With the exception of flying the real airplane, there is nothing more fun and challenging than a session in a full-motion simulator with a highly experienced instructor who is intimately familiar with the modeled airplane–in this case the Pilatus PC-12. FlightSafety International invited AIN to Dallas to sample the full-motion PC-12, the first such simulator available for new and returning pilots of the Pilatus single-engine turboprop.
FlightSafety placed the PC-12 NG simulator into service at its Dallas learning center about two-and-a-half years ago, followed by the legacy PC-12/47 Series 10 simulator last July. Both are full-motion level-D simulators with electric motion and control loading technology. The NG is equipped with the Honeywell Apex integrated glass cockpit, while the legacy simulator covers older models with BendixKing EFIS 40 avionics. The NG model was busy with a customer during my visit, so instructors Tom Evans and Dan Noyes and I took the regular PC-12/47 for a refresher flight.
My last experience in the PC-12 was a few years ago when I attended the initial training program at factory training provider SimCom, which offers fixed-base PC-12 training devices that do an excellent job of replicating the airplane. I flew a real PC-12 afterwards and found that the training devices provided a great introduction to the airplane. Coincidentally, Evans worked for SimCom at that time; he joined FlightSafety about eight months ago. (FlightSafety is the entitlement training company for Pilatus’s new PC-24 jet.)
FlightSafety has two locations at DFW Airport in Dallas with 30 simulators between them. The larger learning center, where the two PC-12 simulators are housed, also has two PC-12 classrooms and averages four initial PC-12 training courses per month. Students (or their employers) who sign up for a three-year commitment receive a 32-gigabyte iPad loaded with all the PC-12 documents, including FlightSafety’s app used to store and access training materials. This allows students to prepare before arriving for class and also saves having to lug around a stack of books. All updates to the material are automatically downloaded by the app, so documents are always current.
For learning the Honeywell Apex flight deck in the PC-12 NG, Honeywell provides its training materials, under a reciprocal agreement with FlightSafety. A new feature being added soon for the PC-12 is flashcards on the iPad, which includes a self-assessment grading system that rates the student’s knowledge. Flashcards are already in use on other programs. The iFlightDeck section of the FlightSafety app replaces the big cockpit poster with interactive graphics. Touch any section of the flight deck and it provides detailed descriptions, and the switches and buttons move to light up applicable crew alerting system (CAS) messages.
Ground School
The PC-12 is not a typical FlightSafety program, in terms of the variety of pilots who fly the beefy turboprop, ranging from owner-pilots to corporate, aeromedical, freight and even military organizations such as the Air Force’s 319th Special Operations Squadron and Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Initial PC-12 students spend the first five days in ground school. For the NG, students study the Apex avionics for the first two days, and on the second day they spend four hours in the simulator to practice using the avionics. NG students can speed their learning by running the Honeywell Apex computer training program supplied on their computers, and this is also available in the classroom and Internet cafe. The simulator portion includes 10 hours of pilot-flying training, either in five two-hour or two three-hour and two two-hour sessions, plus another 10 hours of pilot-monitoring. Part 135 pilots or ATP candidates get an additional two training sessions.
Many PC-12 trainees are owner-operators flying single-pilot. “They need to know the systems and how they interact,” said PC-12 program manager John Patterson. “We try to elevate the bar [for owner-pilots],” he added, so they learn more about what it’s like to fly as a professional. For many new PC-12 pilots, the experience at FlightSafety is their first exposure to a full-motion simulator and also to professional-level training. While there is no type-rating requirement in the U.S. for complex airplanes such as the PC-12, “We’re here to try to give you information and help you feel better when you put your family in the aircraft,” he said. “You retain it much better when you’ve been through it [in the simulator].”
As Noyes explained, instructors are trained not to pass a client if the instructor wouldn’t allow a family member to fly with that pilot.
In the classroom, Noyes backs up his explanations with animated dynamic systems presentations developed by FlightSafety’s on-site designers. Detailed photos and diagrams of systems and components show students not only where items are located but also how they relate to associated components and other systems. For example, students can view the actual PT6 engine fuel heat exchanger instead of a block diagram that outlines just the location. Other examples include a detailed diagram of the torque limiter, with an animation showing what happens when “Py” air is bled off, and a diagram of the oil system that is more detailed than Pratt & Whitney Canada’s own materials. Another dynamic graphic shows the engine driving the propeller and all the resulting mechanical permutations.
For students who want to dive in even deeper, the Dallas learning center has an engine training facility where PC-12 pilots can learn more than they ever wanted to know about the PT6. “We’ve had clients who didn’t want to leave,” Noyes said. “Training never stops.”
The classroom training with the dynamic graphics on the instructor’s screens and also on students’ displays makes it easier to conduct scenario-based training. The instructors like to teach students how to deal with CAS lights or messages, as a method to illustrate the particular system involved.
View from the Left Seat
When it’s time to fly in the simulator, FlightSafety instructors have a tool called SimVu that records the action in the cockpit. During the debriefing after simulator flights, the SimVu recording can be played back, and it replays not only the cockpit video and audio but also the positions of flight and engine controls and cockpit equipment. SimVu recordings are automatically deleted afterwards and never stored.
The PC-12 legacy simulator is equipped with the latest high-resolution visual display, FlightSafety’s Vital 1100; the PC-12 NG simulator has a Vital X visual system.
Evans set us up for takeoff from Runway 17 at Montrose Regional Airport in Colorado, and right away he started in with the challenges. After a normal takeoff, he failed the engine to see whether I could conserve the energy in the big PC-12 and bring it back around to land on Runway 35. This happened a few times, ending when I came in way too high on one approach and touched down near the end of Runway 31 and blew all three tires trying to stop before the end of the pavement. I joked that this was part of my plan to avoid an overrun, but no harm done in the simulator.
Naturally these maneuvers are not intended to teach pilots how to do a turnback after losing an engine on takeoff, but are just good handling practice, and they helped me regain the feel for flying the PC-12. The simulator felt a lot like flying a real airplane, and the Vital 1100 visual display, with its ability to replicate clouds and terrain accurately, added to the realism.
We practiced an idle rollback on the PT6, which means that I had to “catch” the engine with the manual override using the emergency power (EPL) lever before power dropped below 50 percent. This requires a light touch on the EPL, which controls the fuel valve directly, and is a great example of how a simulator helps pilots practice events that can’t be replicated in the airplane and without worrying about destroying expensive components. Evans then ran me through the airborne engine restart procedure.
At 10,700 feet, Evans produced yet another engine failure, and I glided down for a landing on Runway 13. With plenty of time to get set up, Evans suggested that I try gliding with the autopilot on, and that worked well, leaving me more time to focus on hitting the right milestones to get to the runway safely.
Evans repositioned the PC-12 on the localizer/DME approach to Aspen’s Runway 15, and this was a great exercise because I quickly learned that I had to dump the nose after passing doype intersection to have any chance of descending another 4,000 feet to make the runway. We flew the approach twice. The first time, I was hopelessly high because I didn’t descend aggressively; the PC-12 likes to fly. The second time worked much better, but I had to lower the nose about 20 degrees to lose altitude in time to land. This was an excellent illustration of why pilots ought to simulate operating at some airports before flying there for the first time. After the flight, we reviewed some of the maneuvers on SimVu, then Evans pushed the delete button.
The FlightSafety PC-12 instructor team serves as a resource not only for clients’ technical questions but also for Pilatus itself. For example, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police experienced a failure of the number-one avionics bus, and the instructors were able to help pinpoint a relay that caused the problem. “To make sure it’s right, we run it by the Pilatus maintenance people,” Patterson said. In another case, they were able to help Pilatus test pilots understand a CAS message problem on the PC-12 NG, where a stack of messages in some cases scrolled off the page on the display, leaving the root cause message viewable only by scrolling toward the bottom of the list, something that might be difficult for a single pilot during an emergency.
“We love this program,” Patterson concluded after my flight. “We’re always trying to make it better.
