Scudrunners

This is a really weird subject in aviation that gets very little discussion.

In aviation, it is written in stone that a 10,000TT pilot is at least as twice
as good a pilot as a 5,000TT pilot.  No one would dare question that orthdoxy.

But the four bar that flew a perfectly functioning Boeing into the seawall at SFO
in perfect wx, had 10,000TT.  Was he really that hot a stick?  Evidence would
suggest not.

Harrumph, Harrumph, Harrumph go the four bars.  Well, AC, good job at SFO
recently.  Again.

I remember hearing that the four bars that wrecked the Boeing at SFO might have
had 10,000TT but only 10 minutes of actual flying in the last year.  Or ten years.
Whatever it was, was fucking horrifying.

Hopefully the light bulb goes on for people.  Spending hours and hours bored out
of your mind, watching an autopilot fly an airplane may put hours in your logbook
but it doesn't put any more skill in your hands and feet.

I remember a few years back, noting that the guy flying the F-18 demo in Canada
probably didn't have enough hours to get hired to fly left seat in a King Air, which
is laughable.

Again, another clue that maybe all hours are not created equal.

Even today, Air Cadets take 45 hours to get their PPL, but the civilian national
average is almost twice that.  Even if no one gives a shit about the wasted time,
that's a pile of wasted money.

I'm not saying military flight training is perfect - it's a long way from it - but frankly
almost anything is better than the train wreck we call civilian flight training today.

Here's a really simple example.  Most pilots don't spend hardly any time in slow
flight during training.  You could probably measure it in seconds.  Wrong answer.
Pilots have to spend a lot of time in slow flight - maybe even measured in minutes
or - gasp - hours, and I mean real slow flight, where you're dropping one wing, then
the other, and not just in straight and level flight, either, with the nose pointed up
at the moon.

That time is super-valuable.  It teaches pilots to fly with their hands and feet, and
to look outside, and to recognize yaw, and to deal with it appropriately.  The four
bar of Colgan 3407 could have spent some more time doing that.  Sorry, four bars,
but it's true.

Again, the idea that some time in your logbook is more valuable than other time
in your logbook.  Hmmm.

Remember pilots have trouble landing?  They flare horribly, and yes, it's at least
partially because they don't know how high they are.  Problem is, flight instructors
give them only a few seconds in the flare, for every hour of dual in the circuit.  No
wonder students struggle with landing.  How are you supposed to get good, when
you haven't mastered the basics of slow flight and you only get seconds of experience?

This is so fucking obvious, but no one in aviation is allowed to mention it.

How students get good at flaring and landing is by spending some time in the flare
right above the runway, learning to control without a PIO in pitch - a very common
problem, and one only addressed by practice practice practice.

How on earth do people expect to get better without intense practice?

Anyways, I don't instruct any more and I know Canadians think I'm full of shit, and
I'm cool with that, but I instructed for a long time on a ridiculously long list of types.

After an hour of dual with me, hopefully you were exhausted, sweating and if you
had some vomit on your shirt, that was ok, too.  You want someone to make you
feel good, find a Thai hooker that will stick her finger up your @ss when she blows
you.

Fact: 0.3 of surface acro will teach you more than 5.0 hours straight and level in
a twin watching an auto-pilot, regardless of what the fat lady in HR thinks.



Spend some time doing that, and you will find that doing other stuff in an airplane
is ridiculously easy.

Here's a suggestion:  get some flight training that doesn't suck.  It may not be easy
to find, though.  In my estimation, 99% of the civilian flight training in Canada is
sub-standard.  Sorry, TC, but the result of your decades of micro-management
gets a seriously failing grade.  You even said so in your latest DPE manual.

The way people log time is weird as well. I had an incident where a pilot started flying 2 years after I did and surpassed me in logged time in 2 years. He was logging flight time on floats and if it took an hour for an long taxi it went into his log book, meanwhile most of us just logged air time. Back in those days stick time was the most important not seat time.

Back to the thread, automation is eroding skills and it marches on. The latest from garmin and their auto land function bares witness and it's all steps to remove pilots from the flight deck. Let's face it a heavy jet is likely the easiest aircraft to fly manually for takeoffs and landings. Stable platform, excellent speed control and it's a matter of nailing the attitude. All it takes is a good instrument scan and drive the flight director. It's up to the individual pilot to maintain these skills and companies to support it.

Engaging an auto pilot at TOCA, unless you are on a complicated RNAV departure might not be necessary,maybe the 73max issues might be different if the auto pilot was engaged at top of noise. Maybe not but possibly. Poor skills needs more time to think.

[quote]You want someone to make you
feel good, find a Thai hooker that will stick her finger up your @ss when she blows
you.[/quote]

Especially during those long cruise flights watching the autopilot fly.

I used to spend a lot of time, teaching tailwheel.  Like other civilian flight training, it was taught horribly
in Canada.

See, how a civilian flight instructor teaches tailwheel is to get the student in the circuit in a taildragger.
Student has flown nosewheel only, did not spend any time in slow flight, and his previous instructor
really didn't give a shit if they landed slightly crabbed, because a nosewheel aircraft doesn't care.
This is the worst possible preparation possible.  Student has bad habits and has been trained that
the rudder pedals don't matter.  Disaster.

Now, student (is actually a PPL or CPL)  is in a taildragger.  In the circuit.  Around and around they
go.  Student touches down crabbed, is miles behind the aircraft, veers frighteningly on the runway,
power goes back on, and up they go.

Around and around they go.  Student is hopelessly behind the aircraft, and only gets a second or
two of time spent working the rudder pedals after landing before it goes horribly bad and up they
go again.  The Canadian Way.

Above is why there are virtually no taildraggers in Canada any more at any FTU.  Instructors
are incapable of teaching it.  Then they become AC pilots.

People get really horrible flight training, and oddly, don't seem to mind when they get their
PPL at 100 hours, with terrible skills.  I've mentioned before that I had a failed class 4 instructor
candidate referred to me.  Somehow he got past his PPL and CPL flight tests without knowing
how to use the rudder pedals.  Only time the ball was centered was when it was passing through.

The examiner that did his instructor rating just couldn't stand it, and flunked him.  So I took him
up in the Maule, and then a 172, and he quickly got up to speed.  No one had ever bothered to
teach him how to use the rudder pedals.  He was CFI at a school near Montreal last I heard,
some years ago now.  I'm sure he's a four bar now.  But at least he knows about yaw and AOA,
unlike the four-bar that killed everyone in Colgan 3407.

I'll get shit on for saying this, but controlling yaw and AOA is NOT advanced flight training -  it
is part of fundamental pilot skills.  In the 20th century, anyways, where I'm from.

O0 C:-)

I haven't started my flight training yet on account of recent events. But I have been asking around the FTU's if they reach tail dagger (as stated not many do). What I was wondering was is there a point I can start to mesh tail dragger in with my training? Or at which point does it make the most sense?

In an ideal world, your first 10 hours would be tailwheel.

See the Learning Factor of Primacy.

I taught tailwheel for 25 years and I learned that it takes at least twice
as long to unlearn bad habits with the feet.

All my best primary students learned and soloed on tailwheel. You
simply would not believe what they went on to fly.

What the colonel said is 100% true.

Well then maybe I need to adjust my initial PPL training. I was thinking it was something I would add later but I understand now that up front makes more sense. I'm assuming you have a much richer understanding of rudder control and overall flight.

Since it does seem a little less common ,most of the flight schools I've researched don't have them. Would there be any benefit to paying for some tail dragger time on the side privately right as I start my PPL?

I know its something I want to learn either way.

TwinOtterFan wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 20, 2020 4:33 am

I'm assuming you have a much richer understanding of rudder control and overall flight.

Sort of, and for two different reasons.

First is from ground handling, a taildragger being an unstable configuration on the ground that always wants to depart from a straight line and once it does the situation just gets worse and worse and worse if you don’t do the right thing. They’re not hard, per se, but certainly not forgiving like a trike. I’ll say it again, it isn’t hard as long as you care. A lot of people will tell you it’s difficult and that usually speaks volumes about themselves.

The second is that most taildraggers are old. Okay, pretty well all airplanes are old, but taildraggers are older. This means in a lot of cases they predate widespread use of things like differential ailerons so you’ll need some amount of rudder to coordinate your turns. Not difficult but you’ll need to pay attention for the short time it takes to become habit. The more you care the faster you'll get It. A lot of taildraggers were also designed for little 65hp engines and are generally stable like that but in the intervening years a lot have been “upgraded” to 85 or 100hp which can leave you wanting a little more vertical fin. Again, not difficult and you’ll be hard pressed to find a Cub or a Champ that wants to switch ends on you, just different from the near-autopilot stability you find in a Cessna 172.

Maybe the best analogy is like driving stick vs automatic. Both are easy in the grand scheme of things it’s just that one is a little easier than the other. Don’t fear it, just learn it.