You should explain to them that you are safer high up than you are closer to the ground lol. If something happens close to the ground you have much less time to recover from it.
Yeah, but at least that first solo flight never leaves the pattern. It’s the first out of the pattern flight and trying to find your way back when all the houses and buildings tend to look alike, just like the old flight sims!
My first solo landing was straddling the center line on a 150’ wide runway just down from the threshold. Not bad. Second time around was a little off and had a bump in it 
It was the third landing, when the instructor was completely out of my head that I missed the center line and came down like I had a 30kt crosswind going. Bouncing a couple times . . . but I did walk away and the plane was able to be flown again. As far as I knew
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Three problems for me when I first went from sim to real.
- Chasing of instruments instead of looking outside
- Insufficient use of rudders
- Using a VSI like an IVSI
Made me a bad pilot? Probably not. Bad habit? Maybe so…
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1 & 2 are mentioned several times. Especially 1.
So what should the ratio be between looking outside and looking at the instruments? I understand that first lessons will always be VFR, so I get the looking outside… but if you would scan the instruments properly, what’s the big deal? Won’t they keep you safe? Assuming you’re flying high enough to avoid ground objects.
Don’t forget there are other VFR traffic outside too, and radio (in my country) is not necessarily mandatory. A big thing about VFR, especially in outside control airspaces, is to look for other traffic so you can maintain visual separation. Ratio wise? I think I’m about 90% outside, 10% inside and that’s mostly on takeoff, landing, tuning radios, leaning mixture, and runups. If I stare at any instrument for too long without having a pair of eyes outside, I get nervous.
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I like what he said here:
Basically in VFR you are glancing at your instruments then back to outside. Not only looking for other planes, but birds and now-a-days, drones! In all my years, I had one bird strike. By the time I saw it, it was too late and heard this “thunk” sound. The bird hit on the leading edge of the right wing near the cabin. Was a hawk. Put a small dent there. Glad it didn’t hit the prop or windshield.
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Same issue for me, except number 3… In fact I have to confess that I did not use the vsi at all initially. :-))
A big game changer for me was when I took up gliding where you are given a vario, Altimeter and Airspeed, so I had no options lol.
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Actually, a big main motivator for jumping into real life aviation was the question for me: “Can I?” After doing siming for several years I hopped to the local flight school for civil aviation pilots doing some A320 simulator sessions also with the same question in my mind. Things proceeded well, just NPAs kept me busy for a while. Someday, those things also got boring, especially with Airbus being usually heavy on automation. So I decided to take the jump to general aviation with it’s more manual approach to flying…
Yes of course. I guess that’s something else to remind yourself when you’re used to flying alone in the virtual world. Even in the current sim, with Live Traffic / AI Traffic or other players, it still seems rather empty. For real you’re not alone.
But seeing how you now get nervous when not looking outside, I’d say you got over it 
One thing that popped into my head while doing a flight (in Flight Sim) yesterday was that when I looked away from the screen to, for example check where I was in LittleNavMap (a little bit realistic) or I switched into drone view to get some screenshots (OK not realistic at all but IRL there will be things you look away for as you do your paperwork or such) I didn’t notice how far the plane had banked, or sometimes my first indication was seeing the plane veering off course in LNM.
In a real plane (I presume) even if you’re not looking out the window at the time you will feel that the plane is moving and needs your attention. You’re not going to be ‘just need to do a few fuel calculations… tum-ti-tum…’ looks up ‘ah ■■■■, how long have I been banked at 45 degrees for?’
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I really don´t know if you can call this a bad habit. Maybe for PPL and VFR flights but enough airliner pilots have been killed cause they didn´t look at their instruments enough. The brain will always trick you.
IRL, the bank angle can creep up without the pilot sensing it. In IFR training, one of the techniques used to get you to trust your instruments is: close your eyes, the instructor will slowly bank the plane; the instructor keeps the bank angle; the pilot feels he is straight and level; open your eyes and put the plane level based upon the attitude indicator and it feels like you’ve banked the plane, not levelled it. When you don’t have autopilot or a wing-leveler, any turbulence at all can put the plane into a bank. Another problem with real life GA aircraft (especially the older ones that are flown by most people) is that they are rarely rigged perfectly. Also it’s why there are so many rules of thumb that are used for good estimates and why flight plan forms are used to minimize the time one’s eyes are in the cockpit instead of outside. Single pilot IFR in a plane without autopilot and bumpy air can be quite stressful near even a quiet airport.
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Watching youtube videos on air-crashes, which seem to be recommended to me a lot since I started watching FS2020 videos, it seems the fatal lapse in concentrations are less to do with basic piloting and more to do with managing the plane; for example missing some switch that will cause the plane to run out of fuel or send the fuel to the wrong place. In most of these situations it seems if the pilots’ only job was to fly the plane then mistakes would not be made and these sorts of mistakes could never happen in a GA craft.
Not like me on Flight Sim, who for the second long flight in a row, forgot to lower the landing gears before scraping to a halt on the runway.
I’m sorry, just saw this reply. This is one to take note of! ROFL…
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In retrospect I would say: knew the systems of the 747 before I was able to fly a proper pattern with the Cessna. So at my first real lessons put the C152 on the runway as if it was an airliner.
Also didn’t look out of the window enough but focused on the instruments instead.
I guess it depends on how you use the sim.
The danger with flight sims is that if you don’t treat them like sims, the chance of developing bad habits is high.
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After 38 years of instructing, I don’t see it this way. The danger with flight sims is that if you don’t treat them like airplanes, the chance of developing bad habits is high.
Unfortunately, as good as simulation is getting, it will never replace the airplane for many phases of flight, landings being one of them. So you can’t always treat the sim like an airplane.
I have had students who were self-proclaimed ‘expert simmers’ before starting basic pilot training. They were some of my worst students.
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Fly the sim as close to real life as you can. Use same procedures, etc. and you will be okay. Develop bad habits in the sim and it might transfer to real life flying. I flew sims for years before I got by PPL and flew them for years after and never thought they were bad but I flew them just like real life. Same checklists, speeds, etc.
I agree with you. I expressed myself badly.
When I said to be “treated like sims”, I meant that you should have the same seriousness as a real pilot on your plane.
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