My recent 2-day Recurrent Training at AST was, unquestionably, the most profitable training time I’ve ever spent in my 45 years of flying. My plan will be to engage the training at Aircraft Simulator Training regularly – as long as I am continuing to fly a complex twin. There was a surprising amount of “new” and specific information I received on my 421C. It was obviously based on their extensive rare and excellent personal knowledge of the airplane. The entire simulator time was spent on the productive repetition of multiple critical phases of flight. There was no time wasted on common activities that had been successfully learned to my satisfaction in the earlier years of my flying. Through the simulator time, I was exposed to some previously untaught, logical, dynamic techniques. Once I can break some of the old habits and integrate some better new ones into my response mechanism, I am totally confident that my flights will be very much improved from a safety and emergency survivability standpoint. There were several questions that came to me as I flew home and as I thought through all I wanted to learn more and more thoroughly. I emailed them the next day and, by the next day… or sooner… had several responses to my questions. They also went above and beyond by their follow-through in contacting experts they know regarding questions out of their area of expertise (i.e. some new Garmin Avionics questions). I cannot recommend AST highly enough but I will be encouraging any pilot I associate with to give them a try.
Note: This was one of the most beautiful 421C aircraft that we have been involved with. We kept it in our hanger and drooled over the outside and inside of the airplane. As instructors we had a great time working with the pilot.