Simulators in Gliding Training
As many gliding clubs have discovered, simulators can be a great help in gliding training at all levels, from beginners to instructors. These notes focus on what can be done with Condor, though other software is available of course. Most of what’s discussed will work with either Condor 2 or Condor 3, but new features that appeared in Condor 3 are very valuable for the low-level simulations.
Experience shows that it can save the student time and money if exercises are first briefed, then practised with an instructor on a simulator, and then flown in the air. This applies across most of the syllabus but here we will focus particularly on those exercises where it is safer and more effective to practise only on a simulator. We also look at the spinning exercises, where practising recoveries before flying can be very valuable. Finally, we’ll consider instructor training; both simulator training for new candidate instructors, and the training of existing instructors who need to learn how to use simulators.
The simulator experience is not identical to flying a real glider of course, but it is a great deal better than nothing and there have been examples of pilots successfully managing difficult situations such as low aerotow failures and landing in the field they’d previously practised with on a simulator.
Low Aerotow Failures
Sadly, there are a number of examples of very serious accidents following an aerotow failure low down, where the pilot has attempted to turn back whilst too low to manoeuvre safely. The advice is to practise these failures in a motorglider, but availability can be limited and a simulator is a simpler and much cheaper alternative.
Ultra Low Launch Failures
The ultra low launch failure, particularly on a winch launch, is recognised as being a potentially dangerous exercise for students to practise and is therefore only demonstrated to them, by an instructor. On BGA courses these days the instructor will have been trained on a simulator before doing them in a real glider, and that simulator practice can readily be made available to all student pilots.
Ballooned Landings
All students need to have experience of dealing with ballooned landings under an instructor’s guidance, rather than perhaps encountering one for the first time when flying solo. Most students will quite naturally experience them whilst learning to land, but the instructor will (hopefully) always take control at the critical moment, so they may not get the opportunity to practise on the controls. Setting up deliberate practice in a glider can be nerve-racking for both student and instructor and, once again, a simulator can provide a stress-free environment where the exercise can be repeated as often as necessary. This exercise is quite similar to the ultra low launch failure but with the added complication of airbrakes being deployed at the time.
The example simulation below includes a deliberate pause and change to external view of the glider, which can be instructive. During instructor training we will pause like this to say “If you saw a glider in this situation you’d be expecting a crash – let’s see if it can be rescued.”
Spins and Spiral Dives
It is important for students to experience these exercises in the air, especially the feel of the glider when it is close to departure, so that they know how to avoid spinning. If properly taught, the pilot should be able to recognise that the glider is about to spin and recover before the spin is established, and this needs to be practised in a real glider. However, they also need to be able to recognise and distinguish between the symptoms of a full spin and a spiral dive and perform the appropriate recovery accurately, with minimum height loss. We practise this in the air but allowing a spin to fully develop makes for an expensive flight in terms of height and often in practice the recovery will be made before the spin is fully established, and sometimes even before it’s clear whether the aircraft is going to spin or spiral dive. It’s rarely possible to allow multiple attempts at recovery from established spins.
There is a lot of value to be had from allowing a student to practice established spins and spiral dives on a simulator. The G forces can’t be reproduced but the other symptoms will all be there. If a spin is allowed to establish fully on Condor the software will not permit a recovery unless the full recovery procedure is followed – unlike some training gliders that will recover as soon as the controls are released. Another advantage is that a nervous student learns exactly what to expect and gains some familiarity with reading the instruments in a potentially stressful situation.
Training Instructors
As mentioned above, using simulators is becoming routine in BGA instructor training. If you are training instructors at your own club and you have a simulator available, we strongly encourage including it in the training schedule. A possible scenario would be to plan a sequence of exercises to be briefed, “flown” and debriefed one after the other, perhaps on a rainy day, and then it may be possible to sign several off after a single real flight. It’s particularly valuable when there are several instructor candidates gathered round the one on the simulator controls, so that issues can be discussed and explained. Being able to pause in mid-flight to point things out is a boon.
The other aspect of instructor training is that existing instructors will need training in using the club simulator if they’ve not done it before. There needs to be a simple instruction sheet explaining how to turn it on and get it ready to use, for example. It will probably be worth constructing a set of “user flight plans” with configurations for different exercises, that the instructor can simply load, without having to set up all the necessary parameters. One could include different wind strengths and directions, launch by aerotow or by winch in each direction, with a cross wind and without, airborne in a suitable glider for spinning, positioned just after final turn for an approach, or just above round-out height for a landing, and so on.
Do we Need to have Condor 3?
No, all of the exercises described can be done in Condor 2. However, in Condor 2 you can only start at an airfield so you have to fly round to the position for an approach, a landing, or whatever, each time – which is time-consuming and makes it tricky to reproduce an exercise exactly. In Condor 3 you can start at any point in the air and restart at that point instantaneously. All the flight plans linked to this document are for Condor 3.
Please supply any helpful feedback to Kate Byrne, SRE Borders and Scotland