Flight Instructors

[Colonel Sanders]

There are PPL's, and there are PPL's.

My PPL's can land on one main. I send my
students solo, with no worries, when the windsock
is straight out across the runway. Here's one
of my teenaged students, flying wing on me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVXWiIrTZlg

I understand that many people don't train PPLs
to have much in the way of stick & rudder skills.
That is their choice. You may think it's a good
one. I don't.

Certainly by the time someone has 200 hrs and
is thinking about doing a CPL flight test, they
could fit an hour of one wheel landings into their
200 hr logbook.

You probably don't think I'm much of an instructor,
and I'm cool with that. I started flight instructing
22 years ago. Here's another one of my students,
flying wing on me:

http://i.imgur.com/y3Gu0YD.jpg

[Beefitarian]

That's not a bad way to think but you're going to need a decent amount of hours before you're at the point of really owning some of those moves.

Running down the runway on one wheel is a very easy exercise and can be taught in a short period of time....about one hour of touch and goes should be sufficient for the average student.

Once you're near 800 hours unless you're a rare career instructor you probably will be moving on to the next phase of your career.

And that is why we are having this discussion........the industry has it backwards when the teachers are still students.

I can ask around and probably get you an interview if you want. I know a few people at some of the local schools. You sound comited to bringing back the glory days of air training, you can fix it from within. Yeah?

Should have left that other part in huh?

[treehugger]

You probably don't think I'm much of an instructor

Quite the contrary...

You, by all accounts, are an effective teacher and dare I say, probably have a toolbox* full of unconventional methods to illustrate 'basic' control.

And I'll expand, I've referenced your postings in the past and have looked to them for guidance. You seem a wealth of knowledge and I respect your insight... I just don't agree with class 4s needing to teach one wheel landings to ppls and cpls.
And to be clear I don't agree with class 4s blowing you off with "violates insurance" rhetoric.

[photofly]

TC's flight instructor guide tells instructors (even class IV ones) to "Teach your students to have mastery over the aircraft; to fly with verve and spirit to the limit of the aircraft's flight envelope; to know what they can and cannot do; but draw a very definite distinction between intelligent confidence and foolhardiness."

In the past I've had a lot of very competent instruction; but I'd have liked a bit more of the "verve and spirit", to tell the truth. Does playing around with one wheel on the ground come under that heading? It does, in my book.

[Cat Driver]

I am well aware this thread was started by C.S, but I just can not stay out of the discussion....

sooo...

The commentator in your video said it best, "he's hotdoggin'". Unless hotdoggin' is a new exercise on the flight test I fail to see how teaching a 10,45 or 100hr ppl/cpl a one wheel landing is an effective use of of the candidates money.

Well that one is easy to answer.

Teaching any candidate effect of controls is exactly what proper training is about.

If, as a new class 4, I spent an hour teaching my 10hr student motoring down the runway on one wheel my CFI would've sh1t a sideways brick looking out the window.

Why would your CFI not approve of you teaching a basic manouver to your student?

Furthermore, I certainly don't need you to validate my flying or teaching ability... I've had numerous dftes, pilot examiners, class 1s and CFIs do that for me. That being said, I'm willing to learn but you should expect to be challenged in return.

You shouldn't get upset over a discussion on an aviation forum, especially when no one knows who you are.

The topic was on approaching a new class 4, challenging them on 3 exercises, one of which is controversial,IMHO, in training someone for a ppl or cpl...

Maybe you should go and fly with C.S. and maybe you will understand that what he is describing is basic flying that all PPL's should be comfortable with.

[Colonel Sanders]

Here's another exercise for you, that I like doing:

Cover up the entire dashboard of the aircraft,
and go flying. We're not talking partial panel
here - we're talking absolutely no flight instruments
at all. No gyros, no altimeter, no VSI, no airspeed.

Have the student start, taxi and takeoff. If he
puts the power where it usually is, and the nose
where it usually is, the airspeed will be what it
usually is, too!

Have him climb to 3000 AGL or so - you can
eyeball it - and if he tries to use any nav radios,
turn them all off, too. No GPS, no VOR, no DME,
no ADF, nothing.

Set the aircraft up for slow flight (he still has the
tach and the flap indicator). Drive around on the
stall warning indicator. 10, 20 then 30 degrees
of bank in the turns, stall warning indicator going
the whole time. Add a little power for the 30
degree banked turns in slow flight. Recover.

Back to the airport. Find it visually, then descend
and join the circuit - eyeball the circuit altitude. Put
any other aircraft in the circuit on the horizon. On
base, set the power where it usually is, pitch attitude
where it usually is, and the airspeed will be where it
usually is.

Common error on final is too much airspeed -
you can spot it by the pitch attitude. But with
sufficient runway, it doesn't really matter. Power
off, and land.

A tremendous confidence booster!

[Cat Driver]

Hey C.S. great post.....

......however many moons ago I used to fly a Fox Moth and you would have had a tough time covering up the A.S.I.

[Shiny Side Up]

If, as a new class 4, I spent an hour teaching my 10hr student motoring down the runway on one wheel my CFI would've sh1t a sideways brick looking out the window.

Why would your CFI not approve of you teaching a basic manouver to your student?

Well playing the who watching over new instructor thing, at 10 hours I wouldn't approve of the class 4s teaching that, at least not quite yet. Some quicker students might be up to that point by then, and either way if we didn't discuss it earlier, yah I'd be tearing a strip off of someone. But then keep in mind that I'm an evil micromanager, but I'm also going to make sure the students can do the one wheel first landing before they go solo too.

[Cat Driver]

It has to be quite apparent to most here that my idea of what a flight instructor should be and what the industry accepts is obvious.

I find it incredible that any instructor could not be trusted to teach a basic lesson such as controlling an airplane running down the runway on one wheel.

[Shiny Side Up]

Some can, some can't. Some won't have the skill to do so since that sort of thing is not in vogue these days and slipping is verboten. Others can do it but lack the wisdom as to when to. I've yet to see a new instructor that was perfect, and I certainly wasn't so when I started. In spite of all our misgivings about the whole FTU system, there is some wisdom in the idea that someone should keep an eye on new instructors.

[Colonel Sanders]

It's not exactly a secret that over the decades,
I have become quite cynical about the utility of
all of the short/soft/rough/obstacle (so-called
"specialty" takeoffs and landings) which in no
way whatsoever prepare a student for any of
those actual conditions.

It is not exactly a secret that a PPL in Canada
is trained to fly from one 3,000+ foot paved,
certified runway to another 3,000+ foot paved,
certified runway.

Once the light bulb goes on about what we are
actually doing, why not do a good job at what
we are doing?

I am happy when a fresh PPL can do both a
normal and a crosswind takeoff and landing
on a 3,000+ foot paved, certified runway,
with a reasonable amount of aircraft control
with respect to airspeed and aircraft position.

You would be amazed at the number of fresh
CPL's who cannot. Something about 5 knot
crosswind max at their large FTU.

Regardless, I want to see a reasonable level of
of proficiency and precision for the normal takeoff
and landing.

And, for the crosswind landing, which is going
to require a slip at touchdown. This is not a skill
that is mastered by many low-time pilots, so I
have them practice it when there isn't even a
crosswind, evil instructor that I am.

Getting good at crosswind landings is of enormous
benefit, IMHO. An instructor that can't teach a one
wheel landing, probably isn't that good at crosswind
landings himself. This drives poor . wild.

[Colonel Sanders]

I suspect many of the young instructors here
wouldn't like how I teach "specialty" landings.

At my home airport, there is a nice 1000 foot
long grass strip, paralleling the paved runway.

I was out on the tractor a couple days ago,
mowing it myself, which gives me a chance to
inspect it carefully. Also had a buddy of mine
roll it on the weekend. Good time of year for that.

Anyways, what I do is have the student approach
at 70 mph. When he can control the airspeed -
generally under pretty benign conditions, with
perhaps just a breath (5 knots) of steady headwind -
I have him slow to 65 mph. If he can do that,
I have him slow to 60 mph.

Now we're getting slightly firmer landings on the
paved runway, and because kinetic energy is a
function of the speed squared, much shorter
landing rollouts.

Next, I have him move over slightly on final,
and approach at 60 mph and touch down
at the start of the grass runway, paralleling
the paved runway.

With 5 knots of headwind, and the kinetic
energy of 60 mph, we easily get stopped before
the ditch at the end of the 1000 foot grass strip.

No wild braking, no flat-spotting the tires, he
doesn't even have to raise the flaps. I don't
want his eyes inside the cockpit during the
landing rollout. I want him looking outside.

And that's how I teach, with no fuss and hysterics,
a real short/soft field landing. Easy as pie.
It's all about precision control of the airspeed
and the touchdown point. Not about wild hysterics
inside the cockpit after touchdown.

My stealth approach to soft/short field landings
is a very effective and efficient application of the
learning factors of Relationship and Exercise:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/p ... s-5483.htm

[TC Aviator]

Cat Driver and Colonel Sanders have it right, Guys.

Exactly my style of teaching; what a breath of fresh air.

[Old Dog Flying]

Back a few years and an instructors refresher course where we actually got a couple of flights for mutual instruction: I was paired with a TCCA inspector who really did not like me ...I was an immigrant from the prairies...and we were given a C152 to fly. The exercize was short field/soft field landings.

I decided to go over to AK3 also known as Delta Air Park , where the runway was soft grass and 2000' long. CS sez OH HUM!..but the school that owned the C152 deemed it a dangerous place and banned their members from going into it..including instructors.

After the inspection pass I slowed the aircraft on downwind, a bit of flap on base, slowed some more and 20* of flap thingies, final and 30* of those forbidden flappers and slowed to book speed...can't remember...trimmed all the way to maintain airspeed, power as required, over the trees, power lines, touched down right on the pre-designated spot and stopped in 400"

Now it got interesting. THe guru of all things aviating sez "Now let me show you how it should be done!" On base full flap and airspeed needle looked like it was attached to a YOYO. The pitch attitude was like a 12" boat riding 6' swells and no a/s control.. We touched down with about 5-600' remaining..no attempt to go around and the drainage ditch was full of dirty water. The Capitan of the Clouds braked hard (on damp grass) and started taxiing back along side the runway through some gravel when I took control, gave the A$#H&^% a piece of my mind and I flew back to ZBB

There was no conversation on the way back and no de-briefing either. The guy was a very long in the tooth instructor, Class 1,

Have at it .! And CS!

[Cat Driver]

What drives me into deep depression is when I was young and all hyped up about being a pilot was I thought it would be a profession that had some credibility as far as skills were concerned.

Now sixty years later I am swamped by so called professional flight instructors trying to convince the industry that the ability to control an airplane down the runway on one wheel is beyond the ability of mere mortals.

Yeh......for sure.....

......to be a flight instructor one has over 200 hours as a pilot and has passed all the tests required...

.....except how to control the thing using the flight controls within the certified limits of the airplane.

I think I will just go shoot myself and end this pain.

[Old Dog Flying]

.: When you and I were young..too long ago..we were taught how to fly by guys whose lives depended on knowing how when the bullets started to come their way. Today we have new CFIs who were taught by other CFIs who..well lets just say that their experience levels need an adjustment.

We learned to fly on aircraft without radios, gyros, glass displays and now a device that can land these little buggers without input from the driver. We learned what our feet were used for or ended upside down in the weeds.

We learned to navigate..watch, map, ground..by MDR and could recalculate an ETA without using a digital thingy that was only as smart as the joker inputting the data.

We learned to fly with everything covered up except the tach, to trim, to control airspeed by attitude and to keep the bloody ball caged.

I've flown with a few modern day instructors and my take-off briefing always ends with "I'm PIC and I hope that you have good medical coverage. If I see your hand moving to fail anything on take-off, you will need all of the coverage you can get!"

Thank the big pilot in the sky for the more than 60 years of memorable flying.
Barney

[Cat Driver]

Barney....

......we learned on the Fleet Canuck and got out PPL in 30 hours.

How many flight instructors are in the training industry who you would give a Fleet Canuck to to fly it from the left hand seat where the brakes are?

Even more interesting a question, how many can teach on one sitting in the right hand seat where there are no brakes?

[Colonel Sanders]

how many can teach on one sitting in the right hand seat where there are no brakes?

I do it - because I have to - but I don't like it
a whole lot. Especially when the carburetor has
no accelerator pump.

It's really a moot point on a lot of older aircraft
with heel brakes, which really don't do much.

This may sound weird, but I like to teach people
to fly tailwheel aircraft with no brakes on their
side. The only time you really need brakes in a
light tailwheel aircraft is during the runup, or turning
out of a strong wind.


Anyways. . & Barney: I feel your sense of
alienation. The world you grew up in doesn't exist
any more, and has been replaced by another which
you find surreal. My grumpy 81 year old father has
much the same experience. Not much you can do
about it, except to acknowledge that you have become
an ambulatory museum exhibit, which is not all bad

[Cat Driver]

I do it - because I have to - but I don't like it
a whole lot. Especially when the carburetor has
no accelerator pump.

Yeh for sure it is a different world today C.S. , when I instructed at Central Airways in Toronto in the fifties we had four Cessna 140's one C170 four Fleet Canucks and one PA12 and one PiperTri pacer.

So basically we had a real mix of braking systems....toe barkes...heel brakes....handle under the panel brakes .....and of course the Fleets with no brakes on the right side.

I don't recall it being any significant problem with braking with any of them, you just learn to control the direction you wanted them to go.

Oh I almost forgot to mention we could do this long before we became flight instructors.

[Colonel Sanders]

They don't have much street credibility, but I have
always had a lot of respect for the C120/140. It's
a squirrely little b1tch with absolutely no damping in
that boing-o-matic spring gear. Any rate of descent
at touchdown flings you back into the sky.

Always had a soft spot for the C170, though. Delightful
airplane. Feed it steroids, send it to the gym, and you
get the C180/185. Much easier to land than the C120/140.

The handbrake under the dash of the Piper Tri-pacer
(milk stool) and Colt was weird. And cheap, I suspect.
They had a really short wingspan. I could never get
consistent landings in them. Never liked them, honestly.

However, to paraphrase Will Rogers, I never flew a
tailwheel ragwing Piper I didn't like

[treehugger]

I probably should've started with:
Is there any practical use for one wheel touch and gos? It appears there are.
Is it the only effective way to teach cross wind t/o and landing? No, I don't believe it is.
That being said... it sounds interesting and this is truly the first time I have heard of it since I started flight training back in '03. It sounds like a valuable skill in control and handling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWjs94ysEH8
Back to class 4s...
Is it a necessity in their repertoire of teaching tools and examples? Again, it's not the only way to teach xwind landings.
Would it be a helpful tool for teaching xwind landings? Any improvement in skill, technique and a knew way to connect/demonstrate to some student is.
I say this grudgingly... maybe it isn't hotdoggin' and has merit.
Back to class 4s... again
Passing the instructor ride isn't like turning on a switch from student to master. There is a huge gap between a class 3 and a class 4. Trusting your newly minted class 4 to teach one wheel touch and gos let alone expecting them to isn't exactly realistic. There's a still a supervision requirement for class 4s so apparently they don't only make CFIs nervous but Transport too.

[Cat Driver]

There's a still a supervision requirement for class 4s so apparently they don't only make CFIs nervous but Transport too.

Yes you have a point.

TC and their CFI's are a real barrier to running a flight training business.

That is why I left Canada to run my flight training business, it gave me the ability to design and operate my flight training to maximize not only the quality of the training but it maximized the profit margin.

I say this grudgingly... maybe it isn't hotdoggin' and has merit.

Good....you are able to accept things that you were not taught before.

Back to class 4s... again
Passing the instructor ride isn't like turning on a switch from student to master. There is a huge gap between a class 3 and a class 4. Trusting your newly minted class 4 to teach one wheel touch and gos let alone expecting them to isn't exactly realistic.

Not really, because there can be a vast difference in class 4's.

One class 4 just out of his/her commercial training will be a robot taught to regurgitate the teaching program that TC requires and it will take some time for that instructor to get experience.

Conversely if you have another new class 4 who has decades of flying experience and may be retired and decided to teach flying as a retirement job that instructor will be light years ahead of a 250 hour product with a class 3.

Therefore it would be not only realistic for the high time retired class4 to teach one wheel passes down the runway it would be expected.

[Shiny Side Up]

Not really, because there can be a vast difference in class 4's.

One class 4 just out of his/her commercial training will be a robot taught to regurgitate the teaching program that TC requires and it will take some time for that instructor to get experience.

Conversely if you have another new class 4 who has decades of flying experience and may be retired and decided to teach flying as a retirement job that instructor will be light years ahead of a 250 hour product with a class 3.

Therefore it would be not only realistic for the high time retired class4 to teach one wheel passes down the runway it would be expected.

The second instructor you mention is an incredible rarity though. I've never seen one or even heard of one in all my days. Any older instructors are going to be one of two types: Guys who have been instructing all along possibly alongside their decades of other flying experience, or retirees who have no more flying experience than the young class 4s.. The former rarely (if ever) do any ab initio type training, the latter aren't any better than their more youthful counterparts.

That's not to say that there's not differences between class 4s though. The difference chiefly exists on how they view flying, How are they interested in it, how important they feel it is and their enthusiasm towards it. In short their attitude makes all the difference.

I'm not sure why we persist in this dream that something is going to convince all the really experienced pilots out there to start teaching. Its Avcanada's Snuffalupagus. Everone talks about it, I've never seen it.

On the issue of "TC's evil CFIs" of which I'm one, I'm of two minds. It would be nice if we had something more accomodating, half way in between what the US has and the system here. New instructor should have some more freedom to make a living as he pleases, but It would be nice if they had some sort of mentoring. After all, there's being a good stick and then there's the whole deal of working with students, and its the latter part that a lot of new instructors need some help with.

[Cat Driver]

The second instructor you mention is an incredible rarity though. I've never seen one or even heard of one in all my days.

That is because of the system you are forced to work under.

Why would a retired experienced pilot even consider working for a Canadian FTU with all the ridgid rules they would be subject to .......and work for pay so low they might not make enough in a day to pay their expenses?

On the issue of "TC's evil CFIs" of which I'm one, I'm of two minds. It would be nice if we had something more accomodating, half way in between what the US has and the system here. New instructor should have some more freedom to make a living as he pleases, but It would be nice if they had some sort of mentoring.

Your sarcasm is typical of the mindset of people who defend the system, "evil " is not exactly the proper description...the proper description is " dictatorship " .

You will probably never have the opportunity to own and manage a flying training business like the Americans have because you live in a socialistic dictatorship.

[Colonel Sanders]

The second instructor you mention is an incredible rarity though. I've never seen one or even heard of one in all my days

Actually, there's one on this website. I won't out
him, but he's retired AC, built an RV, and just did
his class 4. I will admit that he is the exception to
the rule.

There's another guy this website that I won't out
either - he owns his own aircraft, CPL, IFR, and is
doing his class 4.

I will agree with you that there aren't enough of
these guys to make a difference.

How you make a difference, is better training of
class 4 instructors, and to improve their skills and
knowledge, and how you do this is to make better
use of their 200TT that they must accumulate to
get their CPL.

The disappointing thing about most new CPLs
is that they treat the 200 hours flight time as
a burden, to be built in as unimaginative and
repetitious and unchallenging ways as possible.

I might humbly suggest that instead they:

1) get a tailwheel checkout
2) do some aerobatics
3) get their VFR multi
4) do a float rating
5) fly a skiplane
6) fly a glider
7) fly a radial engine aircraft
do a 1000nm x/c

ANYTHING other than just droning around their
home airport, mindlessly clocking up 200TT in
a plastic nosewheel trainer.

PS I LOVE this video!



That guy knows what it's about! He has mastered
his aircraft! That is what every low-time pilot should
strive to achieve - those kinds of hands and feet.