• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Pilot shortage?

Dontcallmegump

Well-Known Member
pilot
...I think they will be missing a lot of experience that can only be gained flying to real airfields with real traffic and real controllers and real weather and real airplanes.

Maybe it was just my expirence, or that of the pipelines I went through, but a lot of the sim instruction is almost purely procedural and without anything that makes the ATC environment more dynamic. I can't tell you how many times the wx was the same for all 4 approaches of an event or that I'm the only person making calls and listening for calls to me and there isn't ever other traffic. All the whiz bang realism stuff is basically never used in the syllabus and sim IPs are not controllers. It's button mashing practice and a scan builder. I can't imagine having less stick time and feeling OK about that.
 

scoolbubba

Brett327 gargles ballsacks
pilot
Contributor
Maybe it was just my expirence, or that of the pipelines I went through, but a lot of the sim instruction is almost purely procedural and without anything that makes the ATC environment more dynamic. I can't tell you how many times the wx was the same for all 4 approaches of an event or that I'm the only person making calls and listening for calls to me and there isn't ever other traffic. All the whiz bang realism stuff is basically never used in the syllabus and sim IPs are not controllers. It's button mashing practice and a scan builder. I can't imagine having less stick time and feeling OK about that.

Bingo. The primary studs get a bunch of BI and RI sims to learn instruments. You know what they don't get? Busy radios, weather, airspace constraints, etc. You know what they suck at? Dealing with anything that deviates from the plan even the slightest.

They can't talk on the radios, they can't adapt to flying different approaches than what they tabbed and gouged up the night before, they can't do anything other than the 1.3 they planned and rehearsed over and over the night before...and that's ok. That's why we take them to places that are busy and places that are quiet and get them the experience that the sims cannot.
 

Dontcallmegump

Well-Known Member
pilot
Bingo. The primary studs get a bunch of BI and RI sims to learn instruments. You know what they don't get? Busy radios, weather, airspace constraints, etc. You know what they suck at? Dealing with anything that deviates from the plan even the slightest.

They can't talk on the radios, they can't adapt to flying different approaches than what they tabbed and gouged up the night before, they can't do anything other than the 1.3 they planned and rehearsed over and over the night before...and that's ok. That's why we take them to places that are busy and places that are quiet and get them the experience that the sims cannot.

Oh shit, you instructors knew we were script monkies?!?!?

I kid, but you can't blame us for doing all we can to know what's up for when the helmet fire hits, but that bandaid has to be ripped off. In the sims you come with a list of your profile and 99% of the time that's exactly how it goes. A few events with "harassment" more than simple EPs but not much dynamic training. Which is a bummer, that's what sims could be great for.
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
Scripts are the single worst way to train an aviator. Even at the beginner level. Sets up a mindset of tunnel vision and linearity.
A little bit can be a good thing, as long as it's early on, because it can give the person a playbook. But once you've got a few pages in that playbook then it's time to exercise the "dealing with the unexpected" part of the brain (and you can still add more pages while doing that).
 

Python

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
A little bit can be a good thing, as long as it's early on, because it can give the person a playbook. But once you've got a few pages in that playbook then it's time to exercise the "dealing with the unexpected" part of the brain (and you can still add more pages while doing that).

I did not have a script in military flight training. I had some guidance in the FTI (as the FTI should), but nothing beyond that. It worked plenty well, as the airmanship and decision making was taught by my IPs in the air, rather than adherence to a script. I have seen what scripts do to students, and it decisively makes them worse off.
 
Top