It costs lots of time & money to add a device rating to your Private or Commercial Pilot's license. Time you have been awarded it, you need not let it lapse & go to waste. Living, as I do, in Hawaii, I find that I need not fly on instruments often. However, island weather can transform all directly & I need to stay competent for those times when I need to file & fly an IFR (Device Flight Rules) flight plan.
Device flying is not exactly like "never forgetting how to ride a bicycle." In the event you don't fly IFR on a traditional basis, it is simple to become "out of form" & you definitely need not endanger your life & those of your passengers because you neglected to practice often so as to stay proficient. Repeated schooling can be expensive, if your IFR flying skills are a bit "out of practice." Periodic IFR competency reviews with a device instructor are mandated by the FAA &, definitely, every device pilot wishes those to go quickly & smoothly. Much more significant than getting through a check ride is the reality that you need to keep up your IFR competence for the sake of yourself & those individuals who trust you with their lives.
Although I cannot log the device flight time legally, as I could in an FAA-approved flight simulator, I have noticed that utilizing a high-quality flight simulator on my home computer is a great way to prevent myself from getting rusty. I can practice all the device approaches I desire, as often as I pick, at no actual out-of-pocket expense. For a long time, I have utilized various versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator to this finish but recently I have become interested in the potential of a computer application called Pro Flight Simulator. There is much to admire about this simulator & there is only a few bad points.
Many persons who use this program have never (& probably will never) will fly an actual airplane in their lives. This type of user usually looks at Pro Flight Simulator as a game, which, in point of fact, it is. The other kind of user is a licensed pilot, like me, who is more concerned with the thought that practice makes ideal.
Over the years, the trouble with home computer-based flight simulators is that they were not lifelike in terms of lag as it relates to tool & control response. Personally, I have found the airplanes modeled by these simulators to be actually much harder to land smoothly than their real-life counterparts. When flying an actual plane on instruments, there is a lag between the time when a motion is input to the controls & when the result that input will appear on the tool panel as the aircraft responds. Pilots become accustomed to this, so the more lifelike a simulator is in this regard, the more helpful the program is to the practicing pilot. There is also lag in positive instruments themselves. As an example, it takes a magnetic compass a few moments to read exactly after the completion of a turn. You need it to act this way in your simulator, also.
While there are a lot of lovely qualities of Pro Flight Simulator that I could speak about, I will restrict myself to those of most significance to pilots using this flight simulator to keep up IFR competency. In short, the instruments & controls are not only true-to-life; they act much like the genuine article. In addition, the over hundred airplanes that are incorporated with Pro Flight Simulator act much like their real-life counterparts do when flying through actual air. You can control the climatic conditions to simulate the IFR weather you are going to come on in actual life & you can flight plan routes all over the globe to & from0, 000 different airports. For VFR (Visual Flight Rules) flying, Pro Flight Simulator's photo-realistic scenery & landscapes appear much like the actual thing.
There is much more to this fantastic flight simulator. You can learn more by going over the promotion knowledge online. You can purchase it & download it on the Net but because it is such an immense download, I strongly recommend you acquire a DVD from the member's area.
