubbornness (and a fairly hefty lump of disposable income too). I recall one guy who had somewhere around 80 hours and had not gone solo, because he was not ready and it would not have been safe. We tried different instructors, we kept talking to him about his (lack of) progress - effectively suggesting he should try some other pastime, but he would not give up. He did not prepare himself well either - knackered from world travel, unfit and stressed up. He stayed with us for 18 moths + and then went to another school but never progressed.
Another similar case, eventually went to another school, eventually got his licence and then crashed a helicopter on virtually his first self-fly hire trip- then he gave up!
I got immense pleasure from successfully teaching "slower than average" students - seeing the satisfaction they got from making progress finally was a great reward. But I used to really worry about these extreme cases which were rare but extremely difficult. In the end I had two principles that I used to stick to:
- Keep telling them about my assessment of their progress;
- Don't let them go to the next stage until they were safe