Curtis L. Olson writes: > It also sounds like another big portion of the training is learning > how the instruments work at a very detailed level. This gives you an > understanding of the types of sensing errors you might see and under > what circumstances.
Yes, but the funny part is that you cannot use most of that knowledge, except in an emergency. Once you're being vectored, you cannot reset your HI even if you notice a disagreement between it and the mag compass, for example. On takeoff IFR, you're not even allowed to put in a wind correction, so you have to watch the airplane drift off the side of the runway (as long as you can see the ground). Enroute, you have to use the altimeter setting that the whole ATC sector is using, even if you can get a much more accurate one from a nearby airport. As Alex has tried to explain before, 90% of IFR training is The Scan. I thought I understood that when he wrote it, but I was wrong: you cannot really understand until you've done a lot of it. The scan is a hard thing to describe -- it's not just a physical process of looking at different instruments, but more like the whole Zen of IFR flying. It's sort of like driving a car while holding your speed right to the kph/mph, watching the rearview, keeping lane position within a foot, and still being able carry on a conversation, only much more so (say, with a newspaper over the windshield). > So should I add a claim to our home page that 100% of people using > FlightGear as part of their IFR training have passed their test on the > first try? Or let's see we could flip that around and say if you are > smart enough to pass your IFR test on the first try, you will know > enough to use FlightGear as part of your training. Sure, go nuts. We'll have a good collection of FlightGear-induced PPL holders soon. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
