At the weekend I attended a course along with 7 other Royal Air Force Air Cadets (RAFAC) staff & Young adults to become basic flight simulator instructors. We had 2 uniformed train the trainers officers deliver the training to the 5 staff members who were mostly private pilots with a variety of expereince levels from microlights to twins and me with no powered expereince at all! The 3 Young adults known as staff cadets had some flying expereince with one part way through their PPL course with about 60 hours.
The instruction was not really about learing to fly but rather about being able to use basic flight simulator equipment we have at our air cadet squdrons to show younger air cadets the primary effects of controls. The idea being they do this before flying in Viking gliders or Tutor aicraft so they have some understanding of what to expect. The patter is similar to that used by a BGA basic instructor although the stick is refered to as the control column and other small differences.
We used different synthetic training devices as the air force call them, the most interesting for me was the one with a motion base. I had not used one of these before. This totally changed the experience of flying on a simulator with with much more feel to the flying and even pre stall buffet. This device can be used with VR but on this occasion we used without as it interfered with the instruction. The training devices simulated the RAF tutor aicraft – Grob 115.
