Scudrunners

[quote]hone your instructing craft[/quote]

This has to do with efficiency, but ...

One of the most important things about
flight instruction is [i]knowing what to leave
out[/i]

If you can leave something less important
out, that means that the poor student has
a better change of learning what is important.

Throwing 178 things at a student is not good
teaching.  He's only going to remember 2 or
3, so choose carefully.

This is probably one my biggest pet peeves
with flight instruction in Canada - a lack of
focus on what's important, and an overwhelming
compulsion to include huge piles of useless crap
which desperately needs to be reined in.

I asked this simple question:

[quote]Quote

    What percentage of instructors can do that accurately?[/quote]

The Colonel said:

[quote]
Not enough!  As you point out, there are
plenty of class 1 instructors, but not many
of them can fly very well - nowhere near
the limits of the aircraft.[/quote]

My next question is how is it possible that a class 1 instructor does not have basic airplane handling skills?

We are not talking about advanced airplane handling skills........

These are basic...period.

Great system isn't it?

[quote]We are not talking about advanced airplane handling skills[/quote]

Try not to cry Chuck, but these days,
stick & rudder (mostly rudder) skill
is viewed as "advanced".

Landing on grass is similarly "advanced".

I teach both of these "advanced" skills -
try not to laugh, either!

As you age, the world changes (and you
don't) and it becomes a really strange
place.

[quote]Conflict of interests ... examiners[/quote]

We've talked about this before - I simply
don't understand why an employee of an
FTU is allowed to do flight tests on the
students of that FTU, with his boss watching
carefully.

TC is happy with that conflict of interest,
but examiners should be independent
and without economic motivation to pass
weak students.

Oh well, there's a lot of stuff that's rotten
in Denmark.

[quote]vary their training. If you want to be an instructor[/quote]

and not just instructor.  Earlier this year I did
two tailwheel lessons in the Maule with a very
smart little lady (has a master's degree in finance -
I told her she was too smart to be a pilot) who
had a PPL and was working on her CPL.  Told
her to read my articles before she showed up.

She had never flown tailwheel before, and we
fixed that.  The Maule is nasty on dry pavement,
and it builds character.  She left, and I exhorted
her to seek out strange types of airplanes, and
to fly them.

She came back recently, with super cub, citabria
and decathlon time in her logbook, and we got her
into the Pitts.  She's a pretty good stick, given her
low time, and maybe I helped her just a little bit.

Anyways, I told her that all the time with me
should be entered into her CPL PTR, and to have
her CFI call me if he had any problems with that,
because what I had her doing was exactly the
kind of experience a CPL student should get!

I have a lot of "advanced" students like her -
and I strongly encourage them to both increase
their systems knowledge (essco manuals) and
to really improve their stick & rudder skills, by
flying as many different types of aircraft as
they can possibly find.

I have resolved myself that as I age, I become
an increasingly weird instructor, even though I
don't think I'm changing.  The world is.

You fly with me, you better know your systems,
the checklist is tossed in the back seat, and it's
time to [i]look outside[/i] (I'll probably cover up all
the flight instruments on you) and you'll learn a
cockpit flow.

You're going to learn about the pitch/yaw
coupling caused by a metal prop - this is
extremely important.

We're going to go flying when the windsock is
straight out across the runway, and you're going
to learn to do touch and goes, landing only on
the upwind main.



Build some character, like this student of mine
flying right echelon on me:

[quote]
You're going to learn about the pitch/yaw
coupling caused by a metal prop - this is
extremely important.[/quote]

It will make flying the Beaver on floats easier.  :)

We should thank Four Bars for starting this thread.

Because now people can read this and then go to the new free advice forum and read your stuff about flying .....

Beyond the FTM.

That is hands down the best offering I have ever seen on an aviation forum.


Thanks Andy.  :) :) :) :) :) :) :)