Who should use PilotEdge?

Student Pilots

Learning to speak on the radio is a very real fear for many students. They can benefit from practicing basic radio work, such as interaction with ground and tower controllers, as well as receiving flight following services from TRACON or enroute controllers.  They can also practice the critical radio calls that can make all the difference when operating from non-towered airports.  Most importantly, for the first time, they can use a simulator to start learning the art of 'building the picture' of the airspace around them by listening to ATC's calls for other aircraft, and the responses from those planes.

Instrument  Students

A huge part of instrument flying is handling the comms and learning how to work with ATC.  Instrument students are typically overwhelmed by the transition from VFR to IFR in terms of the radio work and situational awareness that's required to fly safely in the system.  "N132KT is 5 from the marker, fly hdg 180, maintain 3400 until established, cleared ILS RWY 19R approach, maintain present speed to the marker than contact tower 119.90," often results in "I got the callsign, what was the rest?"  

A typical IFR lesson can easily cost $400 and might yield 1 IFR route clearance, and a handful of approach clearances.  While home-based sims are excellent for shooting approaches, they have, up until now, lacked the ability to practice 'in the system', which is a whole other animal.

This service allows instrument students to practice all aspects of instrument flying from receiving route clearances, enroute holds, vectors to final, non-gyro vectors, full precision/non-precision approaches, one-in, one-out non-towered operations, cruise clearances, VFR-on-top, block altitudes and more.

Current Pilots

Even once you have your certificate and instrument rating and have become comfortable working with ATC, there is still tremendous value in practicing in a dynamic environment that closely mirrors the National Airspace System, rather than flying alone in a vacuum.

Pilots who have obtained their instrument rating often struggle to maintain legal currency, let alone a reasonable level of proficiency.  The difference between flying in a standalone simulator and busy real world TRACON airspace is like night and day.  Most Part 91 pilots don't fly nearly enough to be truly proficient, be it for reasons related to time or money. PilotEdge can help you stay on top of your game without taking up the kinds of time and money that simply aren’t available.

PilotEdge provides an environment for rated pilots to stay on top of their game, providing a month's worth of service for less money than it would cost most pilots to start an airplane and taxi to the active.

Simulator Enthusiasts

There is an enormous community of people who are not rated pilots, but still enjoy using a PC-based simulator at home.  PilotEdge breathes new life into these sims and brings the experience to a whole new level.

Commercial Operators

Lastly, commercial operators and educational institutions lean heavily on PCATD's, FTD's and Flight Simulators for pilot training. With all of the emphasis placed on the importance of Crew Resource Management (CRM) in today's dual crew cockpits, it's truly astounding that an environment doesn't exist for instructors to evaluate a team's ability to deal with the challenge of interacting with ATC. Indeed, the flight reviews undertaken by airline pilots in multi-million dollar FTDs or Level-D simulators still have the instructor attempting to fulfill the role of ATC, and falling well short of the mark.

PilotEdge extends additional functionality to commercial operators, allowing instructors to open a private conversation with the on-duty controllers and actually SCHEDULE an ATC failure, much like they would schedule the ever-familiar engine failure, or failed gear deployment.  ATC failures include items such as transposing the numbers/letters in the callsign, sending the pilot through the localizer, sending them to the wrong frequency, issuing a turn in the wrong direction (ie, "turn left hdg 250" when the pilot is on a 220 heading), or asking for an unreasonable speed to the final approach fix.