Word of the day

[Big Pistons Forever]

My 02 cents

1) if the engine fails talking on the radio is usually going to be the least important thing to do. The most important is to establish the glide, point the airplane at some place where you will survive the crash and then try to get the engine going again since a minimum of 50 % and probably closer to 75 % of engine failures are caused by the actions or inactions of the pilot.

2) When the pressure is on you revert to what you were taught. Therefore if the student has got the airplane well set up for a forced landing, and has done a methodical and thorough cause check and has determined that that there is nothing they can do to get power back, hit the ELT remote switch and dial 7700 in the transponder. If and this is a big if, they have the time to talk on the radio without loosing focus on flying the aircraft, select 121.5 and say 3 things, Mayday, a rough location, and engine failure. I get them to verbalize this to me without pressing the PTT. I as the instructor, do any if required calls regarding alerting others to the fact that we are doing a practice forced approach. Students making calls detailing simulated situations is IMO , negative training.

[TwinOtterFan]

Students making calls detailing simulated situations is IMO , negative training.

You know..... I didn't even think about it until you said it they way. We called them "training scars" we noticed them a lot in tactical trauma care scenarios, the medics would get used to verbalizing something instead of actually doing it. For example they would just say "I am applying a chest seal" but they were not getting the actual muscle memory of actually applying one. Visualization exercises and actually going through the motions was the only fix.

Train how you fight. in other words....

[John Swallow]

One of my retired friends, an ex-instructor, related how a student started his forced landing announcement with "Maytag, Maytag, Maytag..."

[Squaretail]

1) if the engine fails talking on the radio is usually going to be the least important...

... Students making calls detailing simulated situations is IMO , negative training.

Agree. The only exercise that I feel is worthy of announcement was any engine failure work in the circuit, where others may need to know you are doing something out of the ordinary and adjust accordingly. These were also always dual exercises. As much as possible we always tried to do them so as not to inconvenience other traffic, so even then the need to announce it was rare.

Given that, these days it’s a personal pet peeve when I see instructors who seemingly have a lack of concern about other traffic and insist on performing some exercise in the face of a busy traffic pattern.