The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Air Support Division (ASD) is the first law-enforcement agency in the U.S. to install a Loft Dynamics virtual reality (VR) flight simulator. The device is being used train its police pilots who fly Airbus AStar/H125 helicopters.

“It has been extremely difficult to incorporate mission-based scenarios into our training program with the realism and frequency necessary for the training to be effective,” said LAPD chief pilot Kevin Gallagher. “The acquisition of the Loft Dynamics VR simulator and our partnership with their software engineers has solved that problem.

“The realism of the full-motion platform, combined with the ability to custom-build highly specific police scenarios, is revolutionizing the way we train—whether it’s inadvertent IMC entry, low-altitude chases, or night vision operations. This technology ensures that in critical moments, our pilots are prepared to execute with precision and confidence—because in aviation, you don’t rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training.”

Gallagher and the LAPD instructor team are developed a structured, VR-centric training curriculum for the ASD pilots, in collaboration with Loft. Scenarios will include high-speed car chases and integration of virtual Tyler Special Operations Platforms used on the LAPD helicopters for SWAT operations.

Gallagher is also using the LofTWIN system to capture and share scenario- and maneuver-based lessons. Once captured, the student can see a virtual representation or avatar of Gallagher inside the cockpit giving verbal instructions. The student also feels force feedback on the controls to guide the proper control movement. Tracking features also enable measurement and benchmarking of student process against Gallagher’s expertise and objectives.

Flying the Loft Simulator

During a visit to the ASD, Gallagher ran me through two practice sessions in the Loft H125 simulator, for a total of about three hours flying. This would be an opportunity to evaluate its fidelity for practicing procedures that can’t be done in a real helicopter and trying maneuvers that require focused attention.

The ASD Loft H125 simulator is equipped with a virtual Garmin G500H TXi touchscreen display, GTN 650 com/GPS navigator, and a second radio.

We started with some familiarization flying, and I lifted into a hover, then climbed out for a traffic pattern and normal approach but with a run-on landing, which was fairly straightforward. The motion base accurately replicated the feel of scraping the skids along the runway.

I did another takeoff and left-hand pattern with an approach to a hover above the runway, then a third with a landing on Bern Airport’s grass runway in Switzerland.

Gallagher had me air taxi over to a slippery concrete surface where I tried to keep the helicopter from sliding after touching down. This is something that would be almost impossible to practice in a real helicopter without a much higher level of risk and would require access to an icy surface.

This was also a good demonstration of features that can easily be added within the simulated environment for practicing challenging maneuvers. Keeping the helicopter from sliding all over the place and off the surface was difficult, but it was a fun exercise.

The next maneuver was a departure from the airport and a flight to a hospital helipad in Bern. I lifted off, and Gallagher directed me to the crash-site scene, where I practiced orbiting at 500 feet.

From there, a short flight took me to the slope park, where various mounds are available with gentle to steep slopes, all marked with the degree of slope. I picked the seven-degree slope and managed not to embarrass myself with a decent right-skid-first touchdown.

Emergencies and IIMC

After a break for lunch, I climbed back into the simulator for some emergency scenarios. 

First up was hydraulic failure in hover. The AS350B2s that the ASD flies don’t have the later models’ dual hydraulic system, so that is what the Loft simulator replicates. If hydraulic power is lost, landing the helicopter is difficult, and so is hovering. With hydraulic failure, the helicopter’s hydraulic accumulators can hold pressure for up to around five minutes. In this scenario, I would lose hydraulic power during a hover and I would have to get on the ground quickly before the accumulators lost pressure. 

Obviously, shutting off hydraulic power isn’t done in the real helicopter. In this case, after the failure, all I had to do was land, and as I did so promptly, I avoided any control issues. 

Hover autorotations were next, and I did two decent hover autos where I cut the power, stepped on the left pedal to keep pointed straight, waited a moment, then pulled collective to cushion the touchdown. Then I did one where Gallagher dialed in an engine failure, which was a great experience and, again, completely unsafe in a real helicopter.

Another maneuver that adds tension to training is full-down autorotations that simulate an engine failure from altitude. Gallagher positioned me at California’s Santa Monica Airport and had me autorotate to the ground from 1,000 feet above the runway.

During the first autorotation, I was chasing rotor rpm too much with the collective and couldn’t get it to settle at the optimum speed. This one clearly wasn’t going to work out because I lost focus when it came time to flare and touchdown. On the next one, I paid attention to Gallagher’s instruction to pull a little collective (half to three-quarters of an inch) and just leave it alone while managing airspeed with the cyclic.

The rotor rpm settled nicely, although I still had to make tiny corrections with the collective, but I was able to spend more time flaring properly. We set the radar altimeter to call out minimums at the 100-foot flare altitude, and I pulled the nose up into the flare and then pushed forward to try to meet the ground smoothly with a run-on landing.

IIMC Encounter

Gallagher next ran me through some typical standard rate turns, climbs, descents, climbing turns and descents, then 45-degree steep turns. The Loft simulator’s handling felt crisp and tight but fairly light on the controls thanks to the hydraulic boosting. I did a set of these maneuvers first in VMC and then in IMC.

It’s important to highlight a major benefit of the VR simulation environment: the ability to impose adverse weather conditions either gradually or instantly on the simulated outside world. There is no need to wear a view-limiting device, which has questionable value in a real helicopter due to the ability to look below the device through chin windows.

Once in IMC and in the 45-degree bank, Gallagher put me to the test and I failed miserably. Not having flown helicopters in actual IFR conditions, except for training with a view-limiting device, I was not prepared for how a helicopter’s inherent instability makes flying in IMC so difficult.

When I had the simulator set up in the 45-degree banked turn in IMC, Gallagher asked me to initiate an IIMC recovery by leveling back to zero bank, adding takeoff power with the collective, and setting a climb attitude with the cyclic. The first time I tried this, I lost control. I overcontrolled while trying to return to a level attitude, pulled the nose too high then pushed it too low, and after a few gyrations was clearly out of control.

Gallagher thankfully stopped the simulation before I crashed the helicopter. He explained that it’s important to focus on each movement and what the instruments are telling me and to move the controls extra carefully. I tried the same scenario again and managed to maintain some semblance of control—it wasn’t pretty—until breaking out on top of the clouds. Flying a helicopter by visual references is so much easier, and I now understand on a much deeper level why autopilots are required for IFR helicopter flying.

In the next scenario, Gallagher had me flying left orbits around a scene in downtown Los Angeles. The left-hand orbits are so the TFO, who flies on every mission in the left seat, can see the scene. As we orbited at about 500 feet, the visibility gradually got worse. I had to make a quick decision: either go on the instruments and attempt to climb away in IMC towards, hopefully, better weather or pick a spot and “land and live,” to use the term made popular by the late Helicopter Association International president Matt Zuccaro.

There was plenty of room to land because the scene was next to two wide-open baseball fields, and I chose to land before the fog got any worse. I came in a bit too high but managed to perform a steep approach without an excessive rate of descent and safely landed on one of the fields just as the fog thickened dramatically. This felt like a much better outcome than trying to fly away from the scene in IMC without an autopilot.

For the final scenario, back in clear weather, I took off and flew to Santa Monica Airport. An engine chip light suddenly popped up, and this turned into a good lesson on how to manage the situation to ensure a safe outcome. Instead of flying a normal approach—and we were close enough to the airport that it was the selected spot even if the engine was about to come apart—Gallagher suggested maintaining altitude and then flying an autorotation to the runway. That way, if the engine did fail completely, I would be in a position where I could almost guarantee a safe touchdown. This would not necessarily be the case when the engine fails during a normal approach.

I set up for the autorotation and commenced the maneuver and, indeed, the engine did fail. While I came in a little too fast and used up all the runway, I got the helicopter down safely, thanks to the previous full-down auto practice.