Scudrunners

While I enjoy bashing the flight training of today, as much as anyone, this has to be pretty much the dumbest thing lately.  the other website had a thread about clearing turns.


Before doing a turn, a student does a clearing turn.
Full disclosure...the turn is a steep turn.
Apparently, the steep turn has now become such a difficult to master procedure, that a student, rather than looking out for traffic, has to do a clearing turn first


And in discussing this with some new CPL types, I was told that , in doing a PPC recently, they were required to actually pull a checklist out first..run the prelanding checks, including full rich on the mixtures, brief the turn, do a clearing turn, and then do the steep turn.  Once straight and level again, mixtures could be reset,!


I am not making this up.


Has every last bit of common sense disappeared from flight training?
Am I the only one that thinks that someone has to clean out the folks at TC who endore this...they have to see it on flight tests.


Apparently, the thinking is that students, or pilots, no longer look outside in a steep turn....so the clearing turn is necessary.

TK:  I wonder the reaction if the candidate had executed a steep turn as the clearing turn and then executed another steep turn...? 

Probably go right over his head...

It's like another like niggley thing that bugs me:  back when I did a little bit of civilian instructing, we'd counsel the students to mark then pencils in miles or minutes to make their "Diversion" to little simpler.  Understand that you now can't bring a marked pencil into the cockpit. 

However...  You can sit in the cockpit and then mark the pencil the way you want it.

Inspectors on site that can chime in here?

Jesus, TK, you're starting to sound like Chuck and I.

Every so often I think about going the instructor route as an evening/weekend thing, until I hear a story about how ________ flight school forces the use of an encyclopedic checklist, or clearing turns and checklists before steep turns, or some other made up pointless SOP that neuters flying skills.


I did my PPL 15 years ago and can't remember being saddled with these strange rules (useless flight test examiner aside). Is this snowflake thinking a new thing or did I get lucky during my training?

[quote author=Chris link=topic=7110.msg19280#msg19280 date=1505905445]Every so often I think about going the instructor route as an evening/weekend thing, until I hear a story about how ________ flight school forces the use of an encyclopedic checklist, or clearing turns and checklists before steep turns, or some other made up pointless SOP that neuters flying skills.
[/quote]
You should do it, we badly need experienced people instructing.  By and large the folks we have running these places aren't malicious tools, they're just misguided into adding procedure to fix things.  The reality is that through a couple decades of inbreeding the instructor gene pool has shallowed significantly.  Bring some diversity to a flight school.


[quote author=Chris link=topic=7110.msg19280#msg19280 date=1505905445][font=Verdana]I did my PPL 15 years ago and can't remember being saddled with these strange rules (useless flight test examiner aside). Is this snowflake thinking a new thing or did I get lucky during my training?[/font][/quote][font=Verdana]
My training was about the same, I assume it had something to do with flying out of a quiet airport but it could have been other things.[/font]

[font=Verdana]"Bring some diversity to a flight school."[/font][font=Verdana]

I too, gave thought to it when I was retiring.  But a couple of my buddies did do it, and their experiences were not good.  One was told that if he used the term "backside of the power curve". He would be failed as the term is not used anywhere in TC publications, and therefore is not to be used in flight training,

When one was offerred a position he was told he would not be doing any multi instructing,,as they wanted to use the multi time as a carrot for the young instructors.  So the students are to be taught by a 250 hour wonder who has never flown in a cloud instead of an instructor with 20000 hours of multi time , including several thousand on small aircraft, and who has inumerable hours of actual IFR, including Canada's north.

Diversity may be needed, but those with experience who can see the emporer is not wearing clothes are not welcome.

Before there can be any diversity someone with common sense has to become in charge of TC's flight training.  To do the ride for your rating you need a recommend, and that means a class 1 that is willing to take the chance on a Maverik..[/font]

Huh. So we should either set up in Belize or build that back of the van "full motion" simulator?

I know two unicorns, that retired from AC and then
got their instructor ratings.  One of them posts
here but I won't out him.

I have mentioned before that I helped the other
unicorn renew his class 2 instructor rating that was
expired for 42 years.  No shit.  He's a CFI near Montreal,
now.  I will warn you that he worked like a dog and
ate shit with a spoon.  It takes both of those characteristics
to make TC happy, and I can't blame a retired guy
for saying, Fuck That, and then going to work on
his golf game in Arizona instead.

I can understand someone being a missionary,
but not a saint.

[quote author=Trey Kule link=topic=7110.msg19295#msg19295 date=1505964512]
[font=verdana]I too, gave thought to it when I was retiring.  But a couple of my buddies did do it, and their experiences were not good.  One was told that if he used the term "backside of the power curve". He would be failed as the term is not used anywhere in TC publications, and therefore is not to be used in flight training,
[/font][/quote]
Do it anyways; if you teach the power/drag curves in ground school the term is merely describing a region of a graph.  I understand the importance of using somewhat standard terminology to avoid confusion but have a hard time believing that a TC inspector would fail an instructor ride on it.  You know, unless they asked you the difference between slow flight and the back side of the power curve and you told them to stuff it.  That would probably be a fail.



[quote author=Trey Kule link=topic=7110.msg19295#msg19295 date=1505964512][font=Verdana][font=verdana]When one was offerred a position he was told he would not be doing any multi instructing,,as they wanted to use multi time as a carrot for the young instructors.  So the students are to be taught by a 250 hour wonder who has never flown in a cloud instead of an instructor with 20000 hours of multi time , including several thousand on small aircraft, and who has inumerable hours of actual IFR, including Canada's north.
[/font][/font][/quote][font=Verdana]
Leave the airplane for the young guys to fly, they need MPIC and the experienced crowd can make the biggest difference in the sim.  By the time the student gets to the airplane it should just be supervised practice anyways.

Flight instruction can be fixed in as little as three years if enough people buy into it.[/font]