AI tower · live flight grading · MSFS

The tower talks back. And it’s taking notes.

Hold push-to-talk and make the call. Step Climb answers with real phraseology, tracks every leg of your pattern straight from the sim, and hands you an instructor-style debrief the moment you shut down. No menus. No mercy on a botched readback. No one on the other end to be embarrassed in front of.

Join the waitlist See a debrief

Windows · connects to MSFS over SimConnect · private alpha

COM1 118.600 KPAO TWR

PTT

YOU · SKYHAWK 123AB

PALO ALTO TOWER

YOU · SKYHAWK 123AB

✓ READBACK VERIFIED · RWY 31 · LEFT TRAFFIC · CALLSIGN

PHASE HOLD SHORT

An exchange from a real Step Climb session — KPAO, runway 31, closed traffic.

Why Step Climb

Mic fright is a real thing

Every student pilot knows the moment: hand on the yoke, thumb over the PTT, and a brain that just went blank. Live networks put real controllers on the other end — realistic, and exactly why so many people never key up. Menu-based ATC has the opposite problem: you click through a flight without ever saying a word.

Step Climb sits in the gap. A tower that expects proper phraseology, catches the runway you read back wrong, notices the callsign you dropped — and never sighs, never queues, never judges. Botch it, and you simply hear:

“Skyhawk one two three alpha bravo, say again.”

How it works

Fly. Talk. Get graded. Improve.

One session, end to end — from engine start to the scorecard.

Fly

Start a session and fly the pattern in MSFS. Step Climb connects over SimConnect and follows you through every phase — parked, taxi, hold short, all four legs, rollout, taxi in.

Talk

Hold PTT and say it like the real thing. Speech-to-text plus an aviation intent parser understands your callsign, position reports, readbacks and requests — no menus, ever.

Get graded

The tower validates every readback while the flight tracker measures your pattern geometry, approach stability and touchdown — five times a second, all flight long.

Improve

Shut down and read the debrief: a letter grade, per-category scores, specific findings, the full transcript. Every session lands in your logbook, so progress is visible.

The debrief

Every flight ends with a grade

AI ATC tells you what to do. Step Climb is the first companion that tells you how you actually did — the pattern you flew, the approach you held, the landing you made, and the radio work in between.

The tracker knows which leg you’re on — and where you left the profile.

SESSION 014 · KPAO RWY 31 · C172
3 circuits · 41 min · wind 300° @ 8 kt

B 84 / 100

Pattern geometry86

Stabilized approach74

Touchdown91

ATC compliance84

−8

Unstable descent on final, circuit 2. 940 fpm through 300 AGL — outside the 500–800 fpm stable band.

−6

Downwind flown high. 1,060 ft on circuit 1 — KPAO pattern altitude is 800 ft.

−4

Readback error. “Right traffic” read back against a left-traffic instruction; corrected after tower repeated.

Touchdown, circuit 3. −128 fpm, 3 ft right of centreline. Keep that one.

TRANSCRIPT · 14 TRANSMISSIONS · 2 FLAGGED LOGGED → LOGBOOK

Under the cowling

Built like a check ride, not a chatbot

Voice-first radio

Hold a key and talk. Deepgram speech-to-text feeds an aviation intent parser that understands callsigns, position reports, readbacks and requests.

NO MENUS. EVER.

A tower that holds you to it

A state machine runs the real flow — taxi clearance, hold short, takeoff, pattern, landing clearance — and validates every readback against what was actually issued.

WRONG RUNWAY? FLAGGED.

5 Hz flight tracking

Altitude, heading, airspeed, vertical speed, gear and position sampled five times a second. Step Climb always knows which leg you’re on.

PARKED › TAXI › HOLD SHORT › UPWIND › CROSSWIND › DOWNWIND › BASE › FINAL › ROLLOUT

Graded on four axes

Pattern geometry, stabilized approach, touchdown quality, ATC compliance — scored against the same bands instructors use, with the deductions itemised.

A THROUGH F

Instructor-style debrief

A scorecard after every flight: letter grade, per-category bars, specific findings with point values, and the full radio transcript to replay.

NO VAGUE “GOOD FLIGHT”

A logbook that remembers

Every session is logged — grades, findings, transcripts. Watch the downwind tighten and the readbacks clean up week over week.

PROGRESS YOU CAN SEE

Where this goes

You start in the pattern. You don’t stop there.

Pattern work at a towered field is step one, not the destination. Step Climb is being built as a full career progression — every flight graded on airmanship, landings and ATC compliance, and every grade moving you up a ladder that ends in the flight levels. Here you advance the way real pilots do: gated by checkrides and reputation, not hours logged. Fly it well and you move up fast.

1,000 AGL Student pilot Pattern work at a towered field. The examiner is in the tower. Step 1 · Now

3,500 MSL PPL checkride Pass the ride, earn the ticket, unlock the wider map. Next up

FL120 Charter & freelance GA Fly for hire, build hours and a reputation controllers remember. On the roadmap

FL250 Regional turboprop Your first airline seat. Turbine time, real schedules. On the roadmap

FL310 Regional jet Left seat, jet type rating, the pace steps up again. On the roadmap

FL350 Major airline The flight levels. The goal every graded step was climbing toward. The horizon

Pick your altitude

Up is available — never mandatory. This is a spread of destinations, not one forced summit. Make a home at any altitude and the tower still grades every landing: a Cub in the backcountry, floats on a mountain lake, an aerobatic box, a student in the right seat while you instruct, a charter run at dusk. Flying it right is the whole game — whether the next rung is another circuit or a type rating.

ATC addons don’t grade you. Career addons don’t talk to you. We’re the examiner in the tower.

Missions grounded in reality

Every mission is AI-generated but fenced by real data — actual weather, real runway lengths, true aircraft range. The system never hands you an impossible flight, so a good grade always means you earned it.

The gap

Everyone else does half of this

600,000 people downloaded a radio trainer that uses a toy sim. Thousands pay $24 a month for AI ATC that never says how they did. Live networks are superb — once you’re already good. Nobody closes the loop: real sim, real voice, and a grade at the end. That’s the seat Step Climb takes.

	Real sim integration	Voice radio	AI ATC	Flight grading	Debrief & logbook
Step Climbtraining companion for MSFS	●	●	●	●	●
SayIntentions.aiATC replacement · ~$24/mo	●	●	●	○	○
BeyondATCmenu-based · $30 once	●	○	●	○	○
PlaneEnglish ARSimbuilt-in toy sim · $5–7/mo	○	●	●	◔	◔
VATSIM / PilotEdgehuman controllers · mic fright included	●	●	○	○	○

● yes ◔ radio-only ○ no

Private alpha

Get your tail number on the list

Now flying VFR pattern work at KPAO (Palo Alto) in the Cessna 172 Skyhawk. More airports, more aircraft, and IFR are on the flight plan.

CLEARED FOR THE CLIMB. You’re on the list — we’ll call your number.

Windows · MSFS 2020/2024 via SimConnect · free during alpha

Student pilots Rusty pilots Sim purists ESL aviators practicing phraseology

// SOCIAL PROOF, RESERVED
This box is being held for the first debriefs from alpha testers.
It could be your grade up here.