








As far as doing these to prepare for real life lessons, I highly discourage it- especially if you're using a joystick. As a "real world" pilot I can tell you right now that actual flight lessons are much different than the sim lessons. Although the sim has a lot to offer, it really won't help a pilot without real world experience because you guys simply have no way of knowing whether or not what you're doing is correct. Many sim pilots (especially those who use sim joysticks and no rudders) come into real world aviation with a load of bad habits they developed in the sim. Believe it or not those habits actually do carry over to real life and can take a lot of time and money to fix. In fact, for this purpose many CFIs tell their students not to use the sim until they're finished with their private pilots check-ride. After that point the pilot is fully aware of the differences between real world piloting and sim piloting, and is able to stop himself from developing those bad habits. After that the sim can finally be used as a good training aid, but until then it will likely only do more bad than good.



As far as doing these to prepare for real life lessons, I highly discourage it- especially if you're using a joystick. As a "real world" pilot I can tell you right now that actual flight lessons are much different than the sim lessons. Although the sim has a lot to offer, it really won't help a pilot without real world experience because you guys simply have no way of knowing whether or not what you're doing is correct. Many sim pilots (especially those who use sim joysticks and no rudders) come into real world aviation with a load of bad habits they developed in the sim. Believe it or not those habits actually do carry over to real life and can take a lot of time and money to fix. In fact, for this purpose many CFIs tell their students not to use the sim until they're finished with their private pilots check-ride. After that point the pilot is fully aware of the differences between real world piloting and sim piloting, and is able to stop himself from developing those bad habits. After that the sim can finally be used as a good training aid, but until then it will likely only do more bad than good.
I guess I would have to ask you to be more specific as to what bad habits one might get into as a sim pilot, although I do agree, there are simply some things you learn in real world pilot training that you wouldn't necessarily learn from being a sim pilot (getting the aircraft to level flight before trimming, for example). But as a student pilot who soloed after 6 (yes, 6) hours working with a CFII who is in Rod Machado's advertisements in AOPA and Flight Training magazines (and who has over 6,000 hours of dual instruction time), I have to say, I found my sim experience to be vital. For example, after hundreds and hundreds of landings in the simulator, they were easy as pie in real life. Learning to manage your airspeed and rate of decent on final transfers directly from the sim to the Cherokee. Learning how to fly a pattern correctly may be a slightly different story, but I wouldn't discount sim experience out of hand. Simply learning the skill of scanning your instrument panel (and yes, that is a skill) is in my mind invaluable. Once you get in a real airplane, you aren't wondering what all the instruments are and what they're telling you.
My two cents...


As far as doing these to prepare for real life lessons, I highly discourage it- especially if you're using a joystick. As a "real world" pilot I can tell you right now that actual flight lessons are much different than the sim lessons. Although the sim has a lot to offer, it really won't help a pilot without real world experience because you guys simply have no way of knowing whether or not what you're doing is correct. Many sim pilots (especially those who use sim joysticks and no rudders) come into real world aviation with a load of bad habits they developed in the sim. Believe it or not those habits actually do carry over to real life and can take a lot of time and money to fix. In fact, for this purpose many CFIs tell their students not to use the sim until they're finished with their private pilots check-ride. After that point the pilot is fully aware of the differences between real world piloting and sim piloting, and is able to stop himself from developing those bad habits. After that the sim can finally be used as a good training aid, but until then it will likely only do more bad than good.
I guess I would have to ask you to be more specific as to what bad habits one might get into as a sim pilot, although I do agree, there are simply some things you learn in real world pilot training that you wouldn't necessarily learn from being a sim pilot (getting the aircraft to level flight before trimming, for example). But as a student pilot who soloed after 6 (yes, 6) hours working with a CFII who is in Rod Machado's advertisements in AOPA and Flight Training magazines (and who has over 6,000 hours of dual instruction time), I have to say, I found my sim experience to be vital. For example, after hundreds and hundreds of landings in the simulator, they were easy as pie in real life. Learning to manage your airspeed and rate of decent on final transfers directly from the sim to the Cherokee. Learning how to fly a pattern correctly may be a slightly different story, but I wouldn't discount sim experience out of hand. Simply learning the skill of scanning your instrument panel (and yes, that is a skill) is in my mind invaluable. Once you get in a real airplane, you aren't wondering what all the instruments are and what they're telling you.
My two cents...

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