Incremental Training Effectiveness of Personal Computer Aviation Training Devices (PCATD) Used for Instrument Training Final technical rept

摘要

Flight training is costly when conducted in an approved training device and even more expensive when conducted in an airplane. In an earlier study by Taylor, Lintern, Hulin, Talleur, Emanuel and Phillips (1996), a commercially available Personal Computer Aviation Training Device (PCATD) was evaluated in a transfer of training experiment to determine its effectiveness for teaching instrument tasks. The data indicated that transfer savings for both the number of trials to reach a criterion performance for instrument tasks and time to complete a flight lesson were positive and substantial for new instrument tasks. A comparison of instrument rating course completion times resulted in a savings of about four hours in the airplane as a result of prior training in the PCATD. As a result of the Taylor et al. (1996) study, a Federal Aviation Administration advisory circular published in 1997 permits 10 hours of instrument training to be completed in an approved PCATD. In the experiment reported here, three groups of students at the Institute of Aviation, University of Illinois, received 5, 10, or 15 hours of prior training on selected instrument tasks required for the instrument rating. After training on each instrument task the subjects were evaluated in the airplane using completion standards for each task and these results were compared to a control group trained only in the airplane. A total of 157 students participated in the study.