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Getting Your PPL - Where to Begin & Pick the Best Simulators

At your local airport, you are going to meet people who fly and know how to go about learning to fly. They will be able to give you the absolute best and accurate advice in regard to getting your PPL.

Think about it. Are you going to ask your Uncle Horace, or some guy who has been flying for 25 years?

Airports are where the action is at. That's where you begin.

How Good Are Simulators...Really?

Let's cut through the crap and get real here. No flight simulators are going to give you the actual experience of flying an airplane.

Having said that, after doing quite a bit of research on this subject and getting the opinions of experts, there are a number of flight simulators out there that are quite good.

Here are the best of the best:

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Say what you want about Microsoft. Yeah, they create a lot of crappy products and their OS leaves a lot to be desired, whether it's Vista or whatever. But their flight simulator is hands down the best in the industry.

Flyit Simulator

They call it the new standard in aviation training. Flyit offers FAA approved fixed wing and rotorcraft Flight Simulation Devices for flight training; desktop control panels, motion platforms, cockpits, display systems, and complete simulation environments. Fixed wing, rotorcraft and Flight Training Devices for general aviation, commercial, and military aircraft..

Elite Simulation Solutions

If you want the very best hardware for your simulator, this is the place to go.

There you have it, the best of the best as far as flight simulation.

Night Time Flying Tips

Well, at this point I have approximately 12 hours left to meet my minimum of 40 hours in the cockpit. At that point, I'll be eligible to take my checkride. My instructor feels that I can do it in 40 hours, though the national average is 55 hours. As a personal goal, I'm going to shoot for 40.

So far, we've covered:

the traffic pattern
power on/off stalls
slow flight
steep turns
short-field take-offs and landings
slips to landing
go-arounds
navigation via dead-reckoning and VOR
tower/radio communications
and misc. ground training on airspaces, weather etc...

I've learned a lot. All of which will be used in preparation for the next and last big milestone - night flying.

Night flying is a brand new animal. In the dark, you look like you're going slower than normal and pilots tend to speed up when they don't need to.

Depth perception is also very poor at night. Dim runways might give the illusion that the runway is farther away than it is. Bright runways might give the illusion that the runway is closer than it actually is.

You also have an issue with finding a new airport for the first time at night. Street lights can look like a runway and many pilots have come in for a landing, only to find no runway waiting for them.

One trick to night flying is to use your peripheral vision. Because of the way rods and cones work in our eyes, looking straight at an object in the dark actually gives us less detail than if we looked at it from the side.

Some things are good at night though. For one, there is less air traffic. For another, aircraft are required to use lighting which actually makes them easier to spot at night than in the day.