After many years of simming, I got the opportunity to go on a level d 737-800 sim today. All the years of playing flight sim payed off - all my landings were on the markers, smooth, and on centerline. The instructor was very impressed with my knowledge, and basically let me do whatever I wished as he didn’t have to instruct me :). Just writing this post to say - our home sims really are great training tools. In fact, the level d sim felt easier than my home cockpit (peripheral vision, g forces, more precise controls).

My first drill in LDsim was on A320 and it's all smooth out even with an engine failure.

On 737 however ,my first landing got a bit heavy as I was not yet get the feeling for the yoke, much heavier and need quite large movement compare to my plastic joystick at home back in time.

I had the chance to fly the CAE A320 simulator at TAP training centre @ LPPT around 2002... It was surely a  memorable event I still partially recall, involving taxi from gate to takeoff from LPPT 21 ( now 20 ), under adverse weather, and 3 landings at LPMA with limit winds 🙂

 

Edited December 25, 20232 yr by jcomm

It was definitely the experience of a lifetime. The yoke was a lot heavier than I expected. I went from a Logitech extreme 3D to a thrustmaster hotas, but not even the thrust master comes close to how heavy the real yoke feels. I actually had to use both hands to pull back on the yoke after idling the engines on my first landing, as one hand wasn’t doing the job 🤣. Nevertheless, the precision of the real yoke is unparalleled. Much easier to get the plane to go where you want than in the sim… PMDG did a fantastic job on the trim. The trimming felt very close to what I feel on the PMDG.