As always, preparation starts in your free time at home. Soon, you’ll be seated in a flight deck that professional pilots take years of training to master and become qualified on. There are a number of things you can do at home that will ease the process and help you relax, which in turn will allow better processing of the information and absorption of the instruction given.
There are a few ways you can become familiar with your new environment well before you attend a session. Familiarity of what’s in front of you will really help and just being able to identify some of the elements of instrumentation can stem the flow from the firehose of information being pointed in your direction. By concentrating preparation on the Primary Flight Display and Navigation Display you’ll be able to identify the key flight parameters and use the controls to maintain them and follow the instructor’s commands. You can see these in numerous YouTube videos by searching the above terms, and find a multitude of images with labels displaying what each element represents. Also, some of these videos will provide a good overview of the operation in general, giving an insight in the order and pace of events and actions. Try searching Just Planes (https://www.youtube.com/user/JustPlanes).
Secondly, have some idea of what you would like to try or achieve in the session. Most instructors will have a standard plan for what they can do in a beginners session, but I can’t think of one that wouldn’t do their best to accommodate any special requests. The best simulator companies often contact their customers in advance to introduce themselves, see if you have any experience and ask if there’s anything in particular you would like to do, see or achieve. We encourage this process with owners/managers and like to see or hear about it when we visit to assess and review venues. It also helps to have a rough idea of what is available in the timeframe. We cover this a little further on in the article.
Lastly, have a look at the airports you’d like to visit on google maps or other satellite views or web images. Study the terrain, features, taxiways and runways. Have a look at where the buildings are and the various tarmac layouts. Also, have a look at the surrounding area for significant features such as lakes, coasts and buildings. Looking at websites/apps such as flightradar24 or Plane Finder to see what the real-world traffic usually does will help with understanding and realism. For example, the daily London Heathrow runway switch at 1500Z when on ‘westerlies’ and the specific use of runways for various phases such as runway 9L for landing and 9R for take-off again at London Heathrow.