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- David rides with the Geico Skytypers in the SNJ-2
Our guest this episode is Keith Smith, the Founder and CEO of PilotEdge, which connects your flight simulator to live PilotEdge Air Traffic Controllers. Keith is also an instrument rated pilot and regularly flies a Lancair 360 out of Lincoln Park, NJ.
PilotEdge provides real ATC as you fly your sim, so you are interacting with controllers and other planes and thus flying with real consequences. It’s not synthetic ATC playing in the background. These are active duty Controllers, retired Controllers, and experts culled from other FS virtual networks.
PilotEdge brings a flight simulator to the next level for hobbyists, student pilots, professional pilots, flight training facilities, and airlines looking to increase simulation realism to improve training.
Along the way, Keith provides some good tips for those looking to get started in flight simulation and learning ATC.
Find PilotEdge on the Web at PilotEdge.net. You can also watch and listen to Keith’s approach and Fisk Runway 27 landing for 2012 Airventure at Oshkosh.
The week’s aviation news:
- Autonomous robotic plane flies indoors
- Researchers May Have Found Amelia Earhart’s Plane Debris
- American Airlines loses key decision in bankruptcy court
- American Airline flight attendants rattled by judge’s ruling on pilot contracts
- American Airlines’ flight attendants approve contract offer, avoiding drastic cuts in court
- AMR creditors’ committee to American unionized workers: It’s time to deal
- Analyst: Could AMR Acquire US Airways in Bankruptcy?
In David’s This Week in Aviation segment:
David describes his experience flying with the Geico Skytypers in the SNJ-2, also called the T-6 Texan and the Harvard.
In this week’s Australia Desk report:
GippsAero to commence manufacturing the GA-8 Airvan in the USA, Draken International purchases eight additional ex-RNZAF A4-K Skyhawks to use for training operations in the US, Indonesia to purchase six extra ex-RAAF C130H aircraft in addition to the four already gifted to them, full body scanners to be introduced at Australian airports from November.
Find more from Grant and Steve at the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, and follow the show on Twitter at @pcdu Steve’s at @stevevisscher and Grant at @falcon124. Australia Desk archives can be found at www.australiadesk.net.
In this week’s Across the Pond segment:
Pieter reflects on Airport Security. Are they doing a good or a bad job given some of the challenges they face. He gives some amusing and also worrying examples of where it goes wrong and then comes to the conclusion………….well listen in and find out.
Find Pieter on Twitter as @Nascothornet, on his blog Alpha Tango Papa, on Facebook at XTPMedia, and at the Aviation Xtended podcast.
Mentions:
- Lufthansa Cockpit Careers
- Indo-US Red Flag Air Force Exercise Lecture 2008 Part 1
- Vintage airplane videos
- The incredible ThunderMaster goes 425mph!! (Dynamic soaring)
- AOPA Aviation Summit, 11-13 October 2012 in Palm Springs, California. On Twitter: @AOPAsummit
Opening and closing music courtesy Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at www.brotherloverocks.com.
Neat stuff. Although technology like this might explain why we can’t get any millennial’s to be interested in flying real airplanes?
What about the chick on a solo flight with half filled tanks? Has the flight school owner that set her up to fail been tuned up yet?
Tom, I think the technology actually makes flying more accessible and familiar to the modern generation. Case in point, I took 3 people up on a real flight, one at a time, who’d never flown in a small plane before. Thanks to their experience at home with the sim and with PilotEdge, they were able to help plan the flight, handle the comms, and do a decent job of flying the airplane.