Shiny Side Up wrote:The Dude wrote:Thanks for all the great feedback guys.
Airtide I have my mountain "rating", done on a perfect day. I agree with you that there is nothing more valuable than seeing the ugly stuff with an experienced instructor. Do you have any suggestions in the lower mainland?
Dude, if its an experienced instructor they won't go into the "ugly stuff". The Rocks have claimed enough pilots who thought the weather was "good enough".
Shiney, I've got to partly disagree with you here. It is in a student's best interests to see the realities of what an operation entails. It is for this reason that I am an advocate of IFR training while IMC, of taking a student out for a SVFR circuit, or showing someone how to navigate through the valleys when the weather is less than ideal, and possibly less than what the student is comfortable with, but at no time less than what the instructor is comfortable with. When I talk about an "experienced instructor", I'm talking about someone who works in this environment on a regular basis, and KNOWS when the weather is "good enough". My intention is certainly not to denigrate any of the fine people who have fallen victim to the unique problems posed by mountain flying, but rather to show that seeing how to operate in "the ugly stuff" is exactly what a student should get from an "experienced instructor".
An "experienced instructor" is not necessarily merely someone who has lots of experience instructing, but someone who has lots of experience flying operationally under a given circumstance and is able to convey the knowledge they have acquired doing that. An "experienced instructor" would never take a student out for a 'valley crawl' exercise in minimum VFR Wx, for example, because they know that operation is suicide. They wouldn't do it with a charter passenger, they wouldn't do it with a student.
I've been doing what many would consider the most dangerous type of flying there is for the past 8 years of my career, and have scared the $hit out of myself more than once. That is my "experience" in this field. What can I therefore convey to my other pilots and my students:? What did I do wrong to place myself in that situation, what do I do now to avoid going back to that situation, and what did I do to save my bacon (provided it was something other than just dumb luck

). That is exactly what a student is paying for, and the more realistic the training can be, the better.