While I'd agree that tailwheel time is a good skill builder there are relatively few tail wheel aircraft out there available for training, not to mention that there are getting less and less jobs involving one. A lot of potential pilots out there might never fly a tail wheel aircraft in their entire careers, I mean as far as I know Boeing and Airbus have no plans for any new revolutionary tail dragger airliners.
One point in favour of low time instructors is the fact that most low timers are still enthusiastic about finally getting into their first paying (or so they think ) flying job. An enthusiastic instructor is usually preferable to a jaded one. Besides the training enviornment is still a pretty safe area to polish up some skills in the aircraft especially when you have to set a good example, rather than being tossed to the wolves in some operation and having to learn as you go. Lastly who says the instructor has to be perfect to teach? We don't set this precedence anywhere else, Your english teacher probably flunked out so he became a teacher yet you still learned how to read and write. Experience isn't necessarily everything that makes a good instructor - granted that some are just in it for the time building, but what do you do? There are guys flying float planes and towing gliders for the same purpose but that doesn't make them any worse at their task.
There is far more to aviation than commercial charter and airliner type aircraft.
For instance at the airport where I am we have thirteen homebuilt aircraft, of the thirteen eleven are tail wheel airplanes.
There is only one tricycle gear land plane and one tricycle gear amphibian.
Last year two brothers bought a Taylorcraft and I gave the one with a PPL a checkout on it, the other brother could not find an instructor who would train him on the Taylorcraft. So he did his PPL on a 172.
God only knows how much more it cost him to train on a 172 when he should have been able to train on the Taylorcraft.
What is wrong with this picture?
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
I'm well aware of that, but how many just getting into aviation are? Besides, at my airport there are four tail draggers as opposed to the twenty nose wheel types. Of the nearest airports I can count on one hand how many taildraggers are available for rent or training.
I find it interesting how in the fixed wing world, many flight instructors have just the CPL + the Instructor Rating with minimum time, and in the rotary world (from what I have heard), the heli instructors seem to be the guys that have been there, done that, have a few thousand hours & tons of real world knowledge.
Do you think this have to do with the way the job market is (i.e. easy to get a job flying rotary at 200h as opposed to fixed wing) or the way it has become due to too many fixed wing pilots needing to do something to build time?
And I agree with the tailwheel time stuff. That's when you REALLY learn how to fly an airplane.
O.K. shiny Side up, by your own observation there are tail wheel airplanes that pilots can get checked out on should one wish to do so.
My question is this when you see the designation Class one Instructor and the person holding that license cannot fly a simple tail wheel airplane does this not seem to be strange?
Or am I just to simple minded to grasp this dichotomy?
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
.: you keep referring to a class 1 instructor that can't fly a tailwheel - by any chance are you alluding to the class 1 instructor/CFI at kitchener-waterloo a few years ago who, drunk on the authority and prestige granted to him by the omniescient and omnipotent Transport, jumped into a single-seat Pitts and wrecked it on the first flight?
Worse, I am told he had previously declined an offer of dual time in a two-seat because in his Transport-approved judgement, didn't need any.
Having a class one instructor rating denotes that your grasp of instructional technique is good enough that you can teach instructional technique. It is not intended to denote the ability to fly everything with wings.
One does not need taildragger time to learn about rudders. One just needs to fly something other than a C150/172 or PA28. The whole problem started back in the 50s when Cessna and Piper tried to make light aircraft as popular as cars. The first step in the process was to design low performance easy to handle a/c. Hence, the birth of the 150 and others like it. You can get away with ignoring the rudders on these a/c. The result is the current generation of pilots.
There are two ways to fix this problem. 1.) When teaching on a 150/172 make it a point to teach rudder skills. Turning and climbing in slow flight are excellent ways to to this. 2.) Do some time on something other than a 150/172. This could be a taildragger, or a Zlin
There is no need to increase the time requirements to get an instructor rating. If taught properly, a pilot should have sufficient flying skills by the time they reach 250 hrs. There is historical precedent for this. The BCATP used to get instructors by retaining the top students from each graduating class. 1000hrs for an instructor rating? Bullshite.
Now, this does not mean that there is not a problem. I will whole heartedly agree that rudder and attitude flying skills are sorely lacking (In fact, this is one of the things that TC in our region is focusing on). How do we fix the problem? Simple, SUPERVISON.
Most people think that supervison means getting your student monitored before 1st solo and before flight test. If you read the CARs you will find that it is supposed to be much more than this. The supervising instructor is supposed to keep pretty close tabs on what his class 4s are doing & the class 4's are supposed report to the supervising instructor pretty regularly.
Why did TC do this? Simple, they realize that a new instructor is not safe to go running about on his own, so they set up this mandatory mentoring system.
Does this get implemented the way it was supposed to? No. Of the 3 schools that I have worked at, only one tried to do properly. (The now defunct ATI). The other two let their class 4s do what ever the hell they want, as long as there is revenue.
I have a few class 4s that were nominally placed under my supervision. This was only done after TC drilled our CFI a new one over an incident. I have been able to drill a few things into their heads, but the rest of the class 4s, well.....
So, if you don't like the system, don't blame TC, don't blame the CARs, blame yourselves for letting it get this way. If you want to take it one step further than blame, why not try and change it. From reading some of the people posting in this thread, you must all have at least class 2 instructor ratings. Therefore you must all be supervising instructors. So, fix the system, SUPERVISE.
Why is it unreasonable to expect that a Class one not only understand " Instructional techniques" but also has at least the basic grasp of aircraft handling to be able to fly a damn simple single engine mickey mouse trainer that has a tail wheel on it?
No one is suggesting that they can fly everything with wings on it.
What I am alluding to is the very plain and simple fact that anyone can hold the title of "Class One" and not have the ability to fly the most simple of light aircraft.
How do you expect anyone to "SUPERVISE" something they can't do themselves?
Where is the tylenol??? I'm getting a headache..............
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
CD, If I didn't know better, I would think you were BSing a bit but I have flown a Tcart and they have to be the simpleist most gentle taildragger ever built. Hell, when you and I were just pups, if you went to a flight school to get checked out in one, they would probally just tell you to go jump in and fly it, Anyone can. I did. But to have an instructor that can't fly a taildragger is just beyond me.
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The average pilot, despite the somewhat swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy and caring.
These feelings just don't involve anyone else.
A taildragger is just another type of aircraft. It handles a bit differently on the taxi and t/o, but that is about it. The ability to fly it is not that important to ones overall flying skills. There is no magic to flying one. Anyone can get proficient on them in about 10 hrs. If you're going to require instructors to be proficient on different types of a/c then you had better require 5 hrs on a Lake, and on a Long Easy. They both handle much differently than a conventional.
You are wrong when you say that anyone can hold the a class one rating and not know how to fly a single engine aircraft. Part of the class one ride is the demonstration of superior flying skills (read 4s and 5s on a flight test). Having a class one rating means that you have demonstrated, to Transport, (and in this region they're pretty good), that you know how to fly.
As for supervision of class 4's flying a taildragger. No school that I know of operates one for ab initio training. All the taildraggers I've seen are used for teaching aerobatics. Hence there is no need to provide supervision on one.
So, Cat, when you were applying for your FTU OC, what sort of plans did you put in place to see to adequate supervision of your class 4s?
I still say at 250 hours a person doesn't know enough about flying to be teaching it! Transport should up the requirements! If they start out in the right seat at 250 hours by time they do log 1000 hours how much actual hands on experience do they really have? Have they had the chance to experience getting into crappy little grass fields with howling cross winds? I doubt it very much but hey it's fun going round and round the patch in a buck fifty. Most are good (not all) at knowing the theory but they just don't have the actual hands on experience I look for in an instructor.
I'd train with a guy like Cat long before I would take a fresh college grad with 250 hours TT. At least when they talk about something they are talking from real world experience not just what the book says. Transport blew it in my eyes by pissing a guy off who could have contributed so much to the world of aviation.
They want 1500 hours for the ATPL which by that time most of us have either sat next to or will sit next to a guy with a ton more experience than us. Experience, experience, experience that's what counts!
I think people are putting much to much into being able to fly a tail dragger. After the first couple of hr. in the pattern it becomes a non event. As much as anything the ability of an instructor is based on attitude. The most able pilots will not make good instructors if they do not want to be there.
A novice instructor has a place in any learning enviroment if properly monitored. We all are able to learn on the job and it is expected. I was a better instructor after 200 hrs of instructing and better still after a 1000. A problem I see with training now is not the depth of talent of the individual instructor but the total depth of talent within the whole flight training department. Years ago, and I go back a long way, most pilots could expect to instruct for a long time before other jobs opened up. Most training departments had a number of high time instructors on staff. A student who flew with both novice and experienced instructors tended to get a well ballanced flying experience.
For a number of years now I have seen resumes of more and more high time pilots who have little or no instructing time. It is sad but the experience level in schools only gets better during times of prolonged slow downs when instructors hold their jobs longer.
You and I are eons apart in our conversation as evident in the tail wheel question.
First of all if I had an instructor that needed ten hours to figure out how to fly a simple tail wheel airplane I would not let him mow my lawn, much less fly my airplanes.
At no point have I indicated that there is any great difficulty flying tail wheel airplanes, what amazes me is knowing that it is normal to have the designation class one and be unable to do something as simple as check out someone on a tail wheel airplane because you don't know how to fly one..............
Maybe TC should re classify them and have the rating called something like class 1-A designating that the individual can fly all single engine training aircraft...and Class 1-B limited to nose wheel airplanes?
So you are telling me that they designate a class one as having superior flying skills and there are a bunch of them that can not fly small tail wheel airplanes.......that is really weird to my way of thinking.
With regard to what sort of plans I presented to TC on how I would supervise my class 4's...I don't recall giving them any plans for that, was I supposed to?
No fu..ing wonder they would not let me operate a flight school, I obviously don't have the right stuff.
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
Granted a class one who has no tail wheel experience shouldn't be able to check anyone else out on one or teach on one that's just common sense. If you've encountered someone trying to do so then just chalk it up to the fact that you've just met another person who's doing something stupid in an airplane.
But to require every Class one to be qualified in tail draggers just makes no sense - the point was brought up before. Currently there are no taildraggers available for ab initio training they are pretty much all dedicated aerobatic trainers or tail wheel checker outers. (At least in all of Alberta - I've looked!) Like most training schools twins or floatplanes the school won't let them out solo either. So why the heavy need to be completely competent in one? Besides the fact that no two aircraft are alike who's to say being checked out in a Citabria qualifies one to be qualified in a Champ. So where would having someone "tail wheel qualified" help us? What a class one confers is ability in instructional technique - it has nothing to do with type proficiency. Just as it doesn't qualify one to teach on a twin, a floatplane, or skiplane, etc. Keep in mind there's more to being a qualified instructor than just good stick and rudder skills. It don't matter how proficient you are if you can't show someone else how you're doing it.
Lastly I hate to tell you, but the nose wheel aircraft are the wave of the future, so until they come out with antigrav ships or something you're going to have a lot more people proficient on them than tail draggers, and some of them just might be good pilots too.
Forget the tail wheel airplanes, they can be left to the people who own them and of course there enough pilots who do not have instructor ratings that are more than qualified to check em out...
Please bear with me in my new position of " If I were in charge "
I will need time to readjust my thinking process to understand the world of ab-initio flight training in our fair country.
Just give me some slack here because I am stuck in the thinking process of what I do for a living which is advanced flight training and I have sort of lost contact with ab-initio stuff.......................However I do see some significant concerns in the quality of pilots that are churned out the doors of some flight training operations after being trained for over twice the suggested hours required.
Any how here is another suggestion on how to improve the flight training industry.
Are you ready???
Shi. can every Transport Canada written exam and have someone prepare exams that are focused on the knowledge level of the art of flying and its related subjects, that ask the question in a straight foward clear manner, instead of the present system that are designed to trick you into not understanding the question.......because some moron in Ottawa wants a set percentage of failure rates.
Cat.
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
chipmunk wrote:
Do you think this have to do with the way the job market is (i.e. easy to get a job flying rotary at 200h as opposed to fixed wing) or the way it has become due to too many fixed wing pilots needing to do something to build time?
I'm hoping the rotary instructors are making 30/hr. Yes, they do have more hours and experience. Yes, you'll probably get hired at 200h in heli. btw, I thought it was 100 hours to get Heli-Cpl?
But you're paying $1k/hr on a Ranger and $500/hr for the robinson. And you need the turbine conversion. So your training will cost around $50k
And you only have 3k heli-pilots, while as we have 20k ATPL/Cpl pilots.
Transport written exams are made up by delicate, sensitive English majors, whom I suspect were beaten up every day at recess by large, smelly guys who aren't very good at comprehending all the trick questions.
Basically, it's revenge of the nerds.
Remember also that Transport wants to see a certain failure rate on tests and questions, so questions that test your aviation knowledge will get dropped over time in favour of trick questions that trip people up, leaving us with the dog's breakfast that we have today.
I don't know if anybody here gets out much, but in the USA all the FAA questions are in the public domain - sorta like the PSTAR.
Can I take a temporary posting as Chief advisor to your position?
I'll outline some suggestions for the new Commercial Training/Testing and then you can critique them along with everyone else out there.
Added Ciriculum:
Stalls:
Departure Stalls: 60 degree climbing stalls
Descending Stalls
Recovery Stalls: Stalls at a higher than normal airspeed simulating a bad recovery from a regular stall.
Landing/Takeoffs
Crosswind: 10kts of 90 degree crosswind,
Short Field: Draw out guidlines for each plane ie. No more than 20% over POH listings.
Soft Field: Do an actual soft field landing/takeoff in a soft field. Or require a simulated one without touching the nosewheel to the pavement.
In flight handling
Slow Flight: Not just straight and level but thirty degree bank turns climbing and descending.
Chandelles
Lazy Eights
Wing Overs
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We have no effective screening methods to make sure pilots are sane.
— Dr. Herbert Haynes, Federal Aviation Authority.
Some years ago I was talking to the guy from TC in Ottawa who was responsible for the written exams.
I asked him why they keep changing the exams and making the questions more difficult to understand.
His answer was the flight schools keep feeding the correct answers to their students and TC has a mandate to get a 27% failure rate in the writtens.
So I looked him in the eyes ( there was the look of zero nureon activity apparent behind them. ) and politely asked what exactly did he find wrong with the schools teaching the correct answers.
All I got was gibberish out of him so I went out to the hangar to finish an inspection.
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
No, No just give me time to get my breath back....
It is like getting kicked in the nuts by an elephant reading such sane suggestions....
Fu.k you can take my position and run with it with those kind of ideas..........
Next thing you know we will actually do some good together.....
Remember once you get the instructors rating you can teach your students any way you want, just make sure you do the paper work to make TC think you are doing it their way...
If they get to wondreing what in f..k is going on when the quality of pilot skills leap up, just lie to them...
Their bosses live and thrive on dishonesty so don't let em know that you are plagiarizeing their methods...
The Government hates us stealing anything from them, they think that the right to steal belongs to them..
Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no
After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
I also agree that Canada should go the route the FAA has gone.
Publish all of the questions for every exam. I learned far more from preparing an exam which is filled with a database of 1000 questions then I ever learned preparing for a TC exam.
Going into a TC exam is always a surprise. Sure you have the topic areas to study but really reading half of the quesitons they publish I find it hard to see what the exam is actually trying to measure. If a test is written to achieve a pass/fail rate then it is not written to score a students level of understanding.
I would be curious . to see a reference for your 27% fail rate. An email or PM would be better if you got one.
My suggestion for TC would be to either write exams that are not multiple choice but writtne or publish their database of questions.
If the goal is to see the level of understanding a student has, make the exam a written exam.
If the goal is to make sure a student is familure with all subject areas, publish a database of 2000 questions for each written exam.
avcanada wrote:
I would be curious . to see a reference for your 27% fail rate. An email or PM would be better if you got one.
Don't know about the fail rate, but the chaps at AeroCourse mentioned that once a question has been answered correctly 75% it's disregarded and a new one is added..
TC forces students to attend places like AeroCourse where they're fed the answers.. He even said, "I can't remember if it was b, but c and d were wrong" for one of the questions he wanted us to be prepared for.
Students don't learn anything with the TC method, they just memorize words and paragraphs.
I remember asking my instructor a question once, and he told me to look it up in the book I pulled it out and I was like, dude, I know where it is, I know what it says I just don't know what it means.
Answer - "don't worry you don't need to know what it means, just need to know it"
Don't know about the fail rate, but the chaps at AeroCourse mentioned that once a question has been answered correctly 75% it's disregarded and a new one is added..
Well that is the dumbest policy I have ever heard. I agree that questions need to be updated/modified and even deleted but why remove a question that is measuring understanding. How about if a question is not answered correctly by 40% of the students it is dropped or reworded, the question would then appear in the next AIP ammendments with the resources to be reviewed and studied by all students and training facilities. This would bring the entire industry in line with what TC feels is a topic that needs more training. It will also remove all questions that truly need to be replaced.
TC should strive to achieve students with a 100% on written exams. What resources does a student really have in order to get 100% on a written. I would actually be interested to know how many students actually get 95% or better on a TC exam. Is this published anywhere?
Again I think the right way for TC to go would be to just publish there database for all to access.
It has been a while since I have done a TC exam but are they still doing paper multiple choice exams? If so I still think the FAA system is far surperior. Make a computer generated test that gets the questions from a large database that is accessible to all via the internet or published books.
I have no idea what TC policies are in regards to the make up of exams but I do know that in my opinion they are worded to mislead.
I wish there was more glider work....and that it was emphasized a little more. Gliders taught me so much.......if you really want to stay up there...you'd better understand how your plane is working..and that every cm of movement on your control column or rudder peddal could potentially knock off 5seconds from your flight....but those 5 seconds add up...
Man..I love gliders...
This is a great discussion, thanks for starting it Cat....
) flying job. An enthusiastic instructor is usually preferable to a jaded one. Besides the training enviornment is still a pretty safe area to polish up some skills in the aircraft especially when you have to set a good example, rather than being tossed to the wolves in some operation and having to learn as you go. Lastly who says the instructor has to be perfect to teach? We don't set this precedence anywhere else, Your english teacher probably flunked out so he became a teacher yet you still learned how to read and write. Experience isn't necessarily everything that makes a good instructor - granted that some are just in it for the time building, but what do you do? There are guys flying float planes and towing gliders for the same purpose but that doesn't make them any worse at their task.
