My friend Nick goes Real Aviation, Real World.
Whoops, those blurries again. Ouch, TrackIR uncalibrated. Argh, the stutters around (Sydney, Vancouver, New York, insert your city here). Hey, the (water, earth, trees, clouds) don’t look like that In-Real-Life… These are the little big things which regularly remind us that this is not real, remember? And so, from time to time, someone has the gills to stop simulating and go to that place where textures are always set to GAZILLION bits, and stutters and blurries are unheard of.
A little background if you please, Mr Nick.
My name is Nick, I’m sixteen years old (Year Ten at school) and my home is in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, NSW (one of the best places in the world, IMO). If I’m not out at the airport or up in the sky you’ll probably find me down at the beach, either hanging around or surfing among the sharkies. I enjoy mountain biking, soccer and basketball. I also build & fly RC aircraft. And I flightsim too, of course!
Describe your views on Australian Aviation. Apparently it’s expensive to fly, and the bureaucracy can reach surreal levels, according to AOPA Pilot.
Learning Aviation is OZ is indeed very expensive (and costs will increase more, I believe). However, anyone wishing to begin their flight training and pursue a career could not have picked a better time: Australia is not immune to the world-wide shortage of pilots. Open any aviation-related mag and you’ll see plenty of job offers for pilots, from small GA scenic flights right up to the military and the Qantas airline. And the possibilities to learn are many.
As far as bureaucracy goes, you couldn’t get much worse than CASA, the Australian governing body of Aviation. As a personal example, requesting a student license from them took almost three months, when they promised about four weeks. Having it returned twice, firstly for their own blind error and secondly about an issue with my ID, they suddenly updated the application form a day or two after I sent it off, so the information I provided wasn’t complete! Surely someone has had a good experience with them, I hope. 
Now that you have tried the real thing, how realistic do you consider FS? What’s properly simulated and what is horribly lacking? Did you sense you had a big head-start from your FS background?
There are so many things to take into account when flying an actual aircraft, that aviation must be one of the hardest experiences to try to recreate with a computer. I must say Microsoft has done a pretty good job, but in my opinion we’ll never see something so realistic that will make us think, feel, and believe we are actually flying.
FS is quite realistic. The planes are reasonably recreated, the cockpits are very well done, and the behaviour of the majority of the system is accurately modeled. The one real thing computer-based sims cannot give is the true feel of flight: the vibrations, the smells, and the clues your body receives and reacts to, which are very important when flying. Controls are also unrealistic in a sim. After trying many joysticks and yokes, I’m still waiting for the one that will behave and react to the situation like the real ones do.
From my personal experience, flight-sims can teach you a lot about the theoretical aspect of flying (if you take your time and do your study), but its capabilities to teach you how to properly fly are limited. The basics are there, but actually flying a real aircraft is so incredibly different to the simulator. The consequences of doing or forgetting to do a certain task have no real effect in the sim. Re-load if you crash. In real-world aviation, it takes so much time only to prepare the plane for flight! And also to prepare one-self, both physically and mentally.
For my first flight I told my instructor that I had been flightsimming for quite a while. He said that that was both good and bad, because it gives you knowledge about aircraft and how to fly them, but it can also introduce bad habits, such as jamming the throttle forward and staring too much at the instruments instead of looking outside, for example.
Tell all about your first solo.
That day, 18/8/07 (it would have been earlier if not for the three-month wait courtesy of CASA) began nicely for me at 8 AM, with some circuits around Bankstown on a Cessna 150 known as ‘Juliet Golf Juliet’ and only thirteen hours under my belt. After some fifty minutes of circuits and a change of runway we touched down, and my instructor requested further solo circuits! The taxi back to the holding point seemed to take ages…
My instructor gave me the thumbs-up and I was on my way. I radioed the Tower just like I had done many times before, and the controller said “Juliet-Golf-Juliet, clear for take-off, and good luck.”
What I noticed at first was a better performance of the plane (less weight) and the obvious absence of chatter from the instructor. I found myself looking across the empty seat space many times throughout the entire flight, thinking “this is the real thing, I am up here on my own for my first solo…” Visibility to the right had improved considerably too. Time passed very fast. I was having heaps of fun, as I found myself lined up half a kilometre out. Approach and landing were my best, probably, as I was on the glide slope most of the time, and managed a softish landing without floating nor ballooning.
Taxiing back I heard the Tower’s congratulations. I was overcome by a great sense of achievement, and a big smile came across my face. My instructor and I returned to the Flying Club, where I got a cheer and a lot of handshakes. My Mom and Dad were happy and proud too, but I think they were relieved I was back down in one piece.
We went over the flight with my instructor, and he asked me if I was up for the Solo Revision Flight, which comprises two or three circuits with the instructor and then two or three on my own. I said yes, and in a few minutes I was up in the sky again on ‘Juliet November Bravo’, a Cessna 152 which provided a smoother ride and performed quite a lot better. After a few circuits I headed home, with my happy grin pasted on my face. I will never forget my first solo.
What are your plans for the future? Will you pursue a career in aviation? What obstacles do you predict in your way and how are you going to overcome them?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wish to do, and currently (I’m only sixteen so I may change my mind) I’d like to join the Air Force. I still haven’t decided if I should join the ADFA (Australian Defence Force Academy) to study something else, or simply enlist as a direct-entry candidate. The benefit of studying at ADFA is that it gives you more options for a career if you discover military flying is not your thing; and if it is, the academic knowledge will allow you to move onto other fields, such as Test Pilot, for example. And yet another benefit is that you always have something to fall back on if, for whatever reason, you can no longer fly. I’ve been told many times that “a pilot is about as useful as a brick” at anything else except flying planes.
And there are many opportunities to pursue a career as a Commercial Pilot too. I have considered applying for the Qantas Cadetship, for example. Qantas has expanded its cadetship program to allow for more than one-hundred applicants per year, instead of the very few they used to recruit before. Considering the global pilot-shortage, I think this is a good idea, and I hope other airlines will expand their programs in the future too.
In the end, as long as I am flying I should be happy!
I know you will. Thank you, Nick.
Thank you, Jarn!
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