Live stream Navigraph Academy PPL Course in Flight Simulator 2024
For a bit of fun this evening, I thought we might do some of the Navigraph Academy PPL lessons together.
To try it out for yourself, head to https://academy.navigraph.com and register.
It’s a wonderful resource, and a brilliant introduction to flight for aspiring pilots. It teaches the proper way to do things. My only misgiving with it is that in the real world there is a relationship between the student and the teacher - whereas in the simulator, all Navigraph has to go on is cold hard data - which then means you need to fly the aircraft like a robot to achieve high scores.
It’s also worth noting that I blundered into the tests to see how I would get on without reading or watching the really good training materials - and it was a mixed bag. For basic tests such as climbing or descending turns, I did well. For more complex tests such as stalls - where it’s about judgement and feedback - I didn’t do so well, but that may not have been my fault. If you watch in the video you’ll notice the aircraft didn’t give any feedback during the stalls, which is odd because I have everything set at “hard” in the simulator settings. I’ll try again tomorrow, and let you know if it was a one-off, or something else.
Towards the end of the session, it was lovely to see Navigraph turn up in the live-stream chat - and I got the chance to ask them what plans they have for the academy in the future. I wondered if we might see type ratings for different aircraft - to test procedures. They’re open to ideas - so visit their forums and ask if you would like to see something in particular.
The funny thing? I almost broke the system by “being me” - last night when I loaded the academy for the first time, I wondered if it would let me do the “solo” flight first - and it did - so I’ve passed the solo before learning to take off, turn, descend, stall, or anything else :)