All three students taking part in Redbird Flight Simulations’ One Week Ready To Solo campaign at Sun ‘n Fun are slated to fly their supervised solo flights Saturday morning. Nik Osterman, Chris Graves and Sherry Rosenkranz, all zero-time beginners, started daily training just before the show. So far so good; they will have completed their programs of at least nine hours of simulator time at Sun ‘n Fun and nine hours of flight training in Redhawk diesel 172s at Plant City, just west of Lakeland-Linder Airport. They’ll perform their three touch-and-goes there and then fly to Lakeland for another takeoff and landing.
Completing this in seven days could not have been achieved without the simulators, Redbird’s Charlie Gregoire told AVweb Friday. “The whole point of this is showing that this can happen,” he said. “Learning to fly is easier than people think.” The students also used Redbird’s TRACE technology, a computer-aided training system that allows them to carry on lessons on their own and grades their performance in the simulators. “The simulator was key,” said Graves, a motorcycle builder from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He spent Thursday practicing takeoffs and landings with his CFI, Doris Gatewood, with a sim session in between. Now, he’s ready to do it himself — and go on to pursue his pilot certificate. “It feels great and it was advantageous to take back-to-back lessons,” he said.
