Don't Practice Your Errors

[Colonel]

People here say the problem with pilot
proficiency is that they don't fly enough.

I accept that.  You cannot get good at
something without practice.  Everyone
that plays the piano knows that.

However, there is a problem.  I see people
repeating the same errors over and over
and over and over and over again.  They
are really excellent at making mistakes,
because they have practiced them so much!

This is why people take 100 (or 200!)
hours to PPL, and this is why 10,000TT
is worthless, as Asiana 214 showed us.

The other night, I was watching a doctor
do circuits in his 182.  Kudos to him for
getting the practice in.  However, on
final he consistently had the nose down -
I didn't need to look at the airspeed
indicator to know that he was consistently
too fast on final approach.

This is a common error of low-time pilots.

It feels good to be too fast on final, but
as the four-bars kept showing us at rwy
25 at CYOW, this doesn't always work out
well.

Specifically with a nosewheel trainer, the
mains must touch down first.  And you do
that by decreasing the airspeed on final
which increases the alpha and hence the
pitch attitude.  See the lift equation.

Nosewheels and tailwheels are all junk.
It's just a matter of time until they cause
you trouble.  This isn't just my opinion -
Tony LeVier said pretty much the same
thing about the quality of Lockheed's nose
wheels.

So, you always always touch down on the
mains first, with the nosewheel 1cm in
the air.  It remains there during the rollout
with increasing back pressure as the elevator
loses effectiveness as you slow down.

Eventually the nose tire touches down with
full aft elevator at a very slow speed.  No
shimmy.  And, that's how you land a little
nosewheel aircraft.  Large aircraft is a
different story.

But enough about landing technique - that
is merely a single example of how pilots
insist upon making the same mistake over
and over and over and over and over and
over and over again.  And that's why 10,000TT
is worthless.

Like recovering from alcoholism, the first
step is to realize you have a problem.

This is why people don't take very long to
learn from me - if they put the effort in -
because I immediately point out their errors
and how to correct them.

This ain't rocket science.  It's not even a
PID loop.  That's competent flight instruction,
and it puzzles me as to why it is so hard
to find.

[mcrit]

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect