basic skilss/instincts

[rigpiggy]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/a ... inct.thtml

As someone who has a panic attack when the Sky box fails to work, I am fascinated by people who stay calm in a major crisis. Hence I love listening to cockpit voice recordings on YouTube. Among the best are Apollo XIII and ‘US Airways Flight 1549’ — the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’.

With both engines of an Airbus A320 knocked out by a birdstrike, captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III is offered an emergency landing at Teterboro. He pauses for a second. Then: ‘We can’t do it…. We’re going to be in the Hudson.’

At this point, it is worth noting a few facts about the pilot. He was 57 at the time, an age which would disqualify him from many airlines. He was a former military pilot with 40 years’ flying experience and 19,000 hours of flight time — about 18,930 more than John Kennedy Jnr. He also had experience flying zero-engined aircraft: he was a keen glider pilot.

How could he decide so quickly that landing at Teterboro was impossible? Instead of taking out a scientific calculator, consulting instruments, calculating the rate of descent and working out his range, he simply looked out of the window.

I think the instinctive process (or ‘heuristic’) works like this. 1) Put the aircraft into as shallow a glideslope as possible. 2) Look forwards out of the window. 3) Everywhere where the ground appears to be moving upwards in your field of vision is a place you can’t reach. 4) Everywhere else is somewhere you could land. In cricket, fielders use a related process to catch high balls. It’s not a conscious thing. We can’t describe how we do it — we just do. And we learn it not through teaching, but through practice.

[Brantford Beech Boy]

basic skilss? Like spelllng?

(sorry RP, couldn't resist )

BBB

[Beefitarian]

I know most of this forum's members are CPL so this may not be relevant here but..
Something I'm starting to realize that is really important, especially as I age, is currency. I'm not a better pilot at 300 hours than I was at 150, because I don't fly often enough.

I was having lunch with some other guys that are older and more experienced than me, most of them owners of planes. One of them was saying he had a conversation with another pilot the week before who made him realize something about himself when he said, "I find I'm not really at my best, unless I'm flying at least once a week."

[rigpiggy]

sics munts a go i culdn't spell pileit, now i r won. no offense taken B3

[Colonel Sanders]

I'm not really at my best, unless I'm flying at least once a week

The higher the level of skill that you have, the less practice you will require, to maintain a basic level of skill.

I am sure I will be attacked for daring to opine this, but in my experience it is the low-time and older pilots that need extra flights. If you're 40 with 5kTT, you won't need much recurrent training to stay safe. But if you're 20 with 100 hrs, or over 70 with a gazillion hours, you're probably going to benefit from extra flights. For very different reasons.

I have long maintained - again, attack away - that anyone with less than 1kTT needs to fly twice a day, wx permitting, to develop their skills and experience. It has been my experience that by the time someone has 1kTT they should be reasonably proficient - the learning curve is starting to level off - and by the time they've hit 3kTT they've shown you what they've got. The curve is flat, and extra hours don't really help a whole lot past that point, if you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I would not state that a 20kTT pilot is twice as good as a 10kTT pilot. In fact, as he ages, his performance is going to decrease. He was probably at his peak in his mid-40's with 10kTT. Once you get into your 50's and 60's your physical performance simply isn't what it once was. Mind you, you can still be a damned good pilot at 65 and 30kTT, but you probably won't react as quickly (or as well) to a new, challenging situation as when you were 40 with 10kTT. Fact of life.

Personally, I like to fly every day to stay sharp. Two or even three flights a day - preferably in very different types of aircraft - is even better. And they don't need to be long flights - I often fly 15 minute flights which are very busy and challenging, that leave me drenched in sweat at the end of them. You don't need to spend hours and hours on autopilot, even though I guess it looks good in the logbook, it really doesn't help much.

Crap away from a great height.

[Shiny Side Up]

I would only crap praise upon you from a moderate height since I really wish what you just posted was made into poster form and was maybe mandatory reading somewhere in the FTM. Pretty sure its been said here before, but you only become Bob Hoover if you fly as much as he did, which in general means we all have to do a lot of catching up.

[CFR]

I'm not really at my best, unless I'm flying at least once a week

The higher the level of skill that you have, the less practice you will require, to maintain a basic level of skill.

I am sure I will be attacked for daring to opine this, but in my experience it is the low-time and older pilots that need extra flights. If you're 40 with 5kTT, you won't need much recurrent training to stay safe. But if you're 20 with 100 hrs, or over 70 with a gazillion hours, you're probably going to benefit from extra flights. For very different reasons.

I have long maintained - again, attack away - that anyone with less than 1kTT needs to fly twice a day, wx permitting, to develop their skills and experience. It has been my experience that by the time someone has 1kTT they should be reasonably proficient - the learning curve is starting to level off - and by the time they've hit 3kTT they've shown you what they've got. The curve is flat, and extra hours don't really help a whole lot past that point, if you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I would not state that a 20kTT pilot is twice as good as a 10kTT pilot. In fact, as he ages, his performance is going to decrease. He was probably at his peak in his mid-40's with 10kTT. Once you get into your 50's and 60's your physical performance simply isn't what it once was. Mind you, you can still be a damned good pilot at 65 and 30kTT, but you probably won't react as quickly (or as well) to a new, challenging situation as when you were 40 with 10kTT. Fact of life.

Personally, I like to fly every day to stay sharp. Two or even three flights a day - preferably in very different types of aircraft - is even better. And they don't need to be long flights - I often fly 15 minute flights which are very busy and challenging, that leave me drenched in sweat at the end of them. You don't need to spend hours and hours on autopilot, even though I guess it looks good in the logbook, it really doesn't help much.

Crap away from a great height.

20 [edit - 35 years actually - time flies!] years ago with a 100 hrs I'd have said you were full of crap. At 55 with 300 hours (200 in the last 2 years) I can't agree more. I try and fly twice a week amongst the various aircraft I am check out on (except the twin, at 300.00/hr it is out side my currency ability), with my preference being the Citabria. I don't just bore holes in the sky, but have a plan (today we're going to do short & soft, next time turn off the GPS and do map navigation, etc). It may be a maturity thing, will let you know if I ever mature!

J

[Big Pistons Forever]

I'm not really at my best, unless I'm flying at least once a week

The higher the level of skill that you have, the less practice you will require, to maintain a basic level of skill.

I am sure I will be attacked for daring to opine this, but in my experience it is the low-time and older pilots that need extra flights. If you're 40 with 5kTT, you won't need much recurrent training to stay safe. But if you're 20 with 100 hrs, or over 70 with a gazillion hours, you're probably going to benefit from extra flights. For very different reasons.

I have long maintained - again, attack away - that anyone with less than 1kTT needs to fly twice a day, wx permitting, to develop their skills and experience. It has been my experience that by the time someone has 1kTT they should be reasonably proficient - the learning curve is starting to level off - and by the time they've hit 3kTT they've shown you what they've got. The curve is flat, and extra hours don't really help a whole lot past that point, if you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I would not state that a 20kTT pilot is twice as good as a 10kTT pilot. In fact, as he ages, his performance is going to decrease. He was probably at his peak in his mid-40's with 10kTT. Once you get into your 50's and 60's your physical performance simply isn't what it once was. Mind you, you can still be a damned good pilot at 65 and 30kTT, but you probably won't react as quickly (or as well) to a new, challenging situation as when you were 40 with 10kTT. Fact of life.

Personally, I like to fly every day to stay sharp. Two or even three flights a day - preferably in very different types of aircraft - is even better. And they don't need to be long flights - I often fly 15 minute flights which are very busy and challenging, that leave me drenched in sweat at the end of them. You don't need to spend hours and hours on autopilot, even though I guess it looks good in the logbook, it really doesn't help much.

Crap away from a great height.

I think you only have identified half of the good piloting equation. The other half has to be a personal drive to be the best pilot you can be on every flight. In my experience not very many pilots have that. Most do the minimum required to get the job done.

One of the dictionary definition of a a "Profession" is quote ones principal calling unquote and a "professional" is someone who quote follows a line of conduct as though it were a profession unquote.

I have known 200 hour private pilots that by their attitude, I would consider true professionals and 10 K pilots who are the very antithesis of "professional" piloting....

[schmoo]

I find myself torn by what the colonel has said. Judging by the reaction of others, it appears he has summarized the currency / competence equation quite nicely. Yet, if that is true, I am saddened by the fact that I am destined to be a mediocre if not incompetent pilot, since I know I will never be able to afford to get into a plane even once per day, let alone twice.

Perhaps his comments are more directed at the CPL. Is there any hope for a casual PPL pilot to be safe and competent with only a weekly or biweekly flight ?

[CFR]

I find myself torn by what the colonel has said. Judging by the reaction of others, it appears he has summarized the currency / competence equation quite nicely. Yet, if that is true, I am saddened by the fact that I am destined to be a mediocre if not incompetent pilot, since I know I will never be able to afford to get into a plane even once per day, let alone twice.

Perhaps his comments are more directed at the CPL. Is there any hope for a casual PPL pilot to be safe and competent with only a weekly or biweekly flight ?

A PP should be striving to be the best PP they can!

What works for me is to make quality use of the time. Set a goal(s) and challenge yourself during the flight. I take time to do an accurate and honest assessment of my skills and what needs work. Then I plan my flights to address these areas needing improvement ( planning a diversion using pencil, watch and chart has deteriorated badly as a result of the "direct to" button).

Consider spending some of the time with an instructor for refresher. If you looked at my log book you'd see a lot of dual. Most of it was logged learning new aircraft or systems (Citabria, Seneca, DA40, G1000, etc), but some was as a result of recognizing limitations and wanting to fix them. I wanted to become more comfortable in the Citabria in gusty crosswinds and so on a day that the winds were too high for solo flight, instead of going home I grabbed an instructor and we did some pretty challenging stuff (I will not re-ignite the crab vs slip debate!) which boosted my confidence and probably more importantly, gave me a good idea of my personal limits.

My next personal challenge will be to learn to fly the Citabria from the rear seat with the instructor up front.

I find that there is always something to learn (or re-learn) from every flight.

J

[iflyforpie]

I find myself torn by what the colonel has said. Judging by the reaction of others, it appears he has summarized the currency / competence equation quite nicely. Yet, if that is true, I am saddened by the fact that I am destined to be a mediocre if not incompetent pilot, since I know I will never be able to afford to get into a plane even once per day, let alone twice.

Perhaps his comments are more directed at the CPL. Is there any hope for a casual PPL pilot to be safe and competent with only a weekly or biweekly flight ?

I wouldn't worry about it too much if it is a once or twice a week thing. Skill works like a square root graph with frequency. Huge gains are made for the first few flights, then more incremental gains the more flying you do so it eventually plateaus. How high the plateau is is how demanding the flying is. If you are just $100 hamburgering it on sunny days, it will take less frequency to keep it up than going hard IFR to minimums in a complex aircraft.

[Shiny Side Up]

Perhaps his comments are more directed at the CPL. Is there any hope for a casual PPL pilot to be safe and competent with only a weekly or biweekly flight ?

Of course there's hope, as BPF said it also depends somewhat upon your own attitude towards the activity. With a flight at least once a week, or sometimes every other week, you'd be a head above 95% of the other private flyers out there.

[vcollazo]

Hi there rigpiggy, I believe you made a wrong assumption about Cap. Sullenberger's thought process when he was offered a return to LGA. I can assure you that in 5 seconds or less, he couldn't determine for a fact whether or not he had the glide performance to return and land on runway 13. I believe that his thinking was more proximate to my own. The decision was made many years before. His background and mine are very similar, we're both ex USAF fighter pilots. AFA grads, AF safety officers course grads, etc. Back in those days we were trained to foresee bad situations and to develop plans to counter those. For example, while flying combat in Southeast Asia, I would practice recovering and landing my aircraft with partial or total loss of my primary flight controls as a result of combat damage. In the specific case that you brought up, I had long ago decided that if I was coming out of a place like LGA, MDW, etc. where the approaches are over densely populated areas and I lost them both (engines), then I would opt for a ditching in the Hudson, Long Island Sound, or Lake Michigan since the survivability odds of a ditching are a lot better than plowing into an urban area. He might have made it to the runway, but if he guessed wrong , it was certain death. The ditching left a lot more room for error. Another example of this kind of thought would be a cockpit fire. After the Value Jet DC9 accident in Florida my plan has been that if I can't eliminate or significantly lessen the smoke in the cockpit in a minute or two, then I forget about trying to reach an airport and put it down on the most hospitable surface before I become incapacitated or lose outside visibility. After the Sioux City DC10 accident, I decided that if I was ever faced with a similar situation, then I would fly to one of the active or even inactive Strategic Air Command bases with 13000' long 300'+ wide runways. The bottom line is, you think a lot more clearly and effectively when you're on the ground with unlimited time to ponder the situation, not to mention zero stress.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Perhaps his comments are more directed at the CPL. Is there any hope for a casual PPL pilot to be safe and competent with only a weekly or biweekly flight ?

Of course there's hope, as BPF said it also depends somewhat upon your own attitude towards the activity. With a flight at least once a week, or sometimes every other week, you'd be a head above 95% of the other private flyers out there.

+ 1

[Colonel Sanders]

I am destined to be a mediocre if not incompetent pilot

Save up your money and build your skills during an intensive period
of flying. Many years ago, I got proficient at flying twins by flying
105 hrs in 21 days. At the end of that, I could fly the *ss off that
twin.

100 hrs over 10 years won't build much skill, but 50 hrs in 10 days
sure will! Intensive flight training will build skill. Periodic flights afterwards
will maintain it.

I remember hearing how someone (Russians?) trained for the
WAC - the World Aerobatic Championships, which is Unlimited
category. Each pilot would fly 40 hours, which doesn't sound
like much to an airline pilot. But what they would do, is fly
120 flights of 20 minutes of Unlimited category aerobatics
at low altitude over the airfield. That's gonna put some lead
in your pencil, even if 40 hrs doesn't sound like very much to
a straight-and-level pilot.

[Shiny Side Up]

Intensive flight training will build skill. Periodic flights afterwards
will maintain it.

Also not to be underestimated is the value of study and ground work. There was an interesting article in a recent Canadian Aviator issue about how study of a physical skill was almost as effective for keeping up skill level as actually performing the skill.

Not hard to verify that with student pilots. You can always tell who's been into their notes and books between flights and who hasn't. Many pilots (and student pilots) unfortunately don't have a single thought about flying until they set foot in the hangar - even worse probably not even until they're about to turn the starter, since it doesn't seem they can put their iPhones down before that instant.

[Colonel Sanders]

who's been into their notes and books

I tell people doing flight training with me to go to Walmart
and buy one of those $1 metal-bound notebooks. After
each flight, I ask them when they get home to jot down,
in point form, the important stuff that they learned that
flight, and what they think they might need to remember
the next time they do it. Even if they throw the notebook
away, the simple act of mentally reviewing the flight and
writing down the highlights will help with their retention.

It helps to read the FTM and POH, but a review of your
own notes is golden. When I fly a weird type, I like to
jot notes in my logbook - important speeds, power
settings - so the next time I fly it, I can quickly review
what I need to know. You don't need to write a
goddamned essay - just the important stuff.

[Meatservo]

Best advice I've heard all week, notwithstanding the source.

My, today's crumpets are fresh and crunchy.

[Krimson]

When I fly a weird type, I like to
jot notes in my logbook - important speeds, power
settings - so the next time I fly it, I can quickly review
what I need to know. You don't need to write a
goddamned essay - just the important stuff.

Great advice

[Lost Lake]

I would not state that a 20kTT pilot is twice as good as a 10kTT pilot. In fact, as he ages, his performance is going to decrease. He was probably at his peak in his mid-40's with 10kTT. Once you get into your 50's and 60's your physical performance simply isn't what it once was. Mind you, you can still be a damned good pilot at 65 and 30kTT, but you probably won't react as quickly (or as well) to a new, challenging situation as when you were 40 with 10kTT. Fact of life.

Wow I guess I better tear up that new PPC. I'm 60 and I can still beat people 1/2 my age at tennis, still a single digit golfer (And I still hit a drive 280-300 yd). My learning skills have slowed, by my standard. I think my reaction time is still pretty good, but must be qualified against an average. Everyone has a different level of IQ, skill, etc. Just because you have aged doesn't necessarily make you a dangerous or less capable pilot than "average".

I think you just need to temper your opinion of aged pilots. I would agree that for an older private pilot who only flies 20 or so hr a year, it is true.

[Colonel Sanders]

Just because you have aged doesn't necessarily make you a dangerous or less capable pilot than "average".

Hey, I didn't say that, at all! In fact, I said:

you can still be a damned good pilot at 65 and 30kTT, but you probably won't react as quickly (or as well) to a new, challenging situation as when you were 40 with 10kTT. Fact of life.

My point was that a 65 yr old is simply not the pilot that he used to be, compared to when he was 40. Night vision, reflexes, thought process, coming up to speed with a different, challenging situation. If you're honest with yourself, you will admit that you are physically not as strong as when you were 30 or 40.

A 65 yr old can be an awesome pilot, because he can draw on a lifetime of experience - been there, done that before - to smell when stuff is starting to go wrong, early on, and to stay the hell away from trouble.

I think you just need to temper your opinion of aged pilots

I know a little about this subject. I regularly fly formation with an 80 year old that I know very well. I'm sure he can land a Pitts better than 99% of the pilots in Canada, but is he really still as good as when he was 40 and at the top of his game as a test pilot at CEPE?

[Shiny Side Up]

I know a little about this subject. I regularly fly formation with an 80 year old that I know very well. I'm sure he can land a Pitts better than 99% of the pilots in Canada, but is he really still as good as when he was 40 and at the top of his game as a test pilot at CEPE?

Or maybe more uncomfortably for you: how much longer have you got until the son surpasses you?

[Colonel Sanders]

how much longer have you got until the son surpasses you?

Actually, it would please me greatly if he was a far better pilot than I am! I know, I know, it won't be very difficult for him to do that

In another couple years, he should be able to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcy4ZhGHHaE

[Beefitarian]

What kind of landing was that? You didn't even approach, level out and flare.

[G3]

Regarding Age and Professional versus Private pilots:

A Superior Pilot(ie. Experienced) is a someone who uses superior knowledge and superior experience to avoid situations that require superior skill.

Don't forget the "5 P's": Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance!

And now for irreverence: The difference between a Professional Pilot and an Amateur Pilot when it comes to landings; the Professional doesn't give a SH**!

Just remember folks, we are all passengers below 50 ft.!

Fly safe!!!!

G3