Airborne_Again wrote:
Indeed, but the point is that the BIR is fully competence-based. You don’t need to have a single minute of actual training in the logbook before the checkride.
That is true. The flight school I’m in actually recently set up a non-certified flight simulator with some “simmer” avionics, so that it resembles the flight school’s SR20. And they actually use it for BIR training. I can’t see any downside to it. It’s even environment-friendly! ;-)
I didn’t opt for the BIR, but will do the CB-IR, so I can’t safe on my hours other than excess hours. But I definitely plan to set up my flight sim again in the next weeks to do some procedure training and to keep up currency. It is no “home simulator”, just some knobs basically to not have to use the mouse all the time. But it really helps a lot to improve situational awareness in-flight and is fun at very low cost. You don’t need to be actually flying to understand how to dial the things into the GTN navigator, or to learn how to enter a holding. But flying actually on real charts, in realtime, with an online controller and most of the instruments of the real plane gives quite a good impression actually. I hope that by this I’ll be able to do some more interesting stuff when we actually go flying.
LeSving wrote:
I would believe the purpose of having an IR rating is to actually fly IR, no?
Flying an aircraft on instruments is not difficult at all. Flying an aircraft on instruments with precision while following procedures is quite difficult. That’s where simulator training shines. The advantage of simulators is that you can tailor the conditions to the training you want to do. Also you don’t need positioning flights.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The advantage of simulators is that you can tailor the conditions to the training you want to do.
That’s a good description for all kinds of training actually 
It was mostly a joke, but that BIR takes it to the extreme. If you don’t actually have to fly to maintain/obtain it. Then what is the reason of having it?
LeSving wrote:
Then what is the reason of having it?
Well maybe because you want to use it for touring or for flights to actually reach a destination, and not for training? I do see the point for the BIR.
LeSving wrote:
That’s a good description for all kinds of training actually It was mostly a joke, but that BIR takes it to the extreme. If you don’t actually have to fly to maintain/obtain it. Then what is the reason of having it?
People usually don’t train for a skill for the sake of training. They train to use the skill.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Indeed, but the point is that the BIR is fully competence-based. You don’t need to have a single minute of actual training in the logbook before the checkride.
That surprises me (ok, I did not look at it in depth but this is interesting to know). But I would have said that flying a heavy jet sim trying to attain a BIR to be used on small planes would imho be rather contraproductive.
A 737 is a totally different animal than any GA plane. It also has much bigger and easier to read instrumentation. Add to that performance and handling (particularly of this sim which has no force feedback) I would strongly discourage anyone wishing to train for something like that in this sim.
After all, in the end, you have to pass a checkride on a GA plane and not a jet. IFR in a SEP or MEP is a very different story than IFR in a large and powerful jet. Out of my own experience I’d judge flying our small planes IFR precisely given the fact that they are much more suspectible to icing, winds and turbulence than those powerful machines, from an IR point of view and also from the operation those airplanes are used for, is much more demanding than a fully de-iced jet which can fly above the weather.
UdoR wrote:
The flight school I’m in actually recently set up a non-certified flight simulator with some “simmer” avionics, so that it resembles the flight school’s SR20. And they actually use it for BIR training. I can’t see any downside to it. It’s even environment-friendly! ;-)
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
But I would have said that flying a heavy jet sim trying to attain a BIR to be used on small planes would imho be rather contraproductive.
No arguing with that!
Airborne_Again wrote:
People usually don’t train for a skill for the sake of training. They train to use the skill.
People train to be good at what they are doing, (and because it it fun). A good example here is the F-35. There are no 2 seat versions of the F-35. The reason is cost. I bet there is no way to make a two seat version without a complete redesign due to stealth, internal bays etc. Thus a two seat version would be useless for anything but training, and will cost a whole lot more. This is not cost effective. All “two seat training”, and a whole lot more, is done in simulators. Still, there has to be a reasonable balance between flying the real thing, and simulator training. Besides, the F-35 is more of a “simulator” than an ordinary aircraft anyway, the line between them is blurred.
With this BIR there is no balance. That’s the funny part. And the more expensive the simulator gets compared with a C-172 with a G1000, the funnier it is
LeSving wrote:
There are no 2 seat versions of the F-35.
That was pretty common in fighters in WW2 and before. Even some GA planes have no 2 seat version.
At the time, people simply were told to get in, shown where everything is (if even that) and told to get on with it . The accident rate was quite ferocious during training at the time, but somehow pilots managed to fly those beasts. And those were pretty wild airplanes.
LeSving wrote:
Besides, the F-35 is more of a “simulator” than an ordinary aircraft anyway, the line between them is blurred.
Well, till you impact the terrain or fly through a thunderstorm, at which point the line is thrown into extremely sharp relief!
