Any general hints, lesson learned, gouge for RIs??

[Fly Navy]

The guys at Whiting, if you know your brief and you know your procedures, then you won't get yelled at. If you start doing dumb sh!t, well, expect them to be a bit miffed. Most of them are good guys though, only a few that have short patience. Good luck man.

 

[wilsonator]

I know everyone on here is complaining about the microsim and they are right, it does suck to fly. However, it teaches you to keep your scan going while going through the procedures. I used it before every flight and it helped me immensely, don't worry if you can't maintain altitude or heading very well, the stick sucks but it will work wonders for your procedures as opposed to the riot trainer which doesn't help with eye/hand coordination since you're just staring at the screen.

 

[PropStop]

uh...head falls, tail rises, tail-radial-turn....tail-radial-wind.

RI's are a blast - NOT!

everybody gave you lots of good gouge. get a better kneeboard for sure. sell your old one on Ebay (after i sell mine, thank you very much).

 

[Bevo16]

My advice would be to get on the RIOT trainer and break out your approach plates and fly the actual approaches on your computer before the flight. Don't be afraid to gouge up your plates either, especially for the canned sims. If you know that you are going to have to fly a non depicted teardrop, draw it on the plate so you don't have to figure it out the hard way. That's just good preflight planning IMO.

I would not waste time with the micro sim. You will spend way to much time trying to learn to fly that piece of junk and not enough time flying the approach. You already know how to fly if you have made it to RI's, the RIOT will teach you how the needles move.

 

[Fly Navy]

Let me clarify. When I say sim, I mean the RI cockpit sims. The 2B41 or whatever the hell they are. We here at Whiting are not allowed to use the Microsims unless you're in a study.

 

[airwinger]

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. I Disagree with the guy who says don't live in the sim building, live there. I lived in the Q so it was easy to get practice time at 5:30 or late at night, but if you don't, I knew an AF chick that would get a Q room most nights during RI's so she could practice even more(she's flying F-16's now).

Good grades in RI's are the reason I got jets. And since I KNOW I'm not yeager, I'm pretty sure that 5 hours practice a day helped.

 

[beau]

Thanks for all the info.........I'm going to sign try and sign up for a sim everyday during ground school......and if I dont get a sim, I'll go to the wing and get on the micro sims....I've flown some of the approaches before on the RIOT training at 0'dark thirty on SDO watch to waste time and it seems to be helpfull. The Microsims are alright, but the screen seems real grainy when reading instruments...

 

[46Driver]

From an instructor's point of view:
1) Practice, practice, practice.
2) Airwork is crucial.
3) For you helo bubbas, get rid of the kneeboard on your right knee (use your left knee). The object of this is to rest your right forearm on your thigh and control the cyclic with just your wrist (much like resting the barrel of your M-16 on a sandbag)
4) Always keep yourself positioned on the approach plate concerning 3 big things: radial, distance, and your heading.
5) AVIATE first.
6) NAVIGATE second.
7) COMMUNICATE third.
8) Finally, know every symbol on your VFR and IFR maps before we even start any RI brief - if you don't know what you are looking at, you are going to have troubles.

Good Luck, (I thought they sucked too....)

 

[BeanFighter]

What 46 said and concerning AVIATE...learn to fly the plane/jet smooth. May sound silly but trust me, the smoother you fly the better the grades. Smooth means TRIM the jet up so it will do the flying for you. Yes you are still in control but you will have more time to think about other stuff and not about just making corrections to alt, a/s, and hdg. A trimmed jet will diviate from where you want it slower, thus making the recorrection smaller, thus you fly smoother. Don't move the stick if you don't have to. Let the jet fly. Trim...recorrect....trim....let it fly...breath...smile...smaller recorrect...trim..., the whole time you are doing this the IP is thinking "cool, good BAW" instead of "damn, another stick shaker". PRESS!

 

[Elder]

Eh I did the Microsim and it did help. I didn't get bent out of shape on maintaining altitude.. it's a procedure trainer and that's what I used it for.

And yeah, obviously nothing beats preparing for a sim like... hopping in a sim. :|