some nice feedback...

[Keith Smith]

Ian and Schwed, those are both amazing accounts of some pretty exciting events. Congratulations and enjoy the journey!

Schwed, it's awesome to hear that your instructor was happy to take you on a night IMC flight for your very first exposure to flying IFR...not many instructors seem to do that. You found a good one! As you probably experienced, IFR flying is all about multi-tasking and staying ahead of the airplane. My guess is that the comms came relatively natural for you, not taking up massive amounts of your bandwidth, allowing you to focus on things like hand flying the plane by reference to instruments (a task which also doesn't have to take massive amounts of bandwidth, with practice), briefing the approach, getting the ATIS ahead of time, etc.

Really good to hear.

[marvinlbrooksjr]

I also must agree. As I study being a private pilot at the age of 46 soon 47 This is the BEST platform ever. You must make radio communication with real ATC and even when ATC is off line you still must conduct communications via radio frequency to give your intentions. This is by far the award winning Professional ATC for Fight Simulations ever. 5 out of 5 stars.

Marvin L. Brooks Jr.
PIlotedge Pilot.

[dhplane]

Hi Keith,

A couple of days ago I had a chance a chance to introduce an OLD pilot to Pilotedge. He was a command pilot on KC-97s and KC-135s during the Vietnam War and hasn’t flown for many years. However, he absolutely loved flying in my sim and sitting beside me as I flew on the network.

I don’t know if I will ever get him to actually do a flight on Pilotedge on his own, but I wanted you to know that the great service you guys provide is appreciated my more than just new or current pilots… in this case you helped re-kindle a flame in this guy’s heart that had gone out long ago.

Thanks as always.

Joey

[Mortified666]

So I am fairly new to flight sims and the Pilotedge network. I decided to go all in with learning and started practicing flying on the network. Since then, I have been able to complete my I9 rating and have been learning heaps.

I have been checking out a pile of livestreams and recordings from Pilots flying on PE. I have been able to pick up a pile of information and develop some confidence while flying. A couple of shout outs for their great streams - Catstrator and Jeff Favignano. I do have to give a massive thanks and props to Marcus though. I was setting up my own livestream and was exploring some X-plane streams on Twitch to see what people were up to and how they did it. In my travels i stumbled onto Marcusmmc channel (https://www.twitch.tv/marcusmmc) and enjoyed watching from the other side of the fence.

After watching about an hour of Marcus' last stream. I wondered if per chance he was live while I was online. To my surprise and joy, Marcus was live during my one fail and pass of the I8. It was an absolute joy to hear his remarks and just the way he interacts with the viewers and pilots flying.

So big thumbs up to Marcus for the awesome comments and livestream's and big thanks to all the PE controllers for giving us land folk the ability to pretend to be real world pilots.

[Flagada002]

Well I decided I was going to work on my IPC and get back to IFR flying. This surely was the right place to come!

Sure I'd been practicing IFR procedures on x plane 10 for a little while and it has been ok. Definitely caught a few mistakes that way! But then I joined the PE server, and proceeded to lag behind the plane something fierce! These ATC's have been "forgetting me" in tricky scenarios, calling me while turning to a new VOR radial, put pressure on me to get weather and come up with a request approach etc! Definitely feels like the real deal, and I am only up to I-02 so far!

Also the controller(s) today noticed I kept doing something wrong, eventually he saw a pattern and told me how to correct them! This is very challenging yet educational. Strongly recommend the experience!

My IPC is coming up sometime next week (I hope, aircraft is down for maintenance!). My chief pilot won't know what hit him !

[Keith Smith]

I've been remiss in updating this thread, but here was a lovely message I received via email yesterday:

This week I registered with PilotEdge and I won't bore you with how much I've enjoyed it so far. What prompts me to email you are two of your controllers. I don't know their names but they have been on duty evenings (EST) the past few days. One male, one female. I can't commend them enough. Not only are they professional to the highest degree, but patient and informative, creating an absolutely great atmosphere. You truly won't find two people that could put a better face on PilotEdge....especially for new users. There were a number of times when they dealt with newer people who were clearly nervous. They couldn't have handled them any better. Please extend my compliments to both.

Congrats to the female and male controllers, whoever they were

[Firstinflight]

I am late in adding my comments to this thread.

Its indeed the best thing thats happened to my flight simulation experience (have been in it since 1984!).
I was doing a presentation to a small audience at Embry Riddle last month and the topic was the importance of modeling radio communications in flight sims.
The audience was surprised by the options available, but most impressed when I spoke about PE.
I spoke about the use of PE at the proficiency center at Oshkosh. I even played a short snippets of recordings from PE and they were surprised at the realistic nature of the interactions.
Many reached out after the presentation and I showed them how they could listen into PE if, and when, they chose to.

Thanks to the wonderful controllers on PE. You all do a fine job of changing the flight simulation experience.
Once you get used to PE, it becomes very difficult to fly a sim without it.

Regards,
CPJ

[Keith Smith]

Keith and Staff at Pilot Edge,

I've been flying for just about one year now and am close to finishing my IFR rating. I've already passed written and working on prep for the practical, 300/hr PPL as of writing this email. I'm now starting to practice more regularly approaches in the airplane; I figured now might be a good time to consider flight simulation as a supplement to save both time and money, and allow me to practice at my pace.

As much as I'd love to, I can't spend 2-3 hours in the evening after putting the kids to bed at night to practice filing and copying clearance, figuring out airspace in unfamiliar areas and practice all of my radio phraseology for all phases of flight.

One week ago I signed up for PilotEdge, and I felt that I might give a little feedback for the service.

First, I don't think I can overstate the quality of the service your staff provides. Like controllers in real life, they are busy and are constantly under pressure from a bunch of pilots making requests and often making mistakes. I've had a fantastic time flying in the system, and I'm continuously impressed with how incredibly realistic your team has managed to make the experience always working in a professional manner.

The value of this service is incredible. I will continue to suggest this as a supplement to both student pilots and existing pilots such as myself working on ratings.

Please keep up the great work and absolutely the best wishes for you and your staff in 2017. I expect to see great things from your group as the years move forward.

(BTW, I've been using XPlane 11 - Beta 3 with incredible results!) If anyone that is getting into the sim world with little technical ability and experience, it has proven to be a fantastic platform for me to use with PilotEdge.

[r0bst3r]

I just wanted to say thanks to Marcus. I am a SEL pilot in real life, but all of my flying has been VFR with very little radio contact. I am using pilot edge to work on my IFR rating. Today I did my I-1, and made a mess of the radio calls and some of the flying, but he was very patient and helpful. Along the way he gave me tips and when I flew right through the localizer gave me vectors for a successful re-attempt. I really hate being a burden to the controllers and wish I just had it together all the time, but I find experiences like today help me immensely.

Thanks again Marcus,

Robbie

[dhplane]

I think we all agree that the PE controllers do an outstanding job, especially when they have to simultaneously handle experienced pilots along with guys who are just starting out.

But I want to commend Keith in particular for taking the time to answer so many of our questions individually regardless of how simple or complex the questions may be, and doing so with patience and genuine interest. Moreover, his encouragement to newcomers and rusty pilots such as myself (I haven't flown in the real world in over 45 years - Commercial, multi-engine, instrument) has been instrumental in building up the PE community and helping guys like me re-discover our love for flying.

Thanks again Keith!

Joey