If I were in charge

[justplanecrazy]

What an excellent first post!!!!!!!!!! Lets give a warm welcome for the freshly baked and about to be fried model flight instructor!

Personally I think you should reread your PDM manual before you continue posting!

[Cat Driver]

I have a better idea for Johnny............

Just go to TC and have a look at my past record and if you can find anything that would support your description of me, post it here...

But you must name the TC official who gave you "anything" that would discredit my background....

That is the fair way to get to the truth.

Johnny, here is a deal for you...........I normally have a minimum charge of 500 Euros per. day for part time flying instruction.

But for you I'll make an exception, you come out to Nanaimo and I'll fly with you one hour for free to see what you can teach me.

Cat Driver:

[N2]

Justplanecrazy is Johnny freshly baked or half baked?

[justplanecrazy]

I haven't seen any comments on this, still looking for some feedback:

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

[cyyz]

I haven't seen any comments on this, still looking for some feedback:

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.

Chandelles
Lazy Eights
Wing Overs

The stalls would lead to many deaths as would the aerobatics. I wouldn't have felt safe being instructed with some of my instructors..

As for the items that were erased. Those were included in the training.

But with a proper instruction, sure I would have enjoyed doing the aerobatics.

[mcrit]

justplane:
I suggested adding the stalls/slow flight in a previous thread. As for the wingovers etc, I don't see much point. They really don't require that much finesse on the controls and the time could be better spent on other exercises.
For the person that suggested that the stall practice would lead to more deaths:
I'll be blunt. You should be comfortable recovering from a stall in any configuration (given a safe altitude). If you aren't, then go and get some dual training until you are. I teach all of my students how to recover from a stall in any configuration. ie full power full flap climbing right turn. By the time I'm done with them they can get the a/c under control and only loose about 150'. Every instructor should be doing this with their students.

[cyyz]

I'll be blunt. You should be comfortable recovering from a stall in any configuration (given a safe altitude).

That's what a spin is supposed to be, a "departure stall." But when you practice it at 6000 ft, it loses it's "point."

Or losing a mark on your flight test for "entry into stall/spin/spiral didn't meet expectations"..

"now student enter the stall" 'cause you know, all the Air Canada pilots like to stall their planes on take off.

If you're going to practice something do it right. Do a "departure stall" on departure..

As I said, that would lead to many deaths.. But those that survived would prove to be good pilots.. Those that don't, obviously weren't meant to fly anyways.

But IMO knowing how to stall the plane and recover from it are two different items. And I'd rather fly with the guy who doesn't know how to stall/spin/spiral/crash the plane.

[mcrit]

And how would you suggest that one learn how to recover from a stall if one never stalls the aircraft?

[cyyz]

They can put me into the stall. I shouldn't have to show them how to stall it.

[FA28 guy]

The more any student learns before he is allowed to carry passengers the better. In the last few year I have noticed that the rudder doesn't seem to exist for pilots on final they correct with aileron and start the airplanr rolling and yawing. the yawing seems to get worse and worse as they slow down and get closer to the ground. Tail wheel would probably make student better than instrument training but try to find a tail wheel airplane that's affordable. More experienced instructor will always produce more knowledable students but where do you draw the line. At one time to be an instructor you had to have 200 PIC but thanks to the community college system that changed.

[justplanecrazy]

One of the worst cases of reasoning that I've ever seen!!!

I'll be blunt. You should be comfortable recovering from a stall in any configuration (given a safe altitude).

That's what a spin is supposed to be, a "departure stall." But when you practice it at 6000 ft, it loses it's "point."

Or losing a mark on your flight test for "entry into stall/spin/spiral didn't meet expectations"..

"now student enter the stall" 'cause you know, all the Air Canada pilots like to stall their planes on take off.

If you're going to practice something do it right. Do a "departure stall" on departure..

As I said, that would lead to many deaths.. But those that survived would prove to be good pilots.. Those that don't, obviously weren't meant to fly anyways.

But IMO knowing how to stall the plane and recover from it are two different items. And I'd rather fly with the guy who doesn't know how to stall/spin/spiral/crash the plane.

First off, how does unusual attitude recovery at altitude lose its point?? If you lose 1000' in recovery you have a pretty good understanding that you just killed yourself.

Second, when someone practices stalls, spins, spiral dives, they are learning the flight envelope. If you simply told a student that this will happen when in this configuration they would be paranoid of ever approaching that configuration. Someone who regularly stalls, spins, spiral dives his plane will know where the exact point is where the plane will lose control. Once they know this, they can be right next to this point without being in any danger of losing control.

What you're suggesting is give a kid a bicycle but never remove the training wheels. "Now daddy will show you what happens when you lean to far over. I won't let you do it though cause you might hurt yourself. (kid age 21)" Do you really want to fly with someone who's never removed the training wheels???

That's like saying you want to take a trip on a plane where the pilot has never handled an emergency over the seasoned air force pilot who's dealt with it all and survived. According to your reasoning the pilot who's never had to deal with an emergency won't get into one.

How does it smell up there? Your head being in your ass and all

[cyyz]

How does it smell up there? Your head being in your ass and all

A refined smell, that of a french prostitute.

Like you mentioned an airforce pilot who's done and survived it all.

When little timmy has a stall at 50ft he's going to die, even with his training.

When the british soldiers advanced on the Americans it was found that most of the muskets still had the ball/bullet inside it. They hadn't even fired a shot, but they were trained on how to use the item.

Fear and panic will set in for several pilots and they'll crash, even though they've been trained. Some will even kill themselves because they were "following the book."

The only way you can guarantee 100% that a pilot will not freeze or panic in a departure stall is if they encounter it first hand.

That's why numerous companies have created "surviving a water crash".. Commonsense dictates, plane is in the water get out... Why do these people need to get trained on this? With such extreme detail? Because they've done studies showing people panic, don't know what to do etc. Even the military has its dunk tanks.. Why?

You can't beat the real thing.

If you want, we can continue to argue. But like you said "my head's up my arse" and so is yours so we'll never agree.

But as I stated in my original post, "IMO" "in my opinion".

[Shiny Side Up]

No, if you want a guarantee on something, buy a toaster. Not even that is going to guarantee someone is going to recover from it when they do it themselves, besides, if we believe the low opinion of instructor competence around here, what's to guarantee that he's going to recover every time?

The whole point of stall recoveries, and a lot of the recovery procedures, is to make it an ingrained response. Horn goes off - recovery initiated. That's not to say that you're going to be 100% successful. Like your above example, despite modern training in realistic situations some soldiers faced with real combat still hesitate - The key is most of them don't. (otherwise we wouldn't have war!) Fortunately for us, flying airplanes isn't as hazardous as combat is, and not nearly as stressful.

Secondly, like any good instructor knows, scare your students enough and they might not come back. I hate to remind some people here but we're not in the military and we're generally not training people for combat! If we're flying F-18s then by all means! But most people I know are doing there PPL on a clapped out 172 or some similar hard done to beast. Unless they're going commercial - in which case they'll have that whole 150 hours of time building to improve their skills to really qualify to fly other people around - chances are they just want a licence to go bomb around the patch on Sunday.

[duplicate2]

If you're going to practice something do it right. Do a "departure stall" on departure..

As I said, that would lead to many deaths.. But those that survived would prove to be good pilots.. Those that don't, obviously weren't meant to fly anyways.

That's why numerous companies have created "surviving a water crash".. Commonsense dictates, plane is in the water get out... Why do these people need to get trained on this? With such extreme detail? Because they've done studies showing people panic, don't know what to do etc. Even the military has its dunk tanks.. Why?

You can't beat the real thing.

Commonsense would also dictate that when simulating an underwater egress, you don't do it by strapping people into a real plane and dropping it in the ocean. It's in a controlled environment (=pool) with numerous safeguards (=divers, lifeguards, etc). Your example is actually a better analogy for practicing departure stalls at altitude.

I would also think that using deaths during departure stall training as a way of weeding out weak pilots (and apparently weak instructors, or is this solo?) would not be indicative of commonsense. I think it's a pretty callous, unprofessional, and disturbing that any pilot would shrug off potential deaths of other aviators with a "them's the breaks" type attitude.

[mcrit]

Guys, I think that yyz is just trying to yank our chains. Nobody can be that dense as still run a computer. I suggest that we ignore him.

[Cat Driver]

I agree and remember "Im in charge".

So carry on with useful ideas.

Cat

[Shiny Side Up]

So can I have a raise?

[sakism]

Two ideas:

1 - To address the quality of aspiring pilots.

Some sort of test which must be written prior to commencing flight training. A very hard idea to nail down to specifics - but we all agree that not everyone should be taking lessons, let alone being licenced.

2 - To address the quality of instructors.

FTU's should have to provide some time in the aircraft to their instructors, on a regular basis. This would allow the instructors to work out their own weedy areas, develop different methods of teaching exercises and keep them sharper in terms of 'stick and rudder' skills.

Sure, all instructing time is PIC, but the time spent handling the aircraft is minimal (especially with post-solo students). How is one's 'feel' for the aircraft going to improve if they never get to touch the aircraft?

Knowledge and teaching ability definitely improve with instructing experience, but actual 'flying' skills are bound to deteriorate.

[cyyz]

Secondly, like any good instructor knows, scare your students enough and they might not come back.

Good. I remember doing my 100nm, landing at the field having my door swing open on final(which shouldn't happen and no one believed me) scared the sh*t out of me. I did an overshoot because I was frightened, instead of landing.

I was clutching the door all the way back home. Once I did arrive, I didn't want to go back. Instead of my brilliant instructor saying "oh, I believe you" it was "lol, what a tale, that's not possible."

Luckily I had several friends in the industry. One suggested we go up without the doors. Issue resolved.

"I think it's a pretty callous, unprofessional, and disturbing that any pilot would shrug off potential deaths of other aviators with a "them's the breaks" type attitude."

A death now or a death later down the line is still a death.

" if you want a guarantee on something, buy a toaster"

Guarantee, the only guarantee I want, is one that states that buddy who can't enter a "stall" is worse than the guy who can enter a "stall." In which case, why do we have so many accidents?

Just cause you can stall the plane doesn't make you king sh8t.

"Guys, I think that yyz is just trying to yank our chains"

[shitdisturber]

Had a door pop open on me once, can't remember if I was licensed yet or not, just remember it scared the crap out of me. Then as a Class 4 on climb out I looked over and noticed my student's door hanging open in the breeze; playing the cool, collected instructor, I kept him talking while I reached in behind his seat and closed it with him none the wiser. God we instructors are masterful bullshitters!

[Shiny Side Up]

You're also forgetting what a good portion of the instruction is meant to do: prevent. While we teach a student how the aircraft gets into a stall and of course how to get out of it the main points of the lesson are recognition and avoidance. Monkeys can be taught how to recover from a stall with the appropriate stimulus - but since hopefully your average student is brighter than your average chimp they can also learn how to avoid it. Its the whole reason we do the slow flight lesson first. So the student can recognize and avoid that situation and recover if necessary. In other words hopefully a pilot gets themselves out of or maintains control in slow flight before actually getting to a stall.

Now the question here arises: do you happen to get into departure stalls all of the time? If you do I would assume that there is something wrong with the way you've been taught to fly. As we all know the lessons before stalls and slowflight usually revolve around climbing and decending, hopefully a student can execute these without getting into a stall after a lesson. If they can't - which might then necessitate further practice in stall recovery - I would suggest getting to the root of the problem In other words how they climb the aircraft.

Now what we've went through here is prevention, prevention, prevention. Now in all my flight experience I've never stalled the aircraft by accident. One would wonder why I would then need to take such hazardous training in the event that I might do so as you reccomend. Well lets look at stall/spin situations, especially departure type ones that have caused accidents. In probably half of them the no amount of recovery practice would have saved them: the a/c was overloaded, out of CoG, catastrophic structural failure, etc. In the other bunch you'll find such examples as light aircraft buzzing runways, farms, people etc. in which in the resultant pull up and climb the aircraft stalled, spun and became a ball of metal or flaming hole. Now you might say if these people might have had better departure stall recovery practice they might be alive. A better idea though would be to discourage them from gotten into that situation in the first place.

But that's just me.

[justplanecrazy]

Shiny side up,

I think we've got a little sidetracked here by yyz's posts showing us all that it is better to go into combat not knowing how to fire your gun.

The whole reason we should be teaching these advanced stalls and advanced manouvers is to teach a student how to fly a plane. No departure stalls aren't that common and we don't need to teach a student how to climb better. The point is that there seem to be a lot more accidents occuring in the areas of flight training where the pilot is suddenly required to have good stick and rudder skills (ie. float training, mountain flying). I can name four companies that have lost a total of five float training aircraft in the past two years.

If we want to stop this, then those pilots that are going to be taking a commercial test should be checked more thourougly with their piloting skills. When they get to that last 50 hours of their 150 that they need to build, they should have learned something more than what was taught in their private training. How do we do this? well by adding more stalls, manouvers, and stricter guidelines as pointed out before. A commercial pilot should be able to fly a plane and we all know that not all of them can.

[mcrit]

JPC
Good point. I always hammer home the prevention message. But that doesn't mean that you can't teach the student recovery technique also. Knowing both makes for a well rounded and knowledgable pilot.

[Shiny Side Up]

By all means someone of the commercial level should have a greater degree of skill with the airplane -better stick and rudder of course. But where the CPL really falls down is in its requirements for PDM ability. While its nice to have the skill to recover a stall in fifty feet before the earth reaches up and smites thee, its better if they don't get to that spot in the first place. One of the best excersises required for the CPL is the 300 mile cross country requirement. Rather than the usual rip around the local greenery it for once requires a pilot to make better decisions base on weather, range and their own capabilities all in hopefully a strange enviornment - somewhere at least 300 miles away. This is the first chance some pilots have to get themselves in a bit of trouble to give them a wake up call on how their skills might need to be brushed up. Particularly in making the crucial go/no go decision. You're stuck at some strip in the middle of Hell's half acre and there ain't no airport LTD what do you do? Its the first time many might be subjected to some serious "get home syndrome" Sure you might be on a first name basis with the tower guy at Springbank, but what do you do if the guy at Regina starts giving you trouble? Decision making time!

Should there be better requirements for the old stick and rudder? Gods yes! But I personally think the part that needs work is a pilot's decision making capacity. Because if you really want to get to the root of why people crash airplanes - here it is.

When you say that someone piled in a plane into a cumulo-granite because they didn't have the appropriate steep turn or stall recovery skills. I'd counter that by saying that given that pilot's skill level, he/she shouldn't have made the decision to go there in the first place.

[cyyz]

Shiny side up,

I think we've got a little sidetracked here by yyz's posts showing us all that it is better to go into combat not knowing how to fire your gun.

Lol, maybe sidetracked. But I just copy pasted Shiny Side's post.. =) Once you hear students quoting Shiny you know who's to blame. =) Thanks Shiny.

But others had some good quotes too.

Oh, yeah.. We can go back to if CD was in charge.. =)