So... in your repetoire of tricks, what's your favorite small training aid that you built?Ok, I did the refresher course, now I'm gonna start to build up my notes for ground briefings and groundschools. Being old, and treacherous, I am going to start looking around for copies of the accident reports from around here, and take pictures of the crashes, as well as some of the truly goofy spots we take the otters into, so there's a little more show and tell than the usual private pilot groundschool. I'm not gonna re-invent the wheel, or redo the FIG curriculum. I'm basically gonna give'em the old: "What when why where how", but with better illustrations (when I can think of them.) When I get this stuff all built, I wanna make sure I don't give 'em death by powerpoint!
Having said that, we have a guy who cut a Twin otter prop section apart, and put in an electric motor so people can see how props reduce engine speed to less rpm and torque, and how beta and reverse and feather works. I can't and won't do that. I'm nowhere near that talented.
Reading back through 40 pages of training threads, I gleaned the fact that Pugsley was a deft hand at Powerpoint, moviemaker, flashpoint presentations. I probably can't do that either. I'll pester Pugsley later.
I did see a guy with a fridge magnet with the inside of the rectangle carved open so that it looks like the view out the front of a 172. Put it over a straight black line on a whiteout board, or a beer fridge, and you have pretty good idea of what the horizon should look like in a steep turn.We didn't have a whiteout board, we had a beer fridge. It's not like the stone ages though, only one third of our planes were made out of cloth and wood.
One of the more ambitious guys on the refresher course had a Jepp-sized patter book he made himself (thanks and a tip of the hat to Tim!)
- I had 3 airplane silloettes top side and head on. Built'em out of aluminum, riveted a magnet to the back and painted 'em in harvard yellow. Since they were Harvard silloettes, it seemed appropriate. Now of course, Harvards are the stuff of museums. I might use the Harvard II I suppose.
- I had a piece of copper pipe that attached to a vacuum. had a plexiglass window, and a small airfoil on a stick. Light a smoke (hey, all my students back then smoked
) hold it at the open end, instant wind tunnel - I made up a Twin Otter Sim for Dummies briefing booklet...
- Flash cards... Millions of them... I'm starting to think I should market them... Ive got a package for just about everything. Wolfie
- I built a cutaway engine for ground school. It was an old O-290 case, crank, and cam with some kit-bashed O-320 rods, pistons, and cylinders installed. Also had a carburetor, mag, and a few instruments. I got my hands dirty when I taught. Iflyforpie
- One of
my personal favorites was a bicycle wheel, to
demonstrate gyroscopic precession
Hedley - Our training shop just mocked up a comm panel for one of our in-house panel items, out of old beer cans and spare switches, which is more durable than the real thing. JC
-
2 peices of paper, 1 pencil/pen.Flight training manual for pictures.
When its ground school:same as above, except the paper is replaced with a chalk board, and in some cases, a powerpoint presentation.767 - I did a bunch of Powerpoint stuff for ground school. Too lazy to learn flash. iflyforpie
- I saw a couple really sweet IPhone apps for ADF work today. Dunno their names yet JC
- One of the best I saw was the simplest (and cheapest) for describing compass errors:
Paper cup, paper clip, pencil (for the swivel as well as marking the compass points on the cup).
Put the N, 3, 6, E, 12, 15, S, 21, 24, W, 30 and 33 around the rim (the right direction of course), put the paper clip on S, poke a hole in the bottom of the cup, swivel it on the tip of the pencil and "Voila" your compass training aid.
This is great for showing northerly turning error as well as acceleration/deceleration lead and lag.
And it doesn't cost you anything if you stole the paper cup, pencil and paper clip like all good instructors. It does make having that second cup of coffee later a little tricky though. luscombe - Not something I made per se, but I've used this quite often to explain instrument navigation. It's a small Java applet called Tim's Air Navigation Simulator.
http://www.visi.com/~mim/nav/ louis - I've made a few transparencies to help with attitudes and movements, as well as one with the NACA 2412 (the airfoil used on the 172) Cl/Alpha and Cd/Alpha graphs when talking about theory of flight and stalls.
Another one with a photo clearly showing how to determine wind direction on looking at a lake. louis
cut a square in plywood
put a pen in the hold
stick strings following the image
illustrate forces on an aircraft by pulling on different strings =
the consequence of thrust
added drag (flaps)
weight
increasing the lift (AOA)
works fine
- From Bronco Billy, proof that effective does not alway require expensive, complex training aids:
"At my school some instructors used a loose sheet of paper to show how lift works,
At first what is hard to understand is that when a wing flies, its not pushed upward, but sucked up.
They would hold the end of the sheet in front of their face and would try to make a wing profile out of it,
Then they would blow a good shot over the upper end of it and the sheet would lift upward.
There you go! You now know that with a difference of wind on the two sides of the wing profile you can create lift!" - As well from Bronco Billy, links to to VOR/ Instrument flash simulators:
"For myself I will put some links on the famous Tim Air sim and another french Canadian program that I find pretty nice."
http://airinstruction.com/click/view.ph ... ownload=33
I really like the apps on this site, which I had never seen previously. Although language skill are required to figure out what some of the flash apps are, they (in particular the VOR & ADF!) work like a hot damn!
http://www.visi.com/~mim/nav/
