Hello, I'm Brandon Martini, a commercial pilot and flight instructor.
And I'm Carson Vasquez.
I'm a private pilot.
And you're listening to the aviation mentors podcast sponsored by Stratis Financial.
So buckle up because the aviation mentors are taking off.
Today we're talking about something that's becoming more and more prevalent in flight
training today.
And what is that?
You may ask.
It is a flight simulator.
Simulators come in many shapes and sizes and everything from kind of desktop, Microsoft
flight sim to full motion simulators used to train airline pilots.
I've flown quite a few different simulators in my lifetime so far.
Actually, I have my logbook right here.
I only have 16.3 hours actually logged in a flight simulator.
And 10 of that was during my ATP CTP course.
So before that, I only had 6.3 hours logged in a flight simulator actually.
So I have flown a whole bunch of them, logged and unlogged, obviously.
So we're going to talk about all sorts of things today.
I'm really excited about this episode.
You know, I have pretty easy access to a flight simulator to Redbird SD, pretty good simulator,
but I don't think I've logged any time in one.
I think I've only used it to mess around and fly in.
Yeah.
And always, it's always good to go to the San Diego, not really an airport, but you
get to land on the aircraft carrier.
I mean, it's the only place you can land a 172 on the aircraft carrier.
And that is in Microsoft or sorry, Redbird flight simulator.
So that's kind of cool.
It was fun.
The first time that Brandon and I messed around a simulator, we did a landing competition
on that on the aircraft carrier.
So that was pretty fun.
And believe it or not, Carson beat me on that one.
I was really surprised.
I was like, there's no way he's going to beat me.
He actually beat me.
And the first time I had my son Austin fly in and he was like nine years old or something,
he landed on the aircraft carrier his first time.
I was actually pretty impressed.
And if you guys haven't seen this before, I highly recommend probably looking up on
Google or something.
Or if you're at a flight school, they have a they have a sim you can use.
Go land on the flight simulator or go land on the aircraft carrier.
It's really, really neat.
Yeah.
You know, flight simulators, you can mess around quite a bit.
I think I was actually able to put that thing up on the moon.
I set the altitude like thousands and thousands of feet.
That was crazy.
But simulators, you know, aside from messed around with, they're actually super useful
for flight training.
And I've seen them used kind of for two primary reasons, three, if you count messing around
with them.
So the first one is explaining new concepts to pilots.
So that can be anything from explaining the controls to a brand new student pilot or explain
a maneuver to one who's a little more advanced in their training or even using it for commercial
going over everything from a shandel to power off one eighty.
All can be done in the simulator.
And I've also seen them used a lot for instrument training and for the currency requirements
for keeping your instrument rating.
Simulators are also typically much cheaper than renting an airplane.
So they're certainly a cost effective method for flight training.
So Brandon, do you think that simulators are pretty valuable in the training environment?
What's your opinion on them?
So I'm going to start off with about three or four years ago, I thought that I'm going
to start off with kind of the one that you can use at home, like Microsoft Flight Sim
or X plane or something like that, one that you can just put on your desktop computer
or play on your Xbox or whatever it may be.
And I used to think that people that use those wasted their time and it didn't really do
anything for flight training.
And I just did not think that they were valuable whatsoever.
But over the years, I've decided that they are invaluable.
They are so valuable.
It's ridiculous.
Every kid who's come in here and I call them a kid because 14, 15, 16, even 18 years old,
they come in here and they're like, oh, I've been using Microsoft Flight Sim since I was
I was very young, like five or eight years old or something.
Every single one of those kids knows exactly where to look in an airplane on a six pack
and they actually know how to fly the airplane.
I once did a demo flight with a kid.
He was 17 or 18 years old and he was able to take off.
He was able to fly the proper airspeed.
He was able to do maneuvers all pretty much to standards almost on his like on his first
flight.
I said, you're like a child prodigy.
I want to train you.
I don't even care.
I might give you a scholarship because I want to train you so bad because I think that you
might be the kid who gets their their certificate at 40 on the dot.
Like exactly.
And that's what logging every single hour.
And he unfortunately he said, oh, I'm going to college.
And he was going to a university program and he was going to get his pilot certificate
there.
So I didn't get to train him, but I did get to go on that demo flight with him, which
was kind of the highlight.
And it really opened my eyes.
And then every time I ever did a demo flight or flight with a young person, I asked if
they've ever flown in a Microsoft flight simulator or something, because it really changes, changes
the perspective.
They know where to look.
They know to do lots of things.
So if you're young and you're thinking about getting into aviation, go get a flight simulator
at home and ask for it for Christmas, your birthday or something.
Now back to Carson's kind of real meat and potatoes part of this question.
And that is, do I think they're valuable for a training environment?
With all that being said, any simulator is valuable in the training environment.
If you do the simulator at home without instruction, you are going to learn a few bad habits that
are harder to break.
But I think the positives way outweigh the negatives in that now using them in a training
environment.
Yes, they're very valuable.
There's multiple reasons why airlines actually use simulators.
I don't know.
Some of you might not know, but the first time you fly a Boeing 737 with passengers
in the back is the first time you're flying an actual Boeing 737.
It's the first time you've got like a check airman.
Then you've got your captain or your captain might be the check airman.
You basically have another pilot in there watching you kind of like a DP.
But regardless, they use them because they're one, cost effective.
It's a lot cheaper to train somebody in a simulator than burning a ton of gas.
And they also use them because you get a lot of valuable experience from a simulator and
you can train for situations that are abnormal.
Landing on an aircraft carrier for one, that's very abnormal.
But you can also train, well, what would happen if you lost both of your engines at this out
at 150 feet right after you take off?
Well, it's a lot safer to do that in a simulator and you can land in a field on a simulator
rather than actually doing it in real life.
So there's lots of things you can practice, especially emergencies on a simulator.
So I think they're really, really valuable for a training environment.
And if you fly an older airplane or an airplane that doesn't have a GPS on it, you can practice
using a GPS on a simulator.
There's so many different things you can use a simulator for.
It's insane.
So I used to think that simulators were a waste of time.
You might as well just do ground and then get up in the airplane and feel the airplane.
And then I realized I was totally wrong many years ago.
And I think, I don't know if any of you have ever seen that infographic that says the 100
hour expert pilot.
And basically you start off knowing nothing.
Once you get to 100 hours, you feel like you're an expert.
And then once you get to like 2000 hours, you feel like you know absolutely nothing
again.
And it's because you've learned so many valuable lessons along the way.
And I actually think that's kind of true on maybe a flight instructor's perspective too.
Like you think you know so much about flight training in your first 50 or 100 hours.
And then when you get closer to 500 or 1000, you're starting to feel like, oh, wow, maybe
I didn't know as much as I once did.
I'm still learning.
And I think that's kind of what happened to me on the use of flight simulators.
And for those of you who don't use them currently, I highly suggest you use them.
Integrate them into your flight training.
Yes, I know you're not going to get your valuable flight time to go to an airline as quick.
But you're really doing your student a great service by showing them how to save some money.
And you know what?
It might be part of your syllabus to use as well.
I know the syllabus I've used.
I've used GLIMB for a long time.
And it's always valuable to use that.
It saves money and it saves time.
And when it's really cloudy or rainy or icy outside, you can always use that simulator
and you can still get that time.
And if you're a flight instructor, you can even make some money that way, too.
So there's always some benefits there.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Using simulators, it's crazy the amount of things that you can go and just hop in a simulator
and do.
You can turn the weather cloudy.
You can add more weight.
You can add more drag.
You can add crazy winds and practice crosswind landings from the comfort of your own home
even.
It's pretty crazy to be able to just hop in and go and do this.
It's super useful because when you actually have to face these things, it's hard for your
body to do what your mind hasn't.
So you're already thinking about it with the simulator and then you go and actually do
it in real life and your body's already been there.
You've already done it in the simulator.
It's closer to second nature than it ever can be.
So it's really phenomenal.
Speaking of CFIs not reaching their time as quickly, what are the parameters for logging
time in a simulator?
So if you're a private pilot, you need to log time with a flight instructor.
And if you're part 61 or 141, they're a little bit different.
But in general, if you're part 61, you can log up to three hours in a simulator.
But it's got to be with an instructor.
And it's got to be in a certain type of simulator, BATD, ATD, or something more advanced than
that for you to be able to log it legally.
You can't log the stuff at home unless you have just a fun log book where you're like,
hey, I did this flight on my simulator.
And some people enjoy that.
And that's what they do.
That wasn't for me.
So I've never done that.
But as you can tell by my whole 16.3 hours logged in my flight simulator, I don't actually
count all the time that I've given dual instruction in a simulator.
That's probably another 150, 200 hours or something.
And we normally do those shorter.
But so the parameter for private, you have to do it with a flight instructor.
Same thing with instrument rating.
But when you want to stay current for your instrument rating, in 2018, I believe it is,
they issued a new a new ruling.
Actually they said it was going to come out in 2016.
And it finally came out in 2018 was the final ruling from the FAA.
But you can actually do six instrument approaches, holding procedures and task and intercepting
and tracking courses through use of navigation electronic systems, which by the way, those
are the requirements to take care of every six months to maintain currency, which we've
all talked about currency and proficiency.
By no means this does not mean you're proficient, but it means you're current and technically
legal to go fly an IFR and instrument approach.
So you can actually go do those three things in a simulator now as long as you do them
within six months.
The best part about that new ruling when it came out was it actually changed, it changed
the rules.
So you didn't actually have to do those with a CFII.
You could actually do them by yourself.
So you can go in the simulator and you can just go do those maneuvers and those approaches
all by yourself and log it in your log book.
And it counted as time and not very much time and only counted as total time.
But but it did count as your currency.
So that saves people a whole lot of money for you to go do six approaches.
That's probably going to take anywhere from two to three hours, depending on your your
airport environment you're in.
I know that I can do three or four in maybe an hour and a half usually in Southern California.
So really depending on how much traffic there is and if you're flying in actual or not,
things like that, you can save a ton of money.
You can save a ton of time.
I mean, both of those things are really valuable.
So that's those are some things you can do in a flight simulator.
And also, if you're if you're getting your a different rating or something, you can definitely
practice some of those maneuvers.
I know that I've practiced a lot of maneuvers and I can log some of that time in a one forty
one environment.
They actually allow you to log a certain amount of time with a flight instructor.
So you just need to kind of look at the regulations and which exact rating you're working on to
see how much time you can actually log in a simulator and whether or not you have to
have a flight instructor or not.
But by far the most cool thing is you can do those.
They call them six hits.
You can do those six hits all by yourself in a simulator, which is phenomenal.
And does it matter what kind of simulator using?
Obviously, like you said, you can't use it at your your just at home simulator on Microsoft
SIM.
They also mentioned ATDs or advanced aviation train devices.
There's also BATDs or basic aviation train devices.
And there's also, of course, the one that we're probably not going to see is the FFS,
the full flight simulator, which is those full motion ones, the super cool ones that
the airline pilots get to use and brands gotten a fly.
So what are the differences between these ones?
Yeah, absolutely.
So like you said, there are several different ones.
There's home SIMs, ATDs, BATDs, FFS and FTDs.
Like all the acronyms we always have in aviation.
I think we should probably do another acronym episode at some point because we did one of
those, I think, five or six months ago now.
And we barely even scratched the surface on acronyms.
And it actually happened to be a pretty pretty good episode.
A lot of people download it.
So I'm assuming some people liked it, especially new flight students.
But let's get into all these crazy different acronyms for flight simulator.
So an FFS is a full flight simulator.
And those are typically used at airlines.
So they have levels A through D, level D is the most sophisticated.
And they also have the FTDs, which go up to different levels.
And I don't know all the different levels, to be honest.
But I know that I've flown in a level four for my ATP CTP course.
And then I flew in my FFS, which is the full flight simulator.
And that one is full motion.
It feels like you're in a real airplane.
I mean, when you slam on the brakes, it like throws you forward.
When you press the thrust reversers, it makes you feel like you're putting thrust reversers
on.
It's really, really interesting.
And like I said, those are sub sub categorized levels A through D. And level D is what I
used.
I think I flew in a 321 level D simulator is what I actually got to fly, which was totally
an amazing experience.
I wish we had the podcast then so I could have talked about it when it was fresh on
my mind.
If anybody listening to the podcast just went through a CTP course and you want to talk
about that experience, please reach out to us.
We'd love to have you on.
And another really cool thing about the FFS, you can actually get a type rating in it.
So you can actually earn a type rating without ever flying the actual aircraft.
Just like I was telling you a second ago or a few minutes ago, you the first time you
fly a 737 is with passengers in it.
You're flying this FFS before.
So but there's other other flight training devices that are kind of more commonly used
in flight training, the BATD and the AATD.
And the simulator that Carson was talking about is the AATD, which is the Redbird simulator.
And with the Redbirds and actually Redbird also makes a BATD along with a lot of other
people they make BATDs, a basic flight training device essentially.
But the ATD is a advanced one.
And it's not that much more advanced to be honest.
I've actually seen BATDs that are probably better than the ATDs.
But it's just the way they've been certified in their capabilities.
So the FAA makes sure that that certain simulators are certified and they've got different hierarchy
of certifications.
And some of them get the basic certification, some of them get the advanced certification.
But regardless, if you want to use a flight simulator into training, you actually have
to fly in an approved simulator.
Now if you go buy a Redbird SD for $75,000 or whatever they cost new now, you can't just
jump in and start learning to fly simulator in and logging it in your book.
That's not allowed.
Some people think you can, but you cannot.
You actually have to have a FAA letter of authorization or a LOA.
And that has to be received from the FISDO.
So they'll come out and they'll inspect it for part 61 or part 141 training, regardless
that needs a LOA.
And if it's for 141 training, it has to have a kind of master LOA that's been given by
the FAA when they certified it.
So you need a couple things.
You need authorization from the FAA for it to be a simulator.
And then you also need authorization from the FAA to use it and make sure it's set up
and being used properly and all the buttons and stuff work.
So those are some different things that you need to be able to use a flight simulator.
I think it's kind of crazy that the FAA doesn't just certify the device from Redbird.
They certify your device.
So after it's set up and built and wherever you're training, they come out and do that.
Kind of.
So they do both.
They give a blanket certification on the entire Redbird SD that they give for all the models
as long as they're identical.
And then they also give a specific certification from the FISDO.
So just in case it wasn't very clear on that.
So there are two certifications, one on the entire product and then one on your specific
one serial number specific.
Yeah.
Thanks, Brandon.
You know, simulators can be a very effective tool to benefit your flight training experience.
And we all know aviation can be very, very expensive times, but simulators can typically
cut the cost quite a bit.
And not saying that fly a simulator at home will give you all the knowledge you need to
fly an airplane.
But like Brandon said, I've seen people take demo flights after hundreds or thousands of
hours on Microsoft SIM and fly it pretty well.
So imagine what a real flight training in an FAS certified simulator can do for your
training.
Yeah, it's going to do a whole lot.
So go do it.
Practice at home.
Go practice in the flight simulator at your local school.
And if you're instrument rated, next time go do your currency in that.
Obviously, it's more fun to go outside and go play in the clouds.
But if you can't go do that and you want to save some money and time, go into your local
flight school and go to Ulysses or SIM.
Thank you guys so much for listening today.
If you'd like to reach out to either one of us, you can always reach us at Twitter, Instagram
at MrMartiniGuy or at Carson underscore AV17.
Or of course, where we prefer our emails, Brandon at aviationmentors.com or Carson at
aviationmentors.com.
And as a wrap up for the day, remember, we're here to guide you in your aviation journey.
So fly safe and enjoy the ride.