How Many?

[Strega]

With all the talk of crashing close to the ground, ect I have a question.

How many instructors teach their students how to fly and judge their AOA from references outside the cockpit? For example, how many of your students would be able to comfortably fly without the airspeed indicator? -- I dont mean not looking at it, I mean if if was not present or was not functioning.


S

[KK7]

Anytime I suspected a student was spending too much time watching the instruments, I simply covered them all up. I had 6 instrument covers in my headset bag for just such an occasion. Try flying a few circuits with no flight instruments whatsoever and it's amazing what a student can do after.

I once had a student that had been to two other well respected schools and after being passed around to different instructors right up to their respective CFIs, the student was told that she would never be able to get licenced. Luckily she persevered and decided to try one more school. She came to us, and this was after the other CFI called us to "warn" us about her.

One flight was all it took to notice that the whole time she was staring at the instruments! She played a lot of flight sim at home, and this is a common symptom of ab initio students who are simulator pros. Anyways, I popped out my 6 suction cup soap dishes and slapped them on the instruments and suddenly she knew how to fly once she had no choice but to look outside.

[5x5]

One flight was all it took to notice that the whole time she was staring at the instruments!

Likely you are exaggerating to make a point - and I completely agree that too much reference to instruments is damaging to the rate of progress when learning to fly. You have to address it and covering the instruments is the way to go.

However, the "flight sim jockey" is one of the classic problem students and it is hard to believe two schools and multiple instructors would have missed something so obvious you noticed it in the very first flight. I'm not doubting your abilities in any way, just can't believe that those numerous other instructors would have been so bad. I feel there must have been factors involved that are perhaps to involved to relate. But by shortening up as you did does them a disservice.

It's hard enough to fight the B.S. that comes from pilots in other sectors of the industry without turning on ourselves.

And again, not directed specifically to you at all, but there has been waaaaay too much of that going on lately. The name calling, derogatory and condescending remarks, and blanket questioning of other instructor's skills are becoming much too frequent. If we want others to respect us as a group, we have to respect each other first.

[crazy_aviator]

it took 3 instructors to figure this out ,,,HMM, what has the training world come to?

[iflyforpie]

Only one of my instructors covered up the instruments during my flight training. I only flew with him once while doing my float training. None of the others ever caught my fixation on the instruments.

Out in the mountains for most of my flying, I've never really had too much of a meaningful horizon to use. Some days are worse than others....




Plus, attitudes change. Take a plane with a full load on a hot day and then fly the same one lightly loaded in the winter and the nose-up attitudes for best rate will be noticeably different for each. The only way you can know for sure that you are flying it right is with the airspeed indicator or an angle of attack indicator.

I use the feel of the aircraft, which is a hard thing to teach a student. This is why trim and flying with a light touch is so important as well as paying attention to the sounds of the aircraft and responsiveness of the controls.

In more advanced training, I was told that about one second out of ten should be used to look at the instruments when flying VFR; kind of like a radial scan, but with more devotion to that natural horizon.

[lownslow]

If we all flew simpler airplanes it would be a lot less tempting to look inside so much.


Heck, we could even put instruments in places that MADE you look outside...


Oh yeah, and put me on the list of people who teach other people to fly without instruments. A zero instrument approach and landing is on my pre-solo checklist and there are usually a couple steep turns done that way too at the very least. I've never had anyone have trouble with either one, they just don't believe it's possible until they try it themselves. Good for skill, great for confidence.

LnS.

[gaamin]

Oh yeah, and put me on the list of people who teach other people to fly without instruments. A zero instrument approach and landing is on my pre-solo checklist and there are usually a couple steep turns done that way too at the very least. I've never had anyone have trouble with either one, they just don't believe it's possible until they try it themselves. Good for skill, great for confidence.

+1
The first few flights often have the 6-pack covered by my map to make these pilots-to-be feel the plane and see the visual references.
A fair amount of this in the circuit too. Students do generally much better without the instruments, unfortunately we have to let them fly with them in sight even on VFR flights .

[KK7]

One flight was all it took to notice that the whole time she was staring at the instruments!

Likely you are exaggerating to make a point - and I completely agree that too much reference to instruments is damaging to the rate of progress when learning to fly. You have to address it and covering the instruments is the way to go.

Unfortunately I am not exaggerating. It was obvious in the first two circuits I did with her (she had conducted all the pre-solo exercises, and told me that the circuit was where her problem was, so we started off with this) that she wasn't looking outside. Her only other major issue was her lack of confidence since she was told twice over by respected instructors that she wasn't ever going to be able to fly. She went on to go solo in good time, and complete her PPL. She is working on a CPL in her spare time now.

I don't mean any disrespect to the other instructors, I'm not mentioning any names or they work, and you don't know where I worked. As I said, they are well respected instructors who work for good flight schools. Unfortunately some students slip through the cracks, and I'm also not saying I'm not guilty of this either. I do have to say that I was a little surprised given that two experienced instructors told her this, and that we even got a phone call warning us about her. The call came in the form of telling us they had to let go a of a student because she was wasting her time, couldn't handle the aircraft safely and was likely one of these people that just have bad hands and feet. But she had good hands and feet from what I saw, once she had to look outside.

So no, I'm not trying to knock my fellow instructors otherwise I would be much more specific about who they are. I'm just trying to show the value and importance of looking outside particularly when students are starting off, and I don't think it's a skill that is always recognized as important by some otherwise top notch instructors out there.

[niwre]

you don't know where I worked.

Just taking a stab in the dark but did you work around the CKK7 area?

[KK7]

you don't know where I worked.

Just taking a stab in the dark but did you work around the CKK7 area?

Negative, never flew in that area. My name on AvCanada has nothing to do with any location. But I'm not going to turn this into a guessing game!