FRASCA tips?

J

JordanD

Here so I don’t get fined
Right now about the only sim time I have has been the occasional lucky Level D time, but I will probably be teaching in a FRASCA soon. I had a chance to fly one for about 10 minutes recently, and wow... I felt like the thing was unflyable. If I looked away for 2 seconds to change the radio and my altitude would be insanely off with the VSI pegged, and I found it impossible to get trimmed. Any tips on how to fly these darn things, other than just practice practice practice? Why are they so pitch sensitive? You'd think there'd be a way to adjust it so it's actually somewhat realistic.
 
Well, this is cheating, but on my 610, you can make smoother pitch changes by just using the trim. When I was doing a lot of training with the thing, I'd focus less on flying it well and more on navigation, holding patterns, and approaches. It's super good for teaching that. So, maybe give them a lot of leeway on altitude control and make that the last thing you worry about.
 
I've got some time in one. When I spent a short time at a small collegiate flight school I'd go in every day and fly it just for fun. You learn a light touch and a very active scan, which is actually a nice side effect of using them. The first 10 minutes in a Frasca will usually make you feel like it's either broken or you have no idea how to fly. Dedicate some time to just flying it yourself, work out the numbers, and just get comfortable.
 
DE727UPS said:
Well, this is cheating, but on my 610, you can make smoother pitch changes by just using the trim.
Click to expand...


I noticed the same thing on the ATC 610 I just bought, the yoke's pitch control is not very responsive but the trim wheel is much more responsive.
 
Choose different aircraft. I found the generic airplane was much easier to fly than selecting the C172. It is super sensitive, so it takes a lot of practice before you can get a handle on it. Also, always just take off from the start. It would seriously take longer to stabilize everything if we started at 2000ft and 100kts than if we just started on the ground and did a full take off.
 
The frasca is very touchy. I have found that it is best to try to fly with small changes to power and trim. Other than that just keep your scan fast fast fast! If you can fly the frasca then approaches in the aircraft will be easy. I do wish that it was more realistic, but then again I have not flown many sims that accurately duplicate the pitch and power performance of and actual airplane. Not to mention control feel.... I bet higher level sims are more accurate.
 
I always told my students (instrument anyway) that we weren't using it to learn how to fly but to practice our scan and fly approaches. I hate hearing them blame deviations on how bad the sim flies. The better your scan is the quicker you can catch the deviating tendencies and fix them. Also, the sim being 'harder' to fly makes up for it's lack of noise and other stressors that the actual airplane will have that will be distracting from a good scan. Basically, I think that it is good that they are 'harder' to fly than the actual airplane. It is like weight training for a sport or something. If you can fly the sim like a boss then the airplane shouldn't be a problem even with that turbulence, ATC chatter, uncomfortable headset, etc etc.

Saying that though, I only had one student that could fly the sims what I would call 'well' and that was Mr. Frasca's grand daughter who grew up in the things.
 
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