Charles Cook recently took advantage of the sim to prepare for his Flight Skills Assessment (FSA) evaluation. Charles has purchased an Eclipse, one of the new breed of very light jets (VLJ). As a future Eclipse owner, Charles had to go to Denver for his FSA evaluation in a United Airlines sim. In preparation for Eclipse FSA evaluation, Charles spent several hours at Sim Flite Minnesota. The first sessions were done with the sim configured as a Seneca III, and then we moved up to a King Air B200 in order to get the higher speeds and turbine instruments.

Charles passed his sim evaluation with flying colors, scoring right up with the airline pilots. He had the following comments about working in the Elite sim at Sim Flite Minnesota in preparation for his FSA.

"My training at Sim Flite Minnesota was a perfect solution in preparing me for the Eclipse Flight Skills Assessment test. The simulator has the capability to provide a variety of aircraft performances. We could simulate the exact prescribed flight test profiles and approaches, even with simulated visual ground reference of the Denver airport depicted on the simulator's projector screen on final approach. The simulator allowed us to efficiently and cost effectively focus on the specific training objectives, and repeat training exercises where I needed extra work. In your climate controlled environment, weather is never an issue. We never missed a day, and yet you can simulate ceilings and restricted visibilities at will. One by-product I did not anticipate is the value of a highly developed instrument scan, and what a difference this makes in instrument flying. We pilots are very fortunate to have such a high quality and capable simulator in our area. Linda, let me say your training and teaching skills are superb, and your passion for flying and pleasant personality made the entire experience very enjoyable and a complete success. With instrument flying skills having a relatively short shelf life, you will be seeing me on a regular basis.

"Thanks for the great instruction.
Respectfully,
Charles S. Cook"

Another customer, and now instructor, is Will Outlaw. He completed his initial CFI checkride in 2006, and wanted to do five approaches and holding to maintain his IFR currency. So in the space of two hours in the sim, Will accomplished:

  • VOR approach with procedure turn
  • Missed approach to the published hold, with a few turns around the hold
  • Two GPS approaches using the Garmin 430
  • A DME arc leading into the ILS approach
  • A second ILS approach flown without HI and AI

Update: Will wrote a nice post about his sim session in his blog. You can read it at "Back in the Box".

Another instructor, Deb Thompson also wrote a nice article about her experiences working in the sim. Although it was written for the Minnesota 99s newsletter, Deb granted permission to also post it here. So enjoy Deb's experiences in "Inside the Box".

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