My copy of Flight Training arrived today, and I began by reading about Redbird Skyport (“Right Seat: Flight Training, Deconstructed,” January 2012 Flight Training). The concept of plugging a personalized “key” into a Redbird simulator is interesting. You know what else would be great? An iPad app to collect flight information for innovation and training purposes. I’m working on my instrument rating, and would love to get flight data feedback. I could practice an approach three times on the Redbird simulator, then go try it with the iPad app running. The iPad could be lying in the back seat; but if my CFI is in the right seat with the iPad he can insert comments, or 3-D flight markers to indicate the beginnings and ends of maneuvers, or anything else that will aid us in the learning process. A Redbird “key” would let the simulator see and display how I did in the real aircraft, so that future simulations can be tailored to my learning needs.
After a flight, when I upload my iPad data to Redbird, the Skyport software could allow me to break down the data sections graphically that I or my CFI can analyze. The analysis could tell me, for example, that I’m not adjusting pitch the way I should be on entry and exit from turns. Am I pitching up too much? Not enough? Consistently too early? Too late?
My CFI and I recently discovered that I’m de-emphasizing the attitude indicator in my scan, which makes my flight data look like I’m flying partial panel (because effectively, I am flying partial panel). It sure would have been valuable to have caught that sooner with an iPad flight data recorder app, and Skyport/CFI/self-analysis. The military and others must do this routinely. What can we shamelessly simplify and reapply?
Jerry Jessick
Sobieski, Wisconsin
Speak my language
A plea for the use of correct English grammar in your publication Flight Training, which, after all, is supposed to be promoting education among pilots and thus really should be setting a suitably good example in all things. Will you cease using the adjective “certificated” (as in “certificated pilot”) in your articles and editing, when the correct word actually is “certified.”
Dr. Huw S. Kruger Gray
Miami, Florida
AOPA follows Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which states that certificated is the verb form, and is thus more appropriate when discussing a person or thing that has a certificate.—Ed.
Powerplant
I may not be the most experienced engine person on the planet, but I did note several misidentified items in the story “Powerplant,” (January 2012 Flight Training). On page 26 what is called a connecting rod is really a push rod tube, and on page 27 item number three is called a vacuum pump when in fact it appears to be an air/oil separator. Just a comment on one of the few irregularities of your great magazine.
Ron Magnus
Portland, Oregon
Mr. Magnus’ letter is typical of many we received about the errors in this story. He is correct. Also, in “How It Works: Propeller Governor” we should have said that when rpm increases the flyweights open. We had written the reverse. Flight Training regrets the errors. —Ed.
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