Use of Flight Simulators in a Flight Mechanics Course: Potentials and Weaknesses - 2nd International Workshop on Evidence-Based Technology Enhanced Learning - page 50

Exercises has been designed in order to test several commands and responses of
the plane, which are: climb and descent, stabilize different slip flights, symmetric-
al turns, airplane stalls with three different flap-configurations (0%, 50% and
100%), phugoid mode, spiral mode and gliding flight. Every pair of students has
10 minutes to do the simulation distributed as follow: first of all, each student has
3 minutes to become familiar with the aircraft controls and responses, with the ob-
jective of stabilize the plane and achieve cruise flight. Then, each one has to do
one of the listed exercises. After this 10 minutes the lecturer give some guidelines
and key concepts about the completed practices, asking some interactive questions
to the students, both the pair who has made the flight and the rest of students.

3 Results and Discussion

Test results before and after the practical sessions are showed and commented in
this section. The questions are distributed in three groups, according with the
achieved results, and followed by a short discussion. Each question includes a
graph with statistics from the test, left column are students who made the practice
(results from students belonging to both practice groups are showed together) and
right column are the answers of the control group that did not carry out the simula-
tions. On the other hand, first row are results from the test made before the simula-
tions and the second one corresponds to test completed after.

Table 1 Questions with high improvement rates

Nº 1
Which one is correct ¿if an engine fails
in a twin-engined plane during the
cruise and no corrective action is ap-
plied?
a) It produces slip

b) It produces roll

c) It produces pitch

Correct answer: a)

Nº 3
During an horizontal equilibrium
flight the flaps are somehow deployed
and the pitch angle remains zero, the
aircraft:
a)

Increase flight altitude

b) Reduce flight altitude

c) Fluctuates up and down

Correct answer: a)