Late night sim training

syxfo

New Member
I will be heading in for my first sim training in February. I have two nights in the middle of the training where I am scheduled from 9p-3a. Any suggestions as to how I could possibly be awake and somewhat sharp for these sessions??
 
There is no way you are going to fall asleep in a sim, no matter what time it is. Sims are like this whole other state of being.........They are not of this world.

Sim time reacts with real time like anti-matter reacts to something else. Einstien proved that 1 hour of sim time was equal to 237 YEARS of real flying. It's like "Dog Years", but worse.

Believe me when I say, get your rest before the sim, not matter when it is scheduled for.
 
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There is no way you are going to fall asleep in a sim, no matter what time it is. Sims are like this whole other state of being.........They are not of this world.

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LOL I've fallen asleep in sims MANY times before. First of all they are overly air-conditioned to the point of being a MEAT LOCKER.

Make sure you bring a jacket, learn to drink a lot of coffee and hold your pee. Especially when you're the Non-Flying Pilot.
 
JT...I could see you falling asleep if you were the instructor but not if you were the trainee. I gotta agree with ILS on this one....you get in that sim and all the crap that's going on will make you forget what time it is....it just won't matter. You'll be running on pure adrenaline....
 
Agreed. The simulator is like living in a time warp. There is so much stuff going on around you that you won't have to worry about what time it is. I've done a bunch of late night, and early morning, sims and it hasn't bothered me. No matter when your sim is, though, a previous post was right on ... make sure you go in well rested!

Good luck ...

FL270
 
Don't wory about. I've taken all my sim checkes around 2am-4am in the morning and I've had to worry about falling asleep, and neve felt tired. The best is if all your sims are that early, that way you can get into some sort of cycle during the practice sessions.
 
The majority of my sim sessions were late. I just adjusted my normal sleep schedule accordingly, sleeping after sim at around 4AM until 12PM, then hanging around all day. A caramel machiatto at Starbucks each day right before sim helped as well! The tough part was going from late night sims to a checkride at 10AM and a LOFT session at 6AM the next day after that!
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There is NO WAY you'll fall asleep in the sim. You are just too busy. Unless you are in one of those "special" programs where you just do transcon LOFT the whole time...
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No I fell asleep in the right seat several times. Granted I was the Non-flying pilot. Agreed that when you got one turnin' and one burnin' things are a little too exciting to doze off
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I remember one time at Midway we had a lousy accomodation situation combined with a 2am to 6am sim slot. I went first so I started dozing off during the captains turn. The instructor (• by the way) turned off my screens when he saw me close my eyes and claimed they had been that way for 5 minutes when he woke me (pure BS I checked the clock and knew I had been out for only about 30 seconds.)

But I was a new hire, on probation and it was:

"yes sir I will deal with it do you have any suggestions I am loaded up on coffee and it just doesn't seem to be working in this meat locker do you think we can ask them to turn up the heat a bit please sir?"

Incidentally the suck up routine worked.
 
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Granted I was the Non-flying pilot.

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I dunno, maybe we go faster or something, but in our sims that NFP is ALWAYS busy. The FP just flies the aircraft, sometimes with the autopilot. The NFP has to talk on the radio, run the checklists, pull C/Bs, look for the runway, tune/id the navs, calculate speeds, and look for charts...among other things. If it was my ride and my NFP fell asleep I would be pissed.
 
Not in a 737.

There is a lot of automation and it used during maneuvers like steep turns and stalls.

I'm not talking about long gaps, but when the instructor freezes the sim to talk to the captain about a procedure that I already completed, there is a tendency for the mind to wander.

Yeah you will say the instructor shouldn't be teaching the maneuver in the sim. You are 100% correct!
 
I did 10:30pm to 4:00am when I was training on the 727 flight engineer position.

I'm a night owl so I loved it. My instructor was part of a two income family so his kids never needed day care so he loved it to.

My sim partner, however, couldn't stand it!
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Nothing like an E period sim eh? That's all dh seems to get when he's down there! But he's a night owl too, so he doesn't really mind. The sucky part is the commute home on the first flight out, and the crews says "Well, you're up early!", and he replies "Nope, I'm just up really late."
 
I had nearly all 6-10pm training sessions in new hire that i just went through..absolutely the perfect time for a sim session. But, on a few occasions we had the 10-2am slot. It certainly was quite late and you felt how tired you wre when you got out..but both the PF, and during emergencies the PNF were both busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.

A word to the wise.."COFFEE!!!!!" It virtually became part of our preflight.

I also adjusted my sleep schedule... would go to sleep around 2 or 3 each night, and wake up around 2...get up, go watch the FedEx afternoon push while i ate my Chick-fil-a..then mosey on over for briefing.

We had a morning session and didn't know what to do when we walked outside and saw daylight. I should have been a freight dog.
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Peanuckle the CRJ is a different story! Never fell asleep there. That's because that aircraft was designed with CRM in mind.

In fact (although I never slept in it) I was more bored as the flying pilot than the PNF. It was very hard for me to refrain from correcting the FO as he was botching up the FMS and such while I was flying further and further away from the airport on one engine.

A very technical aircraft, and therefore quite a challenge for those who are not technically minded.
 
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