It’s been the catch phrase used everywhere the last few years, and it has become the gold standard of top quality aircraft or those so realistic and so well designed that you could study them to obtain actual type ratings and pass an initial course.

Most add-ons are of simpler design and varying levels of quality, but over the years, these study level aircraft for the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS20) and X-Plane 12 (XP12) platforms have grown in numbers.

I am old enough to remember the old fighter sim called Falcon 4.0 in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It came with a thick paper manual that felt like a novel. I miss those days of real boxes, manuals, and reading material.

Some of the most detailed aircraft add-ons come loaded with PDFs to study, and some have nothing at all, leaving it up to the customer to go online or just obtain the actual real aircraft’s study manuals. It seems lazy to not bother to publish a manual for an aircraft release, but then again, if it’s so realistic that the only PDF says “go obtain a real Airbus A320 POH” for more information, I’m sold. If something is that good and complete, then I think the developer is allowed to be lazy, or perhaps a bit big braggish.

Most commercial pilots, or experienced aviators in general, were dismissive of flight sims at home. Twenty years ago, I was embarrassed to come out of the sim closet for I’d be a victim of skepticism or at least a target of laughter. “No flight sim can do anything close to what ‘real pilots’ deal with in Level D sims,” I was often told. Or, I’d hear, “Oh, yeah, that little Microsoft Flight Simulator, I played with it once. It looked like a cartoon, so that won’t help anybody.”

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This is what every older-and-bolder, gray-haired retired airline pilot said when seated to my left.

Now that I have gray hair, I am all too happy to encourage the younger generation to get active with sims when they aren’t flying the real thing. It’s also accepted among almost all real pilots I know as a really useful tool now that photorealistic graphics are everywhere and far exceed the quality of a $20 million sim the FAA approves. For as little as $2,000, you can rival those simulators at home.

I am not going to mention every study level aircraft available—that would require a book.

Yet over the years before and even right through MSFS2020 and XP12, several come to mind and most are quite famous and have been around for a long time:

Precision Manuals Development Group

The company has been around since the early 1990s. It’s the longest add-on group ever for any sim, and in my opinion, the finest. Everything about it is study level.

Its entire Boeing products are the gold standard of what an add-on should be, and nobody has rivaled it in producing a Boeing 737NG, 747-400, or 777. Now since the release of MSFS2020, we have been enjoying the entire 737NG set, including BBJ. Almost every system, failures, controls accuracy, autopilot, performance, switchology, sounds, visuals, etc. have all been reproduced perfectly.

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Years of development for just one airframe. You’d ace a type rating in the real aircraft after spending time with PMDG products. I wish I could go get a 737 type rating just to test this theory myself. I feel I know no other aircraft as well as this one, due to my years with PMDG 737s. Now, we are about to get its 777 finally after years of waiting patiently. It will be released this year and continue the outrageous quality and realism we all crave from a company that really only releases masterpieces.

Fenix

This company is a new entrant that stormed onto the stage just last year with its completely detailed A320 for MSFS2020. Upon release, it quickly became accepted as the most detailed Airbus for any sim platform.

In my opinion, the early release suffered from performance and frame rate issues as it couldn’t compare to the smoothness and fidelity of the PMDG lineup. But a year later, with all the refinements and the recent release of the update or Block 2, it is now a masterpiece. Detailed systems right down to individual circuit breakers are modeled. Engine modeling and accuracy is key. All that has been done, and now the IAE version is included, each with its own systems, sounds, and realistic performance.

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Some say it has blown past the PMDG. Whatever the opinion, I share the zeal. It’s smooth, precise, and many real airbus pilots online tout it as basically perfect. A true study level that you’d absolutely use during type rating school. I’ve enjoyed flying it now, as much as I have over the years with the PMDG lineup.

SimMarket

This company sells the Maddog MD82 for MSFS2020. I am not as familiar with the older airliners, so I will defer to the majority of sim fans online holding this up to the level of the Fenix.

For MD fans, this is also a real keeper. It represents a blend of systems modeling and accuracy all from the later ’70s to later ’80s replicated at a high level. In a battle for the top, this is often referred to as the best airliner ever made for MSFS2020. I’ll have to learn it better to give my own opinions, as I have used it little, never being a Maddog fan. But I see the reviews touting it as in the top few airliners ever released.

X-Plane

It has the outrageously in-depth Felis 747-200 series for the X-Plane sim. It is one of the most complete jetliner simulation add-ons I have ever used—from nose to tail. This is one of the reasons I still use XP12.

I cannot say enough about this masterpiece other than I wish it was available on MSFS2020 as well. You need to be three pilots at once to handle this beast. Setting up view points is key, as you’ll not only be pilot and copilot but flight engineer as well, often manipulating the systems as you sit sideways. You can feel the quality, heaviness, and momentum.

X-Aviation

The company sells the most renowned and sought-after bizjet for any sim, the Hot Start Challenger 650. This completely study level jet is once again simulating entire circuit breakers from head to tail. Setting the bar so exceedingly high, it’ll be what all future bizjets are compared to.

Sadly, only X-Plane 12 has it, but again, that’s another reason I still use it. The accuracy, realism, handling, etc. is all spot on. I fly a similar aircraft in real life and find this exceptionally close to the real thing. Again, it’s a type rating quality example to learn from. Many have called it the best jet ever designed for any sim, and it’s impossible to disagree. It certainly rivals the airliners above in total quality and experience.

Flysimware

It has a Learjet 35A that was recently released in “early access.” I have featured this in many an article so far, and it is well on its way to what I would call an honorable mention study level aircraft.

Its blueprint quality visuals, scaled parts, and cockpit clarity make this a winner right out of the gate. I’ve never seen such a beautiful reproduction in an early access or beta-style release. The flight quality, accurate avionics, sounds, and more make this a really promising product when the final version comes out.

It is the best pure bizjet built specifically for the MSFS2020 lineup so far. Let’s leave the jetliners behind now, as accuracy and study level can go down a category and be just as advanced.

A2A Simulations

The company has the 1960s Piper Comanche 250 featuring its coveted Accu-Sim 2.0 technology to bring a living, breathing aircraft to your desktop. This example must be run as gently as a real one, maintained and babied, or else face what real owners face: expensive repair bills.

You can damage and destroy the airplane if you’re a ham-fisted pilot. The aircraft requires a full preflight and walk-around inspection. You can test the fuel and do everything a real pilot would during a flight.

Continually monitoring its wear and tear, systems, and cleanliness is all part of this intensely realistic model that keeps its constant state alive, meaning it will remember its health on a continual basis, even if you fly something else in between on different days. You even get to perform an overhaul and other yearly tasks.

This airplane has quite a following and has been labeled by many as the best general aviation aircraft ever designed for any sim. I believe A2A is leveraging its AccuSim technology to future releases, and it certainly has captured the immersion of owning, operating, and maintaining a personal airplane like no other.

Conclusion

These are all my experiences with what I own and fly in the sim world. Your opinions may vary, especially when you get into the smaller airplanes as it’s much easier to simulate a simple single-engine in study level than an airliner.

In some ways, many of the default or add-ons for GA are close to this namesake already. A basic default Cessna will accelerate any new student pilot right to the top. The graphics of MSFS2020 and XP12 aircraft are good enough and photorealistic enough to permanently lodge in the brain of anyone learning to fly and stay current.

It’s a great time to study and learn in today’s flight sim environment. Compared to what we had in 1981, everything now is study level.

This feature first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: Taking Sim to a New Level appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Since I got back into home flight simulation, I look forward to the winter as the cold weather guarantees a few more weekends that I get to spend indoors, guilt-free. The winter makes it easier to schedule a weekend afternoon flight in my flight simulator, no matter what the real weather is doing outside.

One goal I set was to begin the BVARTCC WINGS series of training flights, which are self-paced and available to be flown whenever there are live air traffic controllers from the VATSIM service controlling the Greater Boston airspace online.

To help complete the WINGS program, I set the secondary goal of learning to use the G1000 for IFR flying, with the BVARTCC WINGS flights serving as an ideal live training environment. The volunteer VATSIM air traffic controllers watch and assess each WINGS flight and issue a pass or fail rating at the end, turning each into a mini-check ride, all from the comfort of your home  simulator. The WINGS flights also require that pilots follow the correct communication and navigation procedures for transition in and out of the airspace in the Greater Boston Class Bravo.

Although many sim pilots have flown the full series of BVARTCC WINGS flights, I am always surprised at how few real-world pilots are aware that this program exists and can be completed with only a basic flight simulator.

The BVARTCC WINGS training program is broken down into six VFR flights, typically flown first, and then 24 IFR flights, all designed to be flown sequentially. As stated in the introductory reading, a BVARTCC club member may fly the flights in any order, and skip flights, but you must eventually fly all 30 flights to become a WINGS graduate.

In summer 2022, when I began the WINGS VFR flights, I decided to fly each of them in order, predicting that I would enjoy the learning and preparation required to successfully pass them. Each flight features increasing levels of difficulty requiring some studying and preflight planning before launching on them.

I found that the WINGS VFR program was an enjoyable way to knock the rust off my VFR Class D, C, and B airspace and communication skills as I prepared for the start of the WINGS IFR program. My relatively slow pace fit my learning goals and available free time, but if you take up the challenge of the WINGS program, you can choose the speed that works for you, provided you fly each flight when there are controllers actively managing the airspace.

BVARTCC publishes a schedule of controller coverage and updates its discord channel when volunteer controllers are working the airspace so you can plan ahead for your flights. When flying in the BVARTCC, you are expected to set your simulator to the live weather conditions.

Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) and X-Plane (XP) will reference current METARs based on your departure airport, which are updated roughly every 15 minutes, and will build the weather conditions in the simulator to match the real world. Each flight simulation program has its strengths and weaknesses concerning the execution of live weather in the simulation. Your experience will vary.

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However, one benefit of METAR-based live weather is that you can use ForeFlight or Navigraph on your tablet or secondary screen to check the weather at your departure and destination and have confidence that you’ll experience those conditions when you are flying in-sim. Accurate winds and barometric pressure settings are important components to using live air traffic control services like VATSIM so that weather conditions you’re experiencing in the sim are the same as the controllers are referencing when assigning runways for takeoff and landing.

I also set the simulator to the current time of day so that daylight changes realistically over the course of my flight. There are some additional basic hardware and software items you should have on your PC to get the most out of flying in the BVARTCC with live air traffic control. See the “Introduction” and “Getting Started” tabs of the WINGS section of the BVARTCC website for more information.

WINGS IFR 1: Introduction to IFR

The WINGS IFR 1 is aptly titled the Introduction to IFR flying. It is the IFR equivalent to a trip around the traffic pattern at KBOS.

To successfully pass the flight, one must file and fly the LOGAN4 departure, with vectors expected to bring the aircraft around to intercept the ILS approach back to the active runway for landing. All of the taxiing and ground movement must be done correctly as well, requiring full attention from startup to shutdown. Making a major taxiing mistake would fail the flight, so my iPad running ForeFlight was prepped with the aircraft checklist, map (zoomed in for taxiing) and the ILS chart for the active runway preloaded onto the “Plates” tab.

KBOS ranks well within the top 10 busiest airports in the VATSIM system measured by total aircraft movements per year. In the real-world, KBOS is typically just inside the top 30 for all international airports, but in VATSIM, KBOS is well-liked for its dynamic New England weather and challenging wind conditions.

It also is a popular destination for sim pilots who depart from Europe and fly across the Atlantic ocean and time their flights to conclude when there’s live ATC coverage from VATSIM controllers at KBOS. Someday I hope to make that cross-ocean journey, once my IFR and widebody jet operational knowledge is at the requisite level for the undertaking.

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With cross-ocean goals in the back of my mind, my journey into IFR flying began at the Signature Flight Support ramp on the northwest side of KBOS as it is the main parking area for general aviation aircraft. The winds were 19kts, gusting 28kts (above my personal minimums in the real world) and the Cessna 172—the recommended aircraft for this flight—was rocking in its chocks when I began the engine start procedures.

MSFS models wind noise, and I could hear the wind blowing and the airplane creaking while I started working through the checklist. With the engine running, I checked the ATIS, dialed in the correct frequency to request my IFR clearance and patiently waited my turn to key the mic.

The volunteer controllers do a great job managing “the weekend rush” of flight sim pilots seeking to fly while the airspace is live and I did my best to bide my time between the pushback requests, taxi instructions and other sim pilots opening their IFR flight plans. There aren’t always enough volunteer controllers to completely staff a given airport or airspace, so we all do our part to share this valuable resource as the controllers often have to stretch themselves across the clearance, ground, and tower communication roles.

Sometimes there are waits to get started but I’m always comforted by the fact that no real avgas is being burned. The busy communication frequencies offer the added challenge of being succinct on the radio when it is your time to push to talk.

After 10 minutes, I found my opening, asked for and then nervously read back my clearance, certain that all the other sim pilots could hear how green I was. As instructed, I filed my flight plan before starting my flight so that the controllers had my virtual flight strip on their display ahead of time. Soon I was following the taxiing toward Runway 9 following at least six aircraft taxiing ahead of me, holding at various intersections, with more sim pilots receiving their permissions for pushback from their respective gates. I could see three aircraft in the air on final for Runway 4-Right.

Until this point, I had never experienced such a busy live flight sim environment, and it was really exciting and immersive. The frequency was jammed with controllers conducting the symphony of aircraft movement, and from listening I could tell that there were pilots from all across the world taking part in this flight simulation experience.

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Accents from the United Kingdom and the southern United States mixed in with pilots from New England, the Midwest, Latin America, and Germany as well. The international and domestic mix of pilots felt and sounded just like the real KBOS on a normal day.

Passing intersection Charlie on taxiway Bravo, my Ground controller offered me a takeoff from Runway 4-Left. I fumbled for the LOGAN4 departure chart on ForeFlight to verify the amended takeoff instruction, a quick reminder that the simulated IFR flight environment can be dynamic and that I must also be ready for a change of plans.

The 4L takeoff prevented me from waiting in the growing line of airliners cueing for Runway 9. Soon I was cleared for takeoff and lifting off from 4L, fighting the gusty conditions, keeping focused on my departure heading and altitude while awaiting my first turn to heading 090. Being vectored through the busy airspace was even more exciting than my usual flight sim adventures as I could hear and see the aircraft I would be joining shortly on final approach.

The visual resolution of other traffic is not what you are accustomed to in real-world flying. Still, it is usually easy to see the navigation lights and a distant but somewhat blurry shape of the aircraft near you making see-and-avoid relatively easy. I had been handed off to Boston Approach and was soon given my final vectors to intercept the localizer for 4R.

Switching back to Boston Tower, I received my clearance to land and tried to keep my approach speed up to minimize the impact of the traffic needing to slow behind me. On short final, I could see one airliner in the air and three aircraft waiting to takeoff on Runway 9.

There would be a small audience for my landing, but I needed to shift my focus to the lateral and vertical guidance of the ILS on my G1000 PFD while trying to maintain the centerline amid a blustery winter afternoon. Although it wasn’t the smoothest landing, I was happy to be back on the ground and safely clear of 4R. Departures on Runway 9 resumed and the controller let me know I had passed the WINGS IFR 1.

Being careful to follow the taxi instructions back to the ramp at Signature, I was excited and relieved to have my first IFR flight in the books. The busy and short flight in the IFR system required my full attention, and was a fitting introduction to IFR flying. I was grateful the live weather was VFR and not at minimums.

I couldn’t have known at that time, but my next IFR flight, the WINGS IFR 2, was going to be flown in actual instrument flight conditions and would really test my rookie IFR flying skills and sim pilot decision-making.

WINGS IFR 2: VOR Navigation

To begin the WINGS IFR 2 flight, I loaded into my Cessna 172 G1000 at the Signature Flight Support ramp at Boston Logan where my WINGS IFR 1 had concluded. The weather for the afternoon flight was 3 miles visibility, light rain and ceilings around 1,000 feet, with winds at 16 knots, gusting 27 knots.

Today’s flight would take me from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island (KPVD), via the TEC route found in the FAA’s preferred route database. The purpose of the flight was to build experience navigating with the VOR radio and then land at Providence using the ILS approach onto the active runway.

Per the instructions, I filed the LOGAN4 departure, received my clearance and began my taxi. Preemptively this time, I asked the tower controller if I could depart off 4L, which would keep me out of the snarl of airliners waiting their turn for takeoff. I quickly double-checked the departure instructions, received my takeoff clearance and was soon climbing up into the soup, fighting to stay on the correct heading while being pushed around by the winds.

After a few vectored turns I was given the ATC instruction “Direct to PVD,” and turned the CRS knob on my G1000 PFD to select a radial to follow to the PVD VOR. The CDI “needle” allowed me to finetune my course to the PVD VOR, and I was on the way to Providence.

Climbing to 4,000 feet, my filed altitude, I was mostly in the clouds, occasionally getting glimpses to either side or a quick look at the sky above. It was an airborne mess of conditions I had heretofore avoided as a private pilot and as a sim pilot. The late afternoon winter sun was breaking through the clouds and the light rain on the ground at KBOS had turned to freezing rain.

I made small lateral changes to try and avoid going through thick clouds where I anticipated the rain becoming more intense. There was turbulence to contend with, and it moved the airplane around a lot, but I decided to keep hand-flying the 172 for the practice of juggling the simultaneous responsibilities of aviating, navigating and communicating with ATC.

The westerly winds I was flying against were slowing my groundspeed and the freezing rain was starting to adhere to the outside of my 172, creeping up onto the windscreen and attracting my attention. I switched on the cabin heat and pitot heat and thought about what options I had if the icing proceeded to get worse.

With the sunlight changing the color of the clouds above me, I estimated the top of the broken layer to be at 4,500 feet and figured I was one request away from a climb out into clear air, which represented my best chance for the ice to sublimate off the surfaces of the 172. ATC surprised me, letting me know there was traffic transitioning at 5,000 feet and I would need to manage at my current altitude.

I knew I had the option to declare an emergency but that would have concluded my WINGS IFR 2 flight early, without a passing grade. The icing had covered about 50 percent of my windscreen, but it was not immediately getting worse. Looking left and right, I couldn’t see a significant amount of buildup on the leading edge of the wing and still had normal control authority, so I decided to hang in there, hoping that the forecast of 5 miles visibility and a 3,000-foot ceiling at Providence was going to hold up.

The ride was not improving, and I was constantly chasing my heading and altitude in moderate turbulence. No physical discomfort in my sim cockpit, but the aircraft was moving around a lot, more than I had seen before. Having never flown in clouds for an extended amount of time, I was keeping focused on my basic instrument scan of the G1000 PFD, which included watching the attitude indicator, the altitude, the vertical speed tape, the turn coordinator arrows, and the CDI/needle of the VOR. Coming in and out of the freezing rain and into the momentary gaps of sunlight made for dynamic visuals and enhanced immersion caused by the high-fidelity winter weather modeling.

After about 30 minutes en route, I had flown over the Providence VOR and was now south of Quonset State Airport (KOQU). I was out of the cloud bank now and being given vectors to intercept the ILS for Runway 5. I had the chart loaded onto my iPad and I switched my nav radio to the correct frequency. I was vectored back to the ILS about 12 miles south of KPVD and used the extra time to think ahead of the airplane and I quickly briefed the anticipated turns and descent required to pick up the final approach course.

ATC cleared me onto the approach and then quickly cleared to land since I was the only aircraft in the area. With clouds behind me, and a low cloud deck over the Providence Airport, it got significantly darker and the wind blew my 172 all over the approach. Although the freezing rain had stopped, the cloud deck over Providence was lower and the visibility was less than what the METAR had reported before I left Boston.

The icing on my windscreen hadn’t melted and turned the approach lighting to Runway 5 into a fuzzy blur ahead of me. Fighting the wind gusts, I kept my focus on the localizer and glideslope, with occasional visual checks through the windscreen ahead.

On final approach 1.5 miles out and 500 feet above ground, I kept my speed up and my flaps at 20 degrees as I encountered low-level wind shear causing large changes on the vertical speed tape and my aircraft to shudder noticeably. Clearing the “fence” just before Runway 5 at Providence, the gusty surface winds pushed the 172 back and forth across the centerline as I tightened my grip on the yoke and worked corrections on the rudders. 50 feet above the runway, I pulled back on the throttle and tensed for a brisker than normal landing.

Once I made contact with the surface, it took a lot of rudder input to keep the airplane on the cement as I had a roughly 30-degree crosswind and wind gusts that threatened to push me into the grass. Finding an opening on the frequency, I made my clear-of-the-runway call and the controller let me know I had passed the WINGS IFR 2.

In my parking spot on the ramp in front of the Atlantic Aviation FBO building, I reflected on the strain and challenge of the 40-minute flight from Boston as the wind whipped over the control surfaces of the just shutdown 172. It was my first short cross-country flight in the IFR system, my first encounter with simulated icing conditions in the clouds and it was a challenge from start to finish with the moderate turbulence and gusty winds. Also, I was challenged to rely on VOR navigation as my main navigation source, not having done that since my private pilot training.

Admittedly, the G1000 PFD in CDI mode offered some additional situational awareness compared to a traditional steam gauge instrument and I was also running ForeFlight on my iPad.

I justify the ForeFlight map as it really aids in situational awareness since my flight simulator is connected to a single 4K TV and does not provide the peripheral vision you have in a real airplane. I use the moving map in ForeFlight to help supplement what I would normally see outside the airplane. I had made the flight more challenging by deciding to hand-fly it but I wasn’t confident that I could manage the automation provided by the autopilot and the other variables.

In future WINGS IFR series flights, I’ll need to be able to use the autopilot proficiently, so I noted this as an area for additional practice. It is one of the many features of the G1000 that I will need to better understand before getting deeper into the WINGS program.

The weather en route provided the biggest challenge, and I now had my first minutes of simulated IMC under my belt. I also contemplated how close I came to a very serious icing situation in the 172, knowing that it had no Flight-Into-Known-Icing capability. I’d like to think that I would never have found myself in that situation in a real airplane, but I was glad to have experienced it in my simulator first. Also, I’m careful to make sure the experience doesn’t build any false confidence, the images I have seen of the real icing lead me to believe that I narrowly avoided a situation that could have doomed my flight.

The MSFS2020 experience was all in the digital world, but the fidelity of it was impressive and the decision- making it prompted resulted in real stress and discomfort from the task saturation I encountered.

This feature first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Earning Your Winter WINGS appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

If you haven’t yet explored this sector of the flight sim world, there are some intriguing options for developing skills, such as communications and procedures, from home. Among them is PilotEdge, a company that aims to provide a virtual air traffic control (ATC) network that is accurate and professional enough to be used for real-world pilot training.

Origin and Expansion

Founded in 2008 by Keith Smith, PilotEdge officially launched in 2011, offering service for the area covered by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). According to Smith, the platform drew on early work done by hobbyists, building it out to form a network of controllers who operate almost exactly like their real-world counterparts.

• READ MORE: Survey: Home Flight Sim Helps Prepare Real-World Pilots

PilotEdge added support for the Oakland, California, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, ARTCCs in 2016. Over the past decade, it has also expanded its feature set with highlights such as an ATIS engine based on real-world weather (which correlates on PilotEdge’s ATC scopes), the ability to trigger remote failures in X-Plane, and high-fidelity controller pilot data link communications (CPDLC) for clearance delivery.

In addition, the company has developed a way to mimic VHF radio interference based on line of sight, terrain, and signal modulation. “Never has so much work been done to make a radio sound so bad,” Smith said.

Rules of Engagement

To get started on PilotEdge, users need a compatible flight simulator such as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Prepar3D, or X-Plane 11 or 12, a headset, and a broadband connection. A PilotEdge account is required—monthly plans run from $19.95 to $34.90—and once an account has been set up, there is software to download. From there, log in, set the real-world frequency for the facility you want to contact, and communicate your intentions just as you would for an actual flight.

When it comes to operating in the PilotEdge environment, there are some rules in place to keep the experience realistic. Smith emphasized that the company’s virtual airspace is not designed for inexperienced flight simmers to test out unfamiliar aircraft. It is, fundamentally, a space for those who are comfortable with their simulator and aircraft model they will be flying to build proficiency.

• READ MORE: Flight Sims for the Win: It’s All About Repetition and Drill

“Contrary to what a new client might think when signing up, PilotEdge is not…designed for pilots to give it a try and see how it goes,” Smith said. “Filing IFR from LA to [Las] Vegas, direct, in a Boeing 737 that you don’t know how to fly, without any working knowledge of IFR procedures, is going to work out about as well as it would in the real world.”

For those who don’t or can’t fly at a realistic level for the type of operations they are simulating, the company focuses on providing education. This includes encouraging the use of its library of training programs.

Training Scenarios and Benefits

By simulating real-world scenarios, PilotEdge seeks to address some common challenges faced by newer pilots, such as mastering the nuances of navigating different types of airspace and proper communication. It also provides an environment where more experienced pilots can improve their skills without the cost of fuel and aircraft rental.

Not getting into the myriad scenarios that are possible on the network, there are two main ways to make use of the space. First, you can just fly your own flight, be it VFR or IFR, communicating with appropriate ATC facilities or via CTAF frequencies as applicable. Again, the whole point is for it to follow the same flow as any similar real-world venture.

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Second, for those looking for a more structured challenge, PilotEdge offers a series of 31 graded training flights. Covering both VFR and IFR skills, each flight is designed to build upon the previous ones. For those looking for encouragement and support while attempting to grow their skills, there is an online community where training scenario results can be shared and discussed.

“PilotEdge’s IFR training programs are known to offer considerably more exposure to a wider range of procedures than is found in traditional real-world training,” said Smith. “Pilots who have completed their IFR training in the legal minimum time have reported to us that their CFII and DPE wanted to know ‘their secret’ as to how they managed to learn so much about IFR flying. These are not isolated incidents either. They are almost becoming the norm on the network. This speaks to the fundamental benefits of self-paced training that offers a high volume of exposure to flying in the system rather than any abilities of any specific pilots.”

That said, Smith acknowledges that those looking to use their simulator-learned skills in the air should pay close attention to where sim training shines—areas such as procedures and communications—and where it differs from real-world flying.

“The secret to getting the most benefit from a simulator is realizing that it’s not your airplane,” he said. “The controls will not feel the same since there isn’t 100-200 mph of wind blowing over the control surfaces, and the visuals are different in a number of ways. As such, even though flight models have come a very long way, and graphics are constantly improving, it’s important to realize what tasks are well practiced in a sim versus what is best left for the airplane.”

Controller Training

PilotEdge brings in its controllers from a variety of backgrounds. Their ranks include real-world controllers alongside those with virtual-only experience. Everyone controlling for the company goes through an 80-plus hour training program that pairs them with a trained PilotEdge controller. The purpose of the program is to refine any previous experience they might have, fill any gaps, and teach how to apply it all on the network. The company uses real-world FAA procedures and manuals as the basis for its controller training.

Unexpected Applications

Like all the best training environments, PilotEdge is far from being serious all the time. It regularly hosts workshops and events, not the least of which is its annual SimVenture. As the name might imply, SimVenture simulates arrivals to the yearly EAA AirVenture fly-in convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The experience allows pilots to practice event arrival procedures before attempting them in person and getting a feel for what’s in store when flying into the extremely busy airshow environment. Much like the real deal, the company reports that it has had more than 100 aircraft show up to fly into KOSH.

There have also been a few unexpected uses of the PilotEdge network, one of which involved a short field landing competition. It was won by a 737-200, which raises a whole host of questions perhaps best left for future exploration. Another is that the network has been used by an aerospace manufacturer for human-factors testing on new aircraft designs as part of FAA and European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification processes.

“Of late, we’re even seeing applications within avionics manufacturers who are now able to more thoroughly test new designs before the real hardware has even been finalized,” said Smith. “We hope to be able to speak less generically about these events in the future.”

Looking to the Future

While it has expanded quite a bit since launch, PilotEdge isn’t done yet. The company is actively developing its services and hoping to announce its newest project later this year.

This feature first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post PilotEdge Offers Opportunity to Hone Key Flight Skills From Home appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

While the time “logged’ using X-Plane or Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t count toward the required time for a certificate or rating, and it won’t give you the kinesthetic feel for the aircraft, it can still help reinforce concepts learned in lessons.

According to a newly published study from the Flight Simulation Association (FSA), those who use home flight simulation technology as a supplement to their flight training are able to receive their certificate with “5.5 fewer flight training hours than those who don’t, and in almost 20 hours less than the FAA average.” The study surveyed some 1,000 pilots and air traffic controllers who use home flight simulation.

“We have always known that enthusiast flight simulation impacts pilot training but have never had a way to quantify it,” said Rick Parker, an airline pilot and co-founder of NextLevel XR. “This survey is a great first step to showing there is serious benefit from complimenting aircraft training with structured or unstructured time in a home flight simulator.”

For a pilot training under a Part 61 program, 40 hours is the minimum required for private pilot certification, but decades of data show that most people have 70 hours or more before they get their ticket. 

Procedures Training

Using home flight simulation allows the learner to perform a more robust version of chair flying—the practice of sitting in a chair as if in the cockpit and running through procedures such as engine start, takeoff and landing. A home flight sim setup provides an opportunity to build muscle memory as you throw switches, press buttons and manipulate controls.

Cross-Country Prep

Getting lost is one of the number of concerns new pilots have. Practicing cross-country flights in the home sim before making them in the real world can help prepare pilots.

It helped Michael Puoci, a 50-hour student pilot in the Seattle area who also works in the computer gaming and virtual flight training industry designing virtual cockpits. Puoci, like so many low-time pilots, was a bit anxious about basic navigation, and worried he’d get lost.

“I would plan my route and use X-Plane to fly it. The graphics were good and matched the topography so I was able to pick out my landmarks,” he said.

When it came time to fly the route in the real world, he said the home sim practice flight, “helped a ton, because I could quickly glance out the window and recognize where I was. It became easier to stay ahead of the airplane.”

The sim is often a better learning environment because the action can be paused and mistakes undone with a keystroke.

“You can pause and learn how to troubleshoot and solve problems,” he said. “You learn how to do that in the sim because in the airplane things can get worse quickly if you don’t have that skill.” 

Sometimes real world flight training helps a sim user diagnose a problem. Puoci was having an issue with his virtual airplane—the engine ran rough shortly after he taxied out of the virtual hangar. His real-world CFI asked him if he had leaned the mixture for taxi or attempted to clear the magneto prior to takeoff. As he had never learned about this, he had not. It was demonstrated in the real world, and when he returned to the virtual world, he applied what had been learned and it fixed the issue.

Accept Limitations

One of the common complaints about simulation technology is that it doesn’t “fly like the real thing.” No it doesn’t. And it’s not supposed to. Once the learner accepts that, they can take advantage of the application of sim technology. The CFIs who regularly make use of simulation technology will warn you the sim is significantly more challenging than the airplane to fly, as you do not have that “seat of the pants” feeling, therefore you need to develop a better instrument scan. 

Virtual ATC

When the home sim is paired with a virtual air traffic controller, such as PilotEdge, it can be an excellent way for the learner to develop the skills they need in the real world, because there are usually multiple aircraft on frequency—just like the real world—and these controllers will tell you when you have clipped controlled airspace or you are at the wrong altitude. But unlike the real world, your certificate won’t be at risk.

The FSA survey also looked at the impact home flight simulation has on air traffic controllers. The results show that home flight simulation could be an undiscovered source of air traffic control recruitment—perhaps even training—that is likely being overlooked by regulators and civil aviation agencies.

 “The advancements in home-based simulation hardware and software have transformed a community once seen as purely hobbyist into a pipeline of motivated and focused individuals with readily accessible tools to explore and prepare for a career in aviation,” said Jon Standley, an air traffic management industry professional and graduate of the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative program.

The Home Sim Set Up

Some home simulation setups can cost thousands of dollars, depending on if the user wants a full set up with yoke and rudder pedals, a special chair and multiple screens and speakers for a full immersive experience. And on the other side, are the desktop devices created by flight simulation companies that cater to professional pilots, such as Redbird Flight Simulations from Austin, Texas. The company makes the FMX, a full motion device that puts the user inside an enclosed cockpit all the way to the J-Bird, which is a desktop model.

“For years Redbird Flight has helped countless aviation professionals achieve their career goals,” says Harvey Madison, a learning development specialist at the company. “For pilots from all sectors of aviation, including Parts 91,121, 135, and beyond, Redbird plays an integral part in learning, mastering, and maintaining top performance skills.”

The FSA is a free to join community of flight sim enthusiast pilots and industry developers and organizer of FlightSimExpo, one of the world’s largest dedicated flight simulation conventions. The next event is scheduled for June 21-23 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The post Survey: Home Flight Sim Helps Prepare Real-World Pilots appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On April 30, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Aurora a $25 million contract modification to continue working on its version of the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) entry, a notable boost from the previous $4.2 million award.

• READ MORE: Aurora Flight Sciences Revises Liberty Lifter Design

Also referred to as the X-Plane, the program is looking for a candidate that can fly at speeds of 400 to 450 knots (far exceeding the 270-knot maximum speed of the V-22 Osprey) and be able to hover “in a stable manner” and transition from hover to forward flight. The X-Plane will also “feature a distributed energy system that effectively powers all the propulsion technology during that transition,” according to Defense News.

Three other contenders are in the X-Plane hunt: Bell Textron, Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft. But Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, is the only competitor to receive upgraded funding.

• READ MORE: DARPA Achieves Major Breakthrough with AI-Controlled Aircraft

The new conceptual art released Monday shows an uncrewed aircraft (in contrast with previous concepts that showed cockpit windows) with a composite exterior. Aurora said it could add more fan-in-wing lift fans to the design should Pentagon requirements change in the future. It could also reinstate the crewed aircraft configuration.

Aurora concluded that its SPRINT/X-Plane design team projects finishing the preliminary design review of its entry in about a year, with the goal of first flight within three years.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post Aurora Notches More DARPA Funding for Its X-Plane Contender appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I was obsessed. Once college approached, I knew I was going to become an airline pilot, and I wouldn’t stop until I was an old man flying a Boeing 747. I was originally going to go to college to become a TV meteorologist, but failing grades in math kept that dream far away. I found it much easier to get into a state college with an aviation program, so off I went to one in New England to become a pilot.

While earning all my primary ratings, private through commercial and CFII, Microsoft Flight Simulator was right there with me. It provided all I needed for that extra boost when studying ILSs, holding patterns, VOR tracking, stalls, slow flight, cross countries, and more. Once the newer versions of MSFS were released (these major new versions were anticipated and sold in PC software stores in malls back then), it would cause so much excitement and anxiety for me that I’d be prepared to drive hours to get the coveted box in hand before the stores ran out, or other friends I knew grabbed theirs. Then the worries over computer strength and how the new version would run upped the anxiety. But it was a fun time back then, one that blew past any young child’s Christmas morning memory on any new release day.

After acing my IFR rating (the CFIs never understood how I knew all this stuff prior to beginning flying), my next big “ace event” was years later during my first real job as a Cape Air captain flying a nine-seat Cessna 402. I had to go for weeks of indoc and training, and my monthlong-stay hotel room was filled with some great multiengine hardware. Throttle quadrants, rudder pedals, and all were a fixture in my small room along with the PC. Today, I highly recommend the Sporty’s Pilot Shop Flight Sim Starter Set—quality Honeycomb equipment—or FLYING’s custom rig.

• READ MORE: Ultimate Realism ‘X-posed’ in 747-200 Classic

Some fellow classmates came to observe or try engine failures in a Cessna 421 add-on, the closest thing we had to the lower-powered 402. But it all worked and made sense. My multiengine failures and a simulated ATP check ride—complete with many single-engine NDB approaches to minimums in the real airplane—all seemed easy to me as I was able to fly all this before. The heck with imaginary “armchair flying”—I had the real thing in my hotel room as far as I was concerned.

Years later, once again another big event was my initial type rating in my first jet—the Beechjet 400A—in Wichita, Kansas. Most folks get a full initial type school of more than three weeks for most bizjets. However, my Part 135 boss was a cheapskate (imagine that) and wanted me typed within a four-day recurrent session the other pilots get every year. That was a lot to accomplish. The instructors said they didn’t think I could do it, as nobody gets a type off a recurrent session. And since it was my first jet rating, I had to take the four-day FMS ground training event as well.

Learning an aircraft FMS is the hardest thing for new jet pilots, and I had no time to learn it. Well, I said let me try the sim and see how I do in the FMS. I had a secret weapon nobody knew about. I had been using an FMS for years in MSFS, thanks to PMDG (www.PMDG.com), the makers of the finest Boeing airliners for the sim platform. Once I was in the real Beechjet sim, I discovered, sure enough, the FMS is exactly like the one in the Boeing jets. Even the glass cockpit was similar. The instructors were dumbfounded as to how I could suddenly bang away at all the keys, programming and modifying all the while learning to fly the jet. I let the cat out of the bag and told them, thanks to me being a geek on MSFS, I had learned all this years ago. They’re reaction was “no way” … but I was told to go ahead and skip the FMS course. I got my type rating in four days!

There was a fairly good Beechjet add-on for MSFS2004 made by Eaglesoft, and I used it during this training event and subsequent recurrents as I became a captain for the 135 outfit I flew with for several years before getting a new type rating on a big, beefy Dassault Falcon 2000 eventually. Sadly, no Falcon products existed for any sim platform, so I was a bit overwhelmed during that initial type rating. But, as most flying jobs change, so did this one. I was suddenly changing jobs and getting typed in a Hawker 800 series—a bit of a step back from the big Falcon.

Now, once again I had the sim advantage as one did exist from designer Carenado (www.carenado.com). The Hawker 850 was out for MSFSX at the time, and it was excellent in preparing me for the overall layout, look, and feel for learning the cockpit. However, it was not too big on exact systems modeling, so I used it as more of a visual familiarization tool than anything else, as well as for some basic flying qualities I believed were probably modeled pretty well.

Soon that 135 job ended, as those old 800s were poorly maintained and most flights were an exercise in using the emergency section of the POH. So I quit, only to find a job flying a much newer, late model Hawker 850, exactly as I had in MSFSX. This was a hoot. The newness and power was so much greater than the older sister. But that new boss suddenly traded in the 850XP for a big, powerful Challenger 300. This was the pinnacle of my career back then, and I had yet another sim weapon—the incredible Challenger 300 for X-Plane 11.

This favorite of many was sadly discontinued years ago, but I used it to the fullest extent while it was available. Systems, operations, layout, and flying quality were all simulated. I became extremely familiar with the CL300 during this time, and once I was type rated and flying the real thing, I became a reviewer of the X-Plane version. I was even able to help the author a bit on tweaking some parameters to better equal the real jet.

But the more I flew the real thing, the more I realized how well done the X-Plane version really was. I used to think it was too powerful, easily performing initial climb rates hitting 10,000 fpm, then I found out, yes, indeed the real thing does it too. What a ride!

Now that sims have helped me learn the real aircraft I fly, what about other stuff? How about life and death? Through no fault of my own, or perhaps a clumsy error, or maybe being even wreckless a bit while flying on the PC, I have found myself in sudden potentially dangerous scenarios that require immediate thinking and problem solving. I often leave the airplane on autopilot to do other things but have returned on a few occasions to discover one or more engines have failed for some reason. In jets it could be because of high-altitude weather, lack of anti-icing items being used, or other issues. Now I must think and react as a real pilot.

Even without a checklist at hand, it’s a brain exercise that is nothing but beneficial. So in a way, that is an actual emergency not planned at all and definitely a surprise. In smaller airplanes I have experienced total loss of power, so a visual landing off airport is an incredible “big picture” situational awareness type of tool that’s very realistic. I have written about such emergencies in past issues of FLYING’s digital platform.

Actual live weather feeding can provide an unexpected moment. So now, it’s time to dig out approach plates or perhaps attempt a visual with terrain. How about a planned emergency? Sure can. Options in either MSFS2020 or X-Plane 12 (XP12) give you the ability to randomly have a failure of anything you choose at a specific time, keystroke, or random period. XP12 goes farther and gives you the chance of random bird impact and resulting crisis, with hundreds more just waiting for you to activate. During jet recurrent events, we practice multiple engine failures at V₁, so that is easily something I’ll do in the sims at home.

Get a friend involved to secretly program something bad to happen. Back when I was a single guy and had a fellow roommate pilot pal (Rob, this is you) whom I taught how to fly, we’d call these randomized, intentional moments of doom “horror flights.” We’d set up the other guy while he wasn’t looking to have to fly the Cessna 182 and have total electrical failures combined with vacuum failure at night. Looking up to see nothing but a turn coordinator to live by is terror in IFR. Use engine sound for rpm and wind noise for pitch. If the outcome was bad, we’d throw each other down the stairs to simulate a crash and resulting injury. This added to the fun and realism. I don’t think any of us really lost too much blood.

I have been to many airfields in the real world where I’ve experienced that “been-there-done-that” feeling. Places like KASE, KTEX, KHSP, KJAC, KVNY, KSFO, KTRK, CYVR, PHLI, and dozens more where, if it weren’t for the sim, I’d be a level behind. Most involve high terrain or odd procedures. My first European trips in the Challenger were done in MSFS or X-Plane. Any new places I know of that I am heading to will be at least seen virtually before going in real life.

Every sim session is educational and keeps the brain in “big picture” mode. SA, or situational awareness, is key. I have flown with so many other pilots that lack this skill or are somewhat always behind the jet. A home simulator keeps these skills sharp. You’re always thinking ahead about “What if…?”

You don’t even need the latest MSFS or X-Plane to do this—or a fancy PC. Any version would do. I’d go as far as to say some of the big picture things can even be accomplished with an air combat sim. If you’re always thinking and doing, planning and preparing with a home flight sim, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the traditional “armchair” pilot.

Going from class to a hotel room, sitting in a chair with a cockpit diagram in hand, isn’t going to cut it. You’re missing the other half.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Healthy Obsession: What Flight Sim Has Done for Me appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

At the beginning of the film, a B-17 returning from a World War II mission makes a low pass over the Memphis Belle’s aircrew playing touch football at their base, signaling the return of the squadron. The beautiful shape and proportions of the B-17 and the unmistakable sound of those four Wright R-1820 engines thundering over me in the theater made the most indelible impression, and my love for aviation began at that very moment.

In spring 1991, David Tallichet, the pilot/owner of N3703G, one of the B-17s flown in the film—the other was Sally B—brought it to Concord Municipal Airport (KCON), and I waited in line one rainy afternoon to tour the interior with my mother and grandfather, all three of us climbing up the steep ladder into the hatch located below the cockpit on the pilot’s side. One of my favorite early memories was pausing with my grandfather behind the pilot’s seat as he patiently answered my questions about the dizzying array of instruments, levers, and switches in the cockpit. As a boy, it looked impossibly complicated, but I was intensely fascinated.

• READ MORE: Taking a Virtual Flight with the Yawman Arrow

After the tour, I purchased a poster at the souvenir stand that Tallichet politely signed for me. At nearly 70, he was gallant in both appearance and manner and spent some extra time with my grandfather and I, taking us around the exterior of his B-17 while he and my grandfather compared notes on their flying experiences. During WWII, Tallichet was a copilot of a B-17 in the 8th Air Force, completing 20 missions. After the war, he became a successful businessman and amassed an impressive personal collection of military aircraft.

Before we departed his company, Tallichet asked if I wanted to fly when I grew up, and I automatically answered yes. Standing between him and my grandfather, who wouldn’t aspire to what each had accomplished as pilots? That poster with his autograph hung in my childhood room until I went to college.

After that close encounter with the movie Memphis Belle on the ramp, I drove my friends and family crazy by asking to rent the film at least once per month, watching it until I could recite most of the dialogue with my sister. Without YouTube in the mid-’90s, there was no easily accessible footage of what it looked like to fly a B-17 from the pilot’s seat, so I repeatedly rewound the videocassette to watch the flying sequences to try and understand how it all worked. In 1993, a friend of mine in the neighborhood heard me talking about the movie and invited me over to his house after school. He owned an early PC with a color monitor and had a copy of the recently released combat flight simulation called B-17 Flying Fortress: World War II Bombers in Action by MicroProse. This was my first flight sim experience of any kind, and I had so much fun trying to fly the B-17 that I didn’t move from the cockpit to try the other crew positions. The cockpit and the gunner stations on the bomber were faithfully modeled as much as was possible at the time. For example, in the waist gun position, you could look toward the front of the B-17 and see the wings, round engine nacelles, and propellers spinning. Your role in one of the gunner positions was to defend the Flying Fortress from attacking enemy fighter aircraft. All of this sounds rudimentary today, but the missions, crew stations, and color animation were created in the early 1990s.

Experiencing the B-17 combat simulator came at a critical and impressionable time in my childhood, and I can still remember the thrill. In speaking with many pilots I have met over the years, a lot of us had a chance to try a home flight sim that served as a connection and an on-ramp to the larger world of aviation. For me, using a flight sim was a lot of fun, and it only made me more excited to try my first real-world flight lesson when I turned 14.

Back during the late ’90s, Chris Palmer—aka @AngleofAttack and a CFI who now runs a successful general aviation training business and popular aviation YouTube channel from his home airport in Homer, Alaska—started flying the European Air War WWII combat simulator. Palmer remembers learning the basic flight and power controls and the thrill of flying a fighter aircraft over the English Channel to challenge the Germans in air-to-air combat. As a teen, he purchased Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) and dreamed of becoming an airline pilot. He would load an airliner into the simulator and enjoy departing from many of the major airports around the world contained in the title’s library.

That early exposure inspired him to pursue real-world flight training. By the time he turned 17, Palmer started ground school and had already learned radio communication basics from the hours he spent on VATSIM, the live air traffic control service staffed by trained volunteer controllers that can be layered into a home flight sim with a software plug-in. After learning how to edit highlight videos for his high school football team, he built a study-level training course on how to fly the Boeing 767 on FSX. These video lessons achieved scale and, 17 years later, the DVDs, which complement a professional ground school study program, are selling to aspiring pilots training for their next upgrade.

When I came back to the world of GA to finish attaining my private pilot certificate in 2010, there was nervousness about the coming pilot shortage. Articles on the topic abounded, and writers made educated guesses about from where the next wave of pilots would come.

The question poised at that time was could enough discovery or EAA Young Eagles flights be conducted to successfully introduce the next generation to general aviation in time to stave off the looming airline pilot retirements not too many years in the future.

In 2014, I changed jobs into a marketing position where I could combine my passion for GA with my skill set as a social media marketer tasked with representing a leading general and commercial aviation product. Around this time, YouTube’s user base was rapidly expanding in popularity, and aviation enthusiasts could follow pilots on journeys from their first training lessons all the way to the airlines. Some pilots such as @flightchops (Steve Thorne) and @steveo1kinevo, who had modest followings of around 30,000 subscribers at that time, would amass hundreds of thousands of them over the next few years as their content attracted aviation enthusiasts from all over the world.

Today there are popular pilot/content creators who have used their engaging videos to help bring pilots of all ages to the airport for their first flight lessons. YouTube and the other social media channels have connected a global audience made up of millions around the world to pilot content creators with the time, equipment, and capability to publish their flying stories and share the world of GA with new, ever-widening, and more diverse global audiences through the mysterious and perplexing magic of the algorithm.

Fast-forward to this summer, and Jorg Nuemann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, presented to a large, in-person audience in June at FlightSimExpo, where he shared that MSFS2020 had achieved more than 12 million individual users since the software launched in September 2020. With the recent launch of X-Plane 12 in 2022, and the continued growth in popularity of Digital Combat Simulator (known as “DCS” and featuring modern fighter and rotor wing aircraft), each software program continues to attract a specific segment of digital aviation enthusiasts. Acknowledging that there is some crossover of home flight simulation pilots between these popular software titles, each offers a digital aviation experience where the user can hop over the virtual airport fence and climb into the cockpit or flight deck of so many faithfully digitally created general, commercial, and military aircraft.

Taken together, these software titles have amassed a worldwide user base on a scale not seen before. The result is YouTube and flight simulation are introducing enthusiasts to the world of aviation by serving as the top of a giant funnel, bringing the user into digital aircraft that are visually accurate to their real-world counterpart complete with high fidelity systems modeling. I believe the next generation of pilots is already here. They are fluent users in the digital world, easily finding flight simulation and aviation video content online.

Although we may not see them at real-world GA airports yet, I am already flying with them in the flight sim club of which I am a member. Listening to their radio calls approaching the Boston Class Bravo airspace, these flight sim pilots, many years my junior, are flying digital airliners into KBOS executing complex IFR arrivals with crisp and professional radio communication. Any of these flight sim pilots could show up to their first real-world discovery flight and surprise their unsuspecting CFI by being able to file and read back an IFR clearance without a single hour in the real-world logbook. Although these students will be well prepared in some aspects of flight training, they will have areas where the flight sim experience can’t adequately do so. But I’m confident a capable CFI will be able to diagnose any weaknesses and bring the student up to the relevant test standards.

To check that assumption, I asked Palmer about his thoughts on home flight-sim use and how it could potentially complement real-world flight training. As an experienced CFI who has successfully trained many private pilots, I wondered if he had any concerns about flight students crossing over from the digital world of flying into the real world—specifically the cross-country stage of private pilot training.

“If flight sim is used in the correct way, it can help you advance your flight training,” Palmer said. “There are more advantages than disadvantages. For example, you can easily mix pilotage and dead reckoning to practice navigation skills. You can plan the flight, get the

exact winds, get the exact weather, and set the correct time of day. Putting that high-fidelity tool in the hands of a student will allow them to find the airport, and [so] on their first cross-country flight, it doesn’t have to be a surprise anymore.”

Within the MSFS2020 and X-Plane 12 software, the student can explore most local airports since they are nearly all modeled. If the student pilot already has ForeFlight, they can pair their tablet with the sim and use it to find the FBO and plan the radio frequencies and approach to the airfield. Even just being able to explore the basics of ForeFlight while on your home sim can be time well spent.

“If you approach the sim seriously, and fly it to a high fidelity, it will pay you dividends by helping you feel more prepared for your private pilot flight training,” Palmer said.

In terms of behaviors to watch, Palmer cautions the new student to be ready to practice converting some of the flight sim knowledge into the real world, including getting used to the traffic scan since that is a habit not readily practiced in the sim. Simply recognizing there will be areas to relearn in actual flight training is the first step.

Equipped with their many hours of flight simulation experience, the student may already have a strong understanding of airspace, communication, navigation, and checklist use but may require some fine-tuning by their CFI.

“There’s nothing like real flying, no matter how much flight sim time you have,” Palmer said. “Go try flying a real airplane. You’re one of us. You like flying things. I am passionate about it, and I want flight sim pilots to experience real-world flight. Take a few discovery flights and see where it leads. At the very least, a real instructor can provide feedback and lesson pointers that you can bring back into the flight sim world.”

The next generation of pilots will one day share their stories about how they found aviation. In our youth, both Palmer and I supplemented our interest in aviation with early flight simulation experiences.

With the growing popularity of the home flight simulation, coupled with aviation content on YouTube and other channels, we are in the middle of a rising tide of digital flying activity that will hopefully continue to widen the funnel, bringing new people into real-world aviation, making it more accessible, and strengthening it for the future.

This feature first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Our Pilots of the Future May Share Sim Stories appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I am fortunate enough to go to work and play with actual flight controls connected by pulleys and cables to a bizjet worth some $20 million. Yet, this career only came after spending the first 20 years of my young adult life behind a computer, seeing the world, learning jet systems, playing the role of airline pilot, and educating myself on everything I could about what a career might be like in this exhilarating world. 

After so many years using Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 95, 98, and X, and X-Plane, I felt I had a pretty good hand on geography, airport locations around the entire U.S., and almost all of the major landmarks. Indeed, that was the case. As I started my career flying jets around the country in 2004, I definitely had that “I’ve been here before” feeling.

Starting with a good computer is key. MSFS or X-Plane won’t run well on a poorly optimized or weak machine. The good thing is prices have come way down these days, so it’s easy to find a good, solid PC to run either sim. My advice is, as always, get an intel chip base, i7 or i9, with Nvidia GeForce video. MSFS has always been the least hassle with this combination. Also required is a monitor with G-Sync technology, either on the laptop itself or externally on a home desktop system. I tried a non-G-Sync laptop by accident recently and returned it immediately due to screen tearing and artifacts, as well as stuttering in frame rates. Not all gaming machines are G-Sync, so beware and do research. The difference is night and day when using a G-Sync display.

• READ MORE: Setting Up Your Sim

Also, I am here to state (though it goes against many opinions among gamers) that a powerful laptop specifically built for gaming will run any sim phenomenally. Do not believe the naysayers. Yes, a desktop is the most powerful system to run a sim, but the compact technology in today’s top-end laptops is far superior to what it used to be. And trust me, you’ll not notice much of a difference. I like the laptops as they come ready to use, already built with the right components melded together for peak performance and quality. It’s cool high-tech wizardry.
You will never find a “gaming” computer in a Walmart, Staples, or even Best Buy. I highly recommend online purchases from dedicated retailers like, Xotic PC, Jetline Systems, or in some cities the great Micro Center. I bought mine at a local Boston Micro Center, and I love the hands-on shopping and ability to just bring it in for any issues or maintenance.

My mainstay sim gear to complement the laptop is the Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition, Xbox Elite 360 controller, and Thrustmaster THQ throttle quadrant. All are easily portable and high quality. Our friends at Sporty’s Pilot Shop offer a bundle of these. The Xbox Elite unit can be purchased at most stores and is exceptionally great for programming the autopilot functions that I use. MSFS seems to accommodate an unlimited number of plug-in USB devices, and this inexpensive unit is one I highly recommend.

Twenty years ago, we had flight yokes, rudder pedals, and more. Yet they were quite heavy and extremely expensive. The market is wide open now with many brands to choose from, satisfying everyone from the casual simmer to the home cockpit builder. Military enthusiasts get what they’re looking for as well, with extremely realistic side sticks replicating exact fighter jet models.

Even though I love my portable on-the-road sim setup, when sitting at home, feeling the throttle quadrant in my right hand with the yoke in my left, feet in place, I can forget that this is all simulated. The realism is really heightened when using a 747 and swapping out the normal two-engine jet for the quad jet pieces that come standard with the Honeycomb base throttle unit. Now, manipulating four individual throttles really comes to life. You feel like you’re in command of something big.

A 747 or Piper Cub, it’s all available when using a Honeycomb THQ. The combinations are limitless and the quality is great. It offers precision handling, and all the parts and pieces can be popped off and on easily to turn it into anything you want. Then you just assign each slider to something in the MSFS controllers configuration screens.

The default throttle parts for Honeycomb are great and work the best overall. Recently, a new company called Prodesksim has started making add-on enhancements for the existing Honeycomb throttle quadrant. ProDeskSim attachments  add visual realism, true-size parts, and functionality. However, one issue I discovered is that the overlays, or underlays, of the throttle and speedbrake strips keep popping out of place as they don’t sit tightly enough to withstand the speedbrake or flap levers moving in and out of place.

Each time I use either the flaps or speedbrake axis, the plastic inserts all pop out from the detents being used. You can use the items without the flap tracks certainly, but you lose immersion and the actual detents most of the units use.

To remedy the loose underlay parts, you have to be very careful or kind of hold them in place with an available finger before using the axis. If you’re a cockpit modeler simulating just one type of jet, you could glue these into place, but it would be permanent. 

I have since learned that ProDeskSim has implemented a fix for all future units to keep this issue from occurring (my demo units came out early in 2023). The innovation here is great. I love how the company can make so many options and attachments based on the default unit. You can turn your Honeycomb unit pretty much into any GA or jet aircraft you want, making the possibilities seem endless.

I’m honestly not fond of reassembling each time as I change aircraft often enough to where this would be a big setback. For a cockpit modeler of one particular jetliner, this isn’t an issue. I found myself using the Boeing twin jetliner units the most as they are fantastic and only take seconds to install.

In case you’ve never used rudder pedals, it’s definitely one of those experiences where you don’t know what you’re missing until you try it. Once you set your feet snugly on them, you’ll wonder how you survived without for so long. I can’t bring them in my suitcase or I probably would.

Getting all the right hardware in place is the first step to enjoying your sims. You certainly don’t have to spend a fortune since the basic Airbus stick-and-throttle unit combined is only $199. The quality is precise and solid. There are online folks who have showcased using real aircraft cockpits and even airliners from nose through first-class cabins to run their sims. I can only dream of that for now.

The post All the Right Tools for Setting Up a Flight Sim appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), a U.S. Department of Defense unit tasked with developing cutting-edge defense technology, wants to do away with all of them.

DARPA this week selected Aurora Flight Sciences—a research subsidiary of Boeing specializing in the development of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other novel aircraft systems—to build a full-scale demonstrator aircraft that can fly with no surface-level control surfaces.

The project is part of a DARPA program called CRANE, or Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors. CRANE aims to design, build, and fly an airplane with active flow control (AFC)—in lieu of control surfaces—as a key design consideration. According to DARPA, AFC technology has been explored at the component level but not as a core piece of aircraft design.

Aurora has already begun building the outlandish demonstrator, called the X-65, DARPA said Wednesday. The agency expects it to roll out in early 2025, with the first flight planned for that summer.

No Control Surfaces, No Problem

The smooth-bodied X-65’s wings look almost like mirrored Dyson fans, with large gaps separating them from the body. In fact, the aircraft uses AFC to generate force in a similar way.

For primary flight control, flaps and rudders are replaced by AFC actuators. Much like a Dyson fan, AFC technology produces jets of pressured air, shaping flows over the airplane’s surface. Effectors spread across the surface use those flows to control pitch, roll, and yaw.

“[The X-65’s] distinctive, diamond-like wing shape is designed to help us maximize what we can learn about AFC in full-scale, real-world tests,” said Dr. Richard Wlezien, program manager for CRANE.

DARPA expects the elimination of external moving parts to reduce aircraft weight and complexity, thereby improving performance. In addition, the tech could enable drag reduction, high angle-of-attack flight, simplified high-lift systems, and thicker wings for better structural stability and fuel capacity, the agency said.

The X-65 will be built initially with two sets of control actuators—traditional flaps and rudders—as well as AFC effectors on all lifting surfaces. In addition to minimizing risk in early flight testing, the control surfaces will serve as a baseline for testing. As the campaign progresses, they will be selectively shut down and replaced by AFC for primary flight control.

“The X-65 conventional surfaces are like training wheels to help us understand how AFC can be used in place of traditional flaps and rudders,” explained Wlezien. “We’ll have sensors in place to monitor how the AFC effectors’ performance compares with traditional control mechanisms, and these data will help us better understand how AFC could revolutionize both military and commercial craft in the future.”

The uncrewed X-65 will have a 30-foot wingspan and is projected to weigh more than 7,000 pounds, capable of reaching Mach 0.7 speed (about 537 mph). Its size, speed, and weight will be similar to military trainer aircraft—which means DARPA could uncover immediate AFC applications for real-world designs.

X-Planes, CRANEs, and Aurora Deals

Construction of the X-65 demonstrator represents Phase 3 of CRANE, the U.S. government’s latest X-plane project.

X-planes are a series of experimental U.S. aircraft and rockets, used mainly to test out new technologies and aerodynamic concepts. The first batch was built by Bell Aircraft Corp. (known today as Bell Textron) in the 1940s and ’50s. Since then, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Curtiss-Wright, and other manufacturers have produced X-plane designs. The most recent, designated X-66, is a transonic truss-braced wing design being developed by Boeing with support from NASA.

With CRANE, DARPA hopes to optimize AFC systems by using the X-65 to mature the technology and design processes. In addition, former CRANE program manager Dr. Alexander Walan in 2020 suggested the agency may create an AFC technology database, which could be used by future manufacturers to design safe, market-ready aircraft.

CRANE began in 2019, when DARPA requested industry participation in the initiative. For Phase 1, which focused on initial design and system requirements, contracts were handed out to Aurora, Lockheed, BAE Systems, and Georgia Tech Research Corp.

But by the time Phase 2 began in January 2023, only Aurora—which had successfully completed wind tunnel testing using a testbed aircraft equipped with AFC—was still under contract. DARPA has now picked up its option for Phase 3, which will explore how AFC can be incorporated on full-scale aircraft and be relied upon for controlled flight.

It’s unclear whether CRANE will continue beyond Phase 3, which is expected to last several years. However, the X-65 is being designed to outlast it.

“We’re building the X-65 as a modular platform—wing sections and the AFC effectors can easily be swapped out— to allow it to live on as a test asset for DARPA and other agencies, long after CRANE concludes,” said Wlezien.

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The post Boeing Subsidiary Building Airplane with No Traditional Control Surfaces for U.S. Government appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Months before this flight, I added the Reality Expansion Pack (REP) plug-in by SimCoders to the default X-Plane 11 Baron. For $19.99, the plug-in brings additional aircraft systems to life in X-Plane 11 and improves upon the default version. This “study-level” simulation requires precise management of the engines and other aircraft systems, and models additional parts within systems that can be set to fail randomly or at specific intervals. As a result, flying with the reality expansion pack makes the sim pilot responsible for more of the digital aircraft and can increase the workload.Unbeknownst to me, a random failure was lying in wait, destined to alter my flight this particular evening.

The air at cruise was calm, and the digital sun—almost fully set—turned the horizon orange except for a thin layer of clouds building up over the mainland above my cruising altitude. The VFR conditions forecasted in the preflight weather briefing were holding. I had been looking forward to this night’s flight all month as I would be joining up with other flight sim pilots in the live airspace over KPVD. This was my first chance to participate in a “showcase” event hosted by my flight sim club, and was the last fly-in event scheduled for the month. One feature of a showcase event is that volunteer air traffic controllers fully staff the airspace around the Boston area (ZBW), giving all sim pilots a chance to do multiple realistic frequency changes during the course of the arrival to the destination air- port. Similar to the real world, Boston Center would hand off flights to Providence Approach, and then to Providence Tower for landing—with ground, clearance delivery, and departure controllers available for aircraft departing KPVD.

Crossing over the mainland just south of New Bedford (KEWB) in Massachusetts, I was now 10 miles southeast of the Class C airspace and expecting my handover to Providence Approach at any moment. Listening to the traffic on the frequency, I could hear many pilots on IFR approaches and was glad to have opted for VFR flight following. The radio chatter reminded me of flying in the ZBW when I was an active private pilot in the real world. It was exciting to feel like I was back in the big show again. Many of the sim pilots sharing the digital skies with me really know their stuff, flying the airspace competently on IFR flight plans and using professional radio work. It was motivating to be part of the group, and I wanted to bring my best when it was my turn to squeeze the push-to-talk button.

Using my call sign, Boston Center got my attention and provided my handoff instructions. Upon checking in with Providence Approach, a friendly controller greeted me with a right turn to 040, setting me up on a 5-mile left downwind for Runway 23. Moments later, the same controller was in touch with some in-sim traffic for me to see and avoid. I could hear the other sim pilot receiving his see-and-avoid instructions, and by looking out my windscreen to the left, I could make out his aircraft, a Citation, in the distance, lining up for final approach a few miles ahead. I couldn’t see the shape of the aircraft yet, but I could see the nav and strobe lights marking his position, which I cross-checked on the MFD of the G1000. The workload of aviating, navigating, and communicating was keeping me fully in the zone. I love the challenge of the arrival phase of flight, complete with its many variables to manage, and the crowd of sim pilots and controllers on frequency really added to the immersion. Although orderly, it was a virtual rush hour within the KPVD Class Charlie as the fly-in was set to close within the next 30 minutes.

With the landing Citation traffic in sight, Providence Approach turned me onto an extended left base for 23 and handed me off to the tower. I repeated the correct tower frequency but didn’t write it down on my kneeboard. When I dialed in what I thought to be the correct frequency, my call was met with silence. I tried one more time, but realizing that I must have mistyped it, I quickly punched the COM flip-flop button to ask Approach for the correct tower frequency. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, knowing I had started to fall behind the airplane in a critical phase of flight. With the correct frequency, I radioed Providence Tower, but my delay caused me to fly past the left turn for final. I sheepishly reported my position to the tower, and the controller took it all in stride, patiently giving me instructions to turn 180 degrees and set up for a right base for 23. Once turned around, I double-checked my airspeed and lowered my landing gear. I took a deep breath so I could focus on the next steps of the arrival.

I needed to settle in and concentrate on the next steps of the approach, but something with the airplane didn’t feel right. I checked my gear lights and had three green. Next, I checked my flaps, and they were retracted. However, I was putting unusual pressure on my yoke to keep my wings level. Immediately, I added rudder to keep the nose on the horizon, and I was now cross-controlling the yoke and rudder to keep the nose level. Not good.

I immediately checked the MFD and backup engine instruments and determined I was not experiencing a powerplant issue. Oil pressure, rpm, and manifold pressure were where they should be for the selected power setting. A few weeks before, I added an additional monitor to my sim cockpit to serve as a backup instrument panel. I attached a suction cup mount to my Stay Level avionics panel that houses my G1000 PFD and MFD. The monitor hosts additional indicator lights, gauges, and controls. With just a glance, I could see critical information about the Baron’s systems that would be available to me if I was flying the airplane in the real world.

One specific gauge caught my attention: The aileron trim position indicator was showing it was rolling uncommanded from full left deflection to full right deflection and back. I quickly clicked the aileron trim controls on the yoke to arrest the trim’s movement but to no avail. Immediately my face felt hot and my heart rate picked up as this problem quickly became an in-flight, in-sim emergency. My chance to land at KPVD with my fellow sim pilots was dissolving rapidly, like my altitude, airspeed, and ability to control the aircraft.

Since I am not a Baron pilot in real life and have not had real-world multiengine training, I predicted the landing would be a challenge. However, this situation provided a great opportunity to work out the problem using what I knew about aircraft systems and emergency procedures. Having never experienced a runaway trim issue in real life or in the sim before, I decided to use the rest of the flight as a test to see if I could survive the emergency. With no physical or monetary consequences, if I failed, it was a very low-stakes learning opportunity. Challenge accepted.

To minimize drag, I raised my landing gear, hoping it would improve controllability. Letting the tower know I was experiencing a flight-control problem, I was cleared to fly south toward the edge of the Class C. So as to not interrupt any fly-in arrivals or departures, I communicated my intentions to the tower and disconnected from the live air traffic control service. I was alone in X-Plane 11 now, and I was running out of troubleshooting ideas. The control of the Baron had not greatly improved with my gear up, and my mind was racing to identify a solution. With both feet and hands working the flight controls, I kept working on the problem mentally. Was I fighting the autopilot? It was definitely possible that I had engaged the AP by mistake. A quick glance at the G1000 and back down to the AP controls confirmed that autopilot was off.

Next, I gripped the yoke tightly—not knowing how the Baron would respond—and activated the autopilot into heading mode to see if that would stop the aileron trim’s maniacal cycling. I recalled that X-Plane 11 has extensive and programmable failure modes. Back in 2021, I had enabled the failure mode to randomly select one failure per 60 hours of flight time and, although I had only flown the Baron about 20 hours in the past 12 months, I realized the runaway trim condition was most likely caused by this programmable setting lurk- ing in the background of my previous months of sim flying, and was now showing itself.

I used the manual in-cockpit camera controls to zoom into the circuit breakers to see if I could pull the appropriate one with a click of my mouse. I knew some X-Plane aircraft modeled circuit breaker behavior but wasn’t sure if my REP Baron was included. When no circuit breakers responded to my rapid-fire mouse clicking, I zoomed in on the base of the throttle pedestal to see if I could manually stop the aileron trim wheel from turning. My mouse was unable to click the control wheel and stop it from continuing to turn. At this point, I was out of options to diagnose and but- tons to click, and still struggling to keep the aircraft under control.

Fortunately, my path south of KPVD led me to the western edge of the Class D for KOQU. Having attended a real-life air show there in 2012, I recalled the main runway of 16/34 would be my best shot at an emergency landing location. I was due west of KOQU by about 2 miles, flying at 170 kts at 600 feet agl, but I had Runway 16 in sight. I dropped the gear and swung the nose toward the runway. It was an ugly short approach over the western side of the airfield, and I did my best to line up with 16, all while fighting the aileron trim and losing altitude in the process. I was coming in fast, at roughly 130 kts, but the directional control seemed to worsen at lower speeds. My best option was to get the wheels on the ground and salvage the best landing possible. Since I would be the only witness in-sim to the outcome, there wasn’t anything to lose. I had flashes of aviation legend Bob Hoover’s sage advice go through my mind as I committed to the touchdown: “If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.”

Thanks to the aileron trim, keeping on the centerline of 16 was nearly impossible, so I floated messily down the runway, slowly reducing the throttles and trying to maintain control. I tried touching down on the mains at roughly 120 knots, about halfway down the 7,500-foot runway, but I swiftly bounced into the air. I pulled back on the yoke to try to arrest the inevitable follow-up contact with the runway and bounced again. I would not attempt a go-around in this condition, so I reduced the throttles to idle and did what I could to minimize the impact of the final bounce. The digital propellers departed both engines with the impact, but the gear stayed connected to the undercarriage, and I skidded to a stop off on the left side of 16, just past the intersection with Runway 5/23.

I unclenched my hands from the yoke and enjoyed the silence in my gaming headset as I switched off the avionics, lights, batteries, and mags. Sitting in my flight sim cockpit in the quiet of my basement, I let my heart rate settle and reflected on how real moments of the flight had felt—especially the last 10 minutes as I was troubleshooting the aileron trim malfunction while trying to keep the Baron under control. Although there were areas for improvement, I flew the surprise emergency to the best of my abilities and enjoyed the mental workout. I never made it to KPVD, but the fidelity of the entire experience will keep me coming back for more.

The post To Providence or Bust, in Simulated Flight appeared first on FLYING Magazine.