And yet every single instrument sim is a highly scripted event.
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Pilot shortage?
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Meh. I'd argue you had more script than you may have realized at the time.
Unless you were at Corpus. Then you just did whatever felt good and called it STAN.
I keeeed. Kind of.
I've never been an instructor, maybe when I get there I'll see this effect. However I'll swear that by making my own scripts, I feel by doing that I could actually learned what was up. Admittedly In a very small portion of the big picture, but I knew what I needed to.
But maybe what you mean is student X is given a script they mindlessly follow and does little else. And I was student Y who studied enough to make something to use to wrap my head around a process.
Meh
The problem with scripts is that when the situation deviates from how you thought things would go when you wrote the script, you're less likely to adapt when things don't go as planned. Reliance on scripts belies a lack of understanding of fundamental principles.
Every aviator I've seen show up to a fleet squadron using scripts, or using script-like thinking, struggles in the jet.
Every aviator I've seen show up to a fleet squadron using scripts, or using script-like thinking, struggles in the jet.
The scripted portion being talked about is that sim instructors are told exactly what to do during each event. There is certainly some leeway, but I've also been cautioned to basically follow the script if I value my job.... FWIW. Not by management per se, but other sim instructors that have been doing it a while. For example, there is an event that will go lost comms. At a specific point. An event that will result in an airborne emergency IMC divert. At a fairly specific point. An event where the wx is out of mins. An event where maybe the expected torque won't be 100% etc etc.. Do the students all know it's coming? Yeah. Except the ones that go it solo through training.
I do actually see the benefit of the scripts; without them a student might get through all X number of INAV sims and not have seen one or two of the scenarios. And make it too much leeway and maybe some instructors will be lazy about it. But especially with how scripted CNATRA training is, yeah the flight experience is huge. Not to mention all the other reasons posted (real changing WX, more than one airplane in the sky on the radios, etc etc etc.)
No idea how scripted the air force sims are but I'd be surprised if it's much different.
Edit: groupme didn't even exist when these scripts were written btw. Imagine the gouge train that exists nowadays....
Edit 2: please transition to a heavier sim-based syllabus. I'll get full-time soonest.
I do actually see the benefit of the scripts; without them a student might get through all X number of INAV sims and not have seen one or two of the scenarios. And make it too much leeway and maybe some instructors will be lazy about it. But especially with how scripted CNATRA training is, yeah the flight experience is huge. Not to mention all the other reasons posted (real changing WX, more than one airplane in the sky on the radios, etc etc etc.)
No idea how scripted the air force sims are but I'd be surprised if it's much different.
Edit: groupme didn't even exist when these scripts were written btw. Imagine the gouge train that exists nowadays....
Edit 2: please transition to a heavier sim-based syllabus. I'll get full-time soonest.
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Maybe script is the wrong word, template perhaps?
My idea was that even with planned or other deviations, a lot of flying is structured similarly by design. No you can't write a template for an EP decision making process on an approach (you could but that would be silly imo), but in primary level instruments or things like bouncing at an untoward field, there's a system to how everything is supposed to go and depending on the place or approach only a little bit of the wording or actions will change.
If I can sit down and study through making a template, and use that to analyze exactly how things are said and done from referencing all the pubs, maybe it's just studying and chairflying while fighting with Word's formatting foibles. Yeah there's a print out sheet for the "oh shit, what do I do now?" That I would take with me to the sim or plane, but 99% of the time it just sat ignored on the knee board. Through making the stuff, I memorized and retained what I needed to. It was the closest frame to what couldn't or likely wouldn't change, the training and decisions in the air, filled it in (but not literally most of the time).
At the end of the day, I did what I had to to bring myself to the tankard and it seemed to work.
Simulators are getting to the point where you could have hundreds of student pilots flying in the same air space, and let ATC trainees (or AI) run them. Get some noise and confusion going. Have sim solos where students show up, hit the on switch, climb in the box, and fly the assigned route. Move through the fully scripted wax-on, wax-off phase into open-ended scenarios.
It would be moderately cool as a student to shoot an approach to Kabul Intl during a firefight on the perimeter, or the McMurdo Sound ice runway in Antarctica.
It would be moderately cool as a student to shoot an approach to Kabul Intl during a firefight on the perimeter, or the McMurdo Sound ice runway in Antarctica.
One of my favorite quotes, “The Plan is nothing, planning is everything.”
You have to remember they are starting from zero. Scripts are important to lay a baseline foundation for procedures, especially in the sims, which are nothing more than a procedures trainer. As the student progresses it's up to the IP to present situations that test the student's foundation of knowledge by giving similar but slightly different situations in the airplane. Without "scripts" there would be no baseline, or zero point, from which to begin.
Im talking about student X. Handed a script. Thinks aviation actually works that way. When something inevitably goes off script, totally helpless.
I can tell from some posts that people are conflating/confusing what we’re saying when we refer to scripts.
In it’s most egregious form, scripting is literally sequentially writing out everything you’re supposed to do and say during a flight on your kneeboard.
In it’s most egregious form, scripting is literally sequentially writing out everything you’re supposed to do and say during a flight on your kneeboard.
I was Corpus. At the time I was a student I don’t know if standardization was lacking or not. But I do know there weren’t scripts, and IMO we are better for it. Prior to the Navy, in civil aviation, I did not get handed a script as a student, nor was I providing one as a CFI. I’m sure maybe it happens somewhere. But scripted thinking does more harm than good. Semantics are important. I do think studying and creating your own gouge is very useful. But that’s different.
This. See: “Hollywood Script.” Glad I didn’t have that as a student.
Well luckily they have an IP to help guide their decision making. Of course they are going to struggle when presented with scenarios they've never seen before. It would be extremely difficult for them to envision certain "off-script" scenarios with zero baseline experience. Very few people are able to just magically intuit the right answer the first time.
The point is that a baseline is entirely possible without a script. Particularly, a script that hand holds though every ICS comm, radio call, button push, nose pick, etc. from walk to debrief.