To all flight instructors,

I know I am a pain in the neck. I really don't want to get between an instructor and his student. He is just trying to get his student through a highly regulated and instrument oriented Practical Test Standard that he has little control over. He may have to teach things he really doesn't fully believe in. He is just doing his job.

I was a poor instructor. I could not teach techniques I not only didn't believe in, I thought some were dangerous at any level of proficiency. I taught safe maneuvering flight techniques through solo and dual cross country and then turned my students over to other instructors to prepare for the test. I felt this was safer, especially for crop dusting and patrol students. All the way through, my students appreciated this approach.

My posts are intended to give insight into this different orientation. Instructors need to justify what they teach, even if that justification is that it is required on the flight test. Students need to know why they are doing what they are doing and it doesn't hurt to know other options are available. Most of their flying will be non-testing flights.

Again, I apologize for any disorientation. Just let me have it "good and hard," as Jonathan Winthrop advised his preachers.

Jim

Jim,

Once I deciphered the vocabulary, I found that you preach what us old farts were taught by our then old fart instructors. I, for one, am extremely grateful that I was taught to fly the way I was taught to fly so many years ago. That foundation was, and still is, rock solid.

Gump

Thanks Gump. I try to use language you people will understand, if they watch old movies, that is. I guess we are considered reactionaries in today's market.

Thanks
May we all keep learning so we can make it to the old fart stage in life. Much of my learning has been painful.
I love advise that I can practice and better my skill set. Hopefully no pain!
Jess

The low and visual way of flying is good to teach, and much of the way I learned when I first was taught in a champ.

That said, even giving the idea to students that the very limited instrument aspects of the PPL and CPL are not fully warranted is foolish at best, lots of folks have lost their lives to VFR into IMC, even if you're a AG pilot, here will be times you might be relocating a aircraft, and as the saying goes shit happens.

If anything the PTS needs more not less, I'd love to see more stalls, real soft field work and spins with a recovery on heading would be great. The instrument aspects of the PPL and CPL are plenty skimpy enough, and the regs are written in blood as we all know, I don't blame the Feds as much as the overly scared public and the few pilots who do dumb crap and make headlines which scares the masses and causes the Feds to knee jerk their regs onto us.

I try to use language you people will understand, if they watch old movies, that is. My wife was fussing to go and I didn't edit the earlier post. i meant to say young people, not you people.

Pretty simple if you ask me.

Take a look at the pilots who have had the most amount of flight hours, the ones who succeeded in the toughest jobs, the ones who survive longest flying in the crappiest conditions. The aerobatic competition winners, the race champions. The pilots who have been spraying crops for decades, and the ones who lived through being slow-aircraft FAC in combat, and the ones who had to freight-dog in junk airplanes for 20 years before getting an airline job. The guys who fly all day every day into tiny strips and backwoods villages, the old retired Air America dudes who may or may not have known about the artificial sweetener they were transporting through the jungles and deserts.

Then look at the way they were trained, what they learned, what their instructors focused on, whether they were taught dead stick landings and spins and whatever, what was important on the tests they passed.

Then build the requirements of flight instruction equally around that stuff and the modern digital whiz-bang new rulebook politically correct TSA stuff.

Contact, I think it is good that you share your experience, knowledge, and understanding of how an airplane flies. It would take years for the average pilot flying 50 or 100 hours a year to figure it out on their own. I just think that there are many ways, as the old saying goes, to "skin a cat". I also know that like myself, you have taken lots of check rides and understand that there are two ways to pass the check ride. You can do things the way the Practical Test Standard says they will be done, or can do it the way the examiner would do it, usually the PTS way is clearer. How the student or the instructor would choose to do it may be neither of these. As a former chief pilot and friend of mine would say "cooperate and graduate". Every time I was ask if I wanted to join the training department or be a check airman, I would give them the same answer "no thanks, I can drink the Cool Aid but not pour". I think you feel the same. Keep up the good work.

Tim

Thanks Tim. I have no problem with "cooperate and graduate." I was just fortunate to get some guys indoctrinated in taking off fast and landing slow before they were indoctrinated otherwise; and other stuff like that. Re-education, as the Communists called it, is more difficult.

EZ, that will never work. It would require a certain number of students to wash out. Not all individuals can be trained to accomplish what you list. In today's politically correct world everybody gets a blue ribbon and a gold star. The FAA position, and the employers of pilots want to replace skill, training and experience with technology. Knowledge of keyboard strokes and automation operation is easy to evaluate. Employers want to pay lower wages for less experienced pilots, who surprise, surprise only need to meet reduced FAA standards. And of course passengers want the lowest fares possible, until things go bad, then they all want the old grey haired guy with thousand of hours who is not shook up by a little thing like an engine fire, or severe icing. Or who is not afraid to tell a dispatcher or his boss that he wants more fuel or is going to the alternate rather than hope it works out for fear of a "letter in his file".

As you can probable tell, I'm an old, grey haired guy who came home and retired rather than start over for the last handful of years of my career. Thanks for listening.

Tim

Look at it this way:

Companies sell their products to the greatest number of customer possible. Flight schools are no different. Accordingly, they have to dumb the product down, well below its potential, to achieve mass market penetration.

In every facet of our economy there are people that take those average products and make them better. Not better beyond the point they were engineered in the first place, better than the lowest-common-denominator de-tuned version that sells to average folks. But the customer has to rise up as well. If you put a performance chip in that diesel truck, you'd better understand how to monitor your EGT or things will go south and get really expensive.

As I see it, your instruction is not for the lowest-common-denominator pilot, it is for the pilot that is willing to learn more and do more, to get more. It is the same guy or gal that continues to pay for instruction, long after the basic lessons have been learned.

I know I have to jump through the hoops to get signed off. I also know there are better ways to fly once I have my ticket and I thank you for that insight.

There are still a handful of DPE's that allow students to fly the airplane instead of the book. The one I had allowed the plane to be flown how it should be instead of by the books. He also wasnt scared of doing things a bit different (requested I take off in the last 1000 ft of runway). Keep up the good work contact! There are many here that like reading your stuff.

Thanks guys. It's what I do.