Well in the old days there would be someone who would jump on that question and remind us that the old days didn’t have that requirement, and pilots were perfectly fine. There is a certain point to that, and I agree with your sentiment above on it that it is indeed some false security.
Now that said, I have had a few students who in spite of all my warnings about weather and clouds and wandering into them, came back and thanked me for being serious about those five hours. One claimed it was the difference between life and death when his judgement was lacking. Now while in decades of training people I can only count those on one hand with fingers left over, so did I get through to most of them about the clouds, and the few that didn’t get through to at least equipped to survive their misjudgement? Hard to say. In the end I think the small extra cost in time and money is worth it, your own view on it may vary of course.
rookiepilot wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:07 pm
Squaretail, I respect your viewpoint, and I've clarified my post. Maybe more Sim time, is the answer.
Personally it’s the only cause for sim work in the PPL, though I dislike the idea of more of it. Staying out of clouds is in the realm of effective PDM, which poor teaching of is the main culprit, but to be fair, some people will just have to go scare themselves, and then maybe not even then. To quote Tolkien: “the burned hand teaches best, only then does advice about fire go to the heart.” The sim can perhaps best be used in a simple exercise, that’s purpose isn’t to develop skill, but serve as a warning. Just make the student fly in a straight line for half an hour, turn on a bit of turbulence to keep them busy, then make then try to manipulate on of the navaids then a course change. Many, if they have only an hour or two of instrument practice will be overwhelmed by this simple bit and lucky to see the sim maintaining +/- 500’ and or +/-25 degrees of heading. If they didn’t get into a spiral dive during the heading change. The point to hammer home is a) stay the f@#k out of clouds, or b) do the practice and work to get an instrument rating. The game is played for keeps.
Respectfully, those specific trips I'm thinking of, were well beyond the capabilities of the weather for a small single engine piston, at night, beyond the aircraft's and the instructor's capabilities too.
One small point is that it may have been within the instructor’s pilot abilities, but not within their instruction abilities. A student is a huge workload burden, more so the greener the student. Advanced conditions require advanced students at the very least. I know enough dead instructors now, who maybe should have switched to full on pilot mode and ended the lesson. I don’t think students learn a bunch in passenger mode, even if the best intentions are had. Our disagreement has been productive if you can see now maybe those things come to be in the thought process. Your revised items in your post make more sense. If possible PPLs should be exposed to marginal VFR, to see how unfun the edge of their envelope is. Most new pilots have trouble spotting airports in clear skies even with the aid of the gps, now do it with 3sm vis.
I'm not sure what's more depressing: That everyone has a price, or how low the price always is.