Rehearse the maneuver before it costs you an hour.
Steep turns, slow flight, short and soft field, power-off stalls, the stabilized approach. The same tasks a DPE will ask for, with the tolerance FAA-S-ACS-6C publishes for each one and the agency’s own sentence printed beside it.
Home simulator time is never loggable — even with a CFI present. Only FAA-approved training devices with a Letter of Authorization qualify (AC 61-136B).
This is the hands half. The other half is ground study.
Checkride preparation splits cleanly in two. Knowing the material — every ACS task area, the oral questions, where applicants commonly come unstuck — is ground study, and it lives on our checkride prep page. This page is the other half: rehearsing the flow of the maneuver itself, so that the sequence and the scan are familiar before you are paying by the hour for them. Most applicants need both, and neither replaces time in the aircraft with an instructor.
Go to checkride prep (ACS tracker and oral)What a desk cannot give you
Control feel and sight picture are the two things a checkride actually tests, and a desktop simulator reproduces neither. There is no seat-of-the-pants cue, no buffet through the yoke, no g-load telling you the turn has loaded up.
That matters most on exactly the maneuvers people most want to practice. Flying at the edge of the stall warning by watching an airspeed tape is a different skill from finding that edge by feel — and repeating the desk version can install a habit that does not transfer. Every mission that carries this risk says so on its own card, before you fly it.
So the honest claim is narrow: this is rehearsal of sequence, configuration, checklist flow and the numbers you are aiming at. It is not practice of the flying, and no amount of it substitutes for dual instruction.
What it does do
01
The number, with its source attached
Every tolerance shows the ACS skill element that publishes it and the agency sentence it came from. Where the ACS publishes nothing for a criterion, we show nothing — an omission is honest, and a plausible invented number teaches a standard the FAA never set.
02
Asymmetry drawn as asymmetry
Some bands are not symmetric. Short-field touchdown is 200 feet beyond the point with no allowance short of it, and approach speed is plus ten, minus five. Those are drawn off-centre, with a hard wall on the side that has no room, instead of being flattened into a tidy plus-or-minus that would be wrong.
03
A route file that opens first try
Each mission exports a .PLN for Microsoft Flight Simulator and a .FMS for X-Plane, built against the published file specifications rather than guessed at. Free on every plan, including the free one.
04
Your own words, read back
After the session you write what happened and mark each criterion as within, outside, or not measured. "Not measured" is the most important option we ship: an honest blank beats a guess that corrupts your own record. The debrief reads what you wrote — it has no instrumentation and never reports a number you did not state.
How people actually use it
The pattern we designed for is a lesson that got cancelled, or a stage check three weeks out. You pick the maneuver, read the brief and the tolerance, print the kneeboard, fly it with live weather enabled and the assists off, then come back and write up what happened while it is fresh. Twenty to forty minutes. The point is not to log anything — it is to arrive at the next lesson already knowing the sequence, so the hour in the aircraft is spent on the flying.
The limits, in plain English
- Not a flight record
- This summarizes a video-game practice session. It does not count toward any FAA certificate, rating, or flight time — even with an instructor present.
- Never loggable
- Home simulator time is never loggable — even with a CFI present. Only FAA-approved training devices with a Letter of Authorization qualify (AC 61-136B).
- No recency benefit
- Practice here satisfies no FAA recency-of-experience requirement, including instrument recency under 14 CFR 61.57(c), which requires an FAA-approved training device operated under a Letter of Authorization (AC 61-136B).
- AI debrief is metered
- The AI debrief is capped, and the cap sits on the button before you write anything — never revealed after you have paid: 10 per calendar month on the founding and Student plans, unlimited from the Pilot plan up, and 0 per month on the free plan.
- Self-reported
- Nothing here is measured by us. You fly the maneuver, you read your own instruments, and you tell us what you saw. We publish the standard and hold your words; we do not verify them.
- Not affiliated
- Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.
Questions people actually ask
Does any of this shorten the training I have to do?
Not by regulation. The minimums in 14 CFR part 61 are unchanged by anything you do at a desk. There is survey evidence that students who practiced at home were associated with fewer flight hours overall, but that is an association in observational data, not a promise, and it does not alter a single required minimum.
Is this the same as your checkride prep feature?
No — they are complements. Checkride prep is ground study: the ACS task tracker, oral question practice and the areas applicants commonly struggle with. This page is rehearsal of the maneuvers themselves. Most applicants use both.
Which simulators does it work with?
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024, and X-Plane 11 and 12, on PC. Consoles are not supported and this is not a scheduling matter — they do not expose the local interface any of this depends on.
Do I need paid add-ons or scenery?
No. Every mission is written for default scenery and a default trainer aircraft, and each one says which airport it uses and why that airport was chosen.
Can my instructor sign anything based on this?
No. There is nothing here for an instructor to sign, and presenting simulator practice to an examiner or the FAA as evidence of training may constitute falsification under 14 CFR 61.59. Show your instructor what you wrote if it is useful to the conversation — that is the whole intended use.