Last weekend I spent two days in Las Vegas in a Cirrus SR20 Full Motion Flight Simulator. Today, as I sat down to debrief my experience, it dawned on me that it would be amazing if there were full motion simulators for campaigns!!!
I’ll have to think about that a bit.
It’s hard to explain the unbelievable value of flying in a simulator to a non-pilot. The best I can do it say that I have now dealt with things in a near-to-real-life situation that I never expect (but always plan) to experience in the air.
Here are some of the things I came away from the weekend with:
1. I have now seen what many emergencies look and feel like and thus will be better able to know them if/when I see them.
2. Having faced a range of critical emergencies first hand, I am more confident than ever in my reactions.
3. I have now tried some things that I should not and will not ever do. The reason for “SHOULD NOT” is more clear than ever.
4. Working with a super qualified flight instructor, I learned a whole range of tips and tricks that I will take into every flight from now on.
The list of emergencies we faced included:
1. Loss of left magnetos during flight. (That’s not a life threatening thing, but there are some very interesting implications)
2. Loss of both magnetos during flight over mountains with no runway in sight… CAPS pulled successfully. Translated, loss of engine, pulled the chute!
3. Sudden and drastic drop in oil pressure followed by engine out. Landed safely back at KPDX, from which I had departed.
4. Sudden onset of night IFR flight (as is only possible in a simulator 
and horrible winds at the airport I diverted to; which resulting in my going around twice before landing. I was literally sweating by the time I was done with this one.
5. Loss of prop governor in climb: nursed the plane back to the airport for a safe landing.
6. Loss of PFD during IMC. Boy do I love that Auto Pilot in times like that. (Translation - Well now, I am in the clouds and the instrument that tells me which direction is up, just went away… Fortunately, there are solid options for dealing with this and not ending up like the son of a president)
7. Sudden loss of control surface resulting in spin over water. CAPS pulled immediately. In this case, the instructor just removed my wing so that I would non-ceremoniously enter a crazy spin to test my reaction time for identifying the situation and pulling the chute.)
8. Overweight take off at a high-density altitude runway… No fun, not going to happen again.
Other lessons learned.
1. I fly over water from time to time up around the San Juan Islands; I will be buying flotation devices for me and passengers to wear.
2. I learned a number of new tricks with the Garmin that I was unaware of before.
3. Formation flying is TOUGH!!!
4. Countless little pearls of wisdom from a guy with 5000 hours flying. The best part about this was that the guy is my favorite kind of professional… a geek. I love geeks of all stripes, even pilot geeks.
I didn’t know you were a pilot. Cool!
Sounds like the flight sim has some of the same goals as when we write unit tests for our code — running things through a bunch of scenarios to make sure they behave as expected…only in this case you’re the one being tested, rather than doing the testing!
You have the plane with the chute?! No way! I remember seeing that years ago, way back when I was subscribed to Plane and Pilot. How many hours are you at?
Indeed, David, I think you’re right. I really do think it would be cool if there was a way to scenario test campaign strategies, too.
Daniel, Indeed I do fly a Cirrus SR20. I have a couple hundred hours but have yet to take the time to get my IFR. I am tempted to do it this summer, but it may have to wait until next year. Time is tough to come by these days. Do you have your IFR ticket yet?