Advice to Instructor:
According to 61.23 (b) (5) an instructor does not need a medical to instruct qualified and current private pilots, commercial pilots or IFR pilots. However such an instructor cannot serve as a safety pilot in any instance. Such an instructor can give flight reviews if the pilot is still qualified and current. No hood time can be given. No student pilot instruction can be given.

Go down to lost and found and get your memory every time you have a senior moment.

As a teacher, I was not given to meaningless praise or reward. As a flight instructor, I judge the lesson by knowledge applied, improvement observed, and satisfaction achieved. The achievement of normal expectations is viewed as acceptable but not deserving of profuse adulation. Only when my retarded students did beyond the usual were they praised. Praise, thus achieved value by not being a throw-away for everyone. My gifted students were always faced with ever higher expectations. My standards were once compared with an ever extending extension ladder. One of my many weaknesses as a flight instructor is an unwillingness to accept from a pilot or a student less than their highest level of performance. Close is accepted only when accompanied by significant improvement. It is a poor student that does not exceed his teacher. Those who read this material will someday come to regret that they did not make better use of their ability and time.  In my old age, I hurry more than ever before to do the mundane.  I need to garner more time to do more of value.

The instructor helps you teach yourself to fly. The instructor tries to get inside your head. He wants to recognize your fears and concerns. The instructor is trying to use what you know and don't know to shorten the time and lower the cost of your learning to fly. Good instructors like to teach. They will keep you from getting hurt.  You progress as you wander through all the mistakes that every student pilot should make.

Once read, that every advance by mankind has been achieved by laziness. I hate to see students preflighting inefficiently. I believe that flying correctly is the easiest way to fly. Every maneuver can be either easy or hard depending on how 'lazy' the pilot has been in knowing how to make it 'easy'. I cringe when a pilot works too hard at flying. Flying is easy only when it is efficient and I don't mean using an autopilot.

I am a Professional
I am a professional teacher of flying. I was a professional teacher for twenty years before I began teaching flying. I belong to a professional flight instructor's organization and have for as long as it has existed. I attend professional seminars, subscribe to over a dozen different papers and periodicals related to better instruction and safer flying. I spend hours a week in furthering my own professional background. I am not trying to use instruction as a 'stepping-stone' to another career.

Flight instruction is predominantly intellectual as is penmanship. The mechanics of flying are not as important as the development of knowledge, discipline, judgment, and discretion. Everything I do is specific to the student. If a student fails to do well it is my failure; not his. A good instructor will have several ways to explain and teach a specific skill.  What works for one instructor and one student at a particular moment is unique to that moment.  I have never been able to teach any procedure, basic skill, or idea twice in the same way with the same effectiveness.  While I try to become more effective and efficient in time and aircraft use, I can never claim to have done any better just differently.  

The uniqueness of instruction and learning is such that it defies being canned or rote except in the most simple of situations.  The teacher never really knows if a specific word or particular demonstration is truly sensed, learned, retained or ignored.  Repetition, review, demonstration and practice compound.  Still there are students who cannot prove comprehension or demonstrate satisfactory performance.  I have had more success than failure but that too is just my opinion.  

I only give flight instruction in those areas for which I am trained, current, and qualified. I am dedicated to flying and spend most of my time and energy working to improve myself when I am not teaching. My major weakness is a lack of patience for those who do not feel as I do.

On Instruction
I teach flying because I like to. It is not the flying I like so much as the teaching. I love flying but most of all I love to teach others to love flying. I intend to teach the love of flying which only incidentally involves learning to fly. A student can only love flying if it is a source of pleasure and satisfaction.

If, in the process of learning to perform the 'required' maneuvers of flying, the love of flying is suppressed, then there is something wrong with my instruction. I have failed my student and myself if a given flight does not move toward the greater love of flying for us both.

Objective: Plant the seed that grows into the love of flying.

Objective: Make flying performance a source of increased love of flying.

Objective: The result of properly performed flying makes the love of flying intense and more enjoyable.

Objective: Making use of flying to increase our love of other things we do will increase the love of flying.

Objective: Out love of flying increases over time as our performance and result improves.

Love will enable the student to do what needs to be done.

Love will provide the circumstances and means for a student to keep on flying against all obstacles.

Love will keep you from ever feeling that you have enough improvement or time in your flying.

Love IS the objective; flying is the pathway..

Instruction as I Do It
The preflight instructional meeting between student and instructor is the time to augment the learning sought, the orderly progression of thought and procedure, and the communications involved. Every flight should include both a planned emergency of sorts and an unplanned (for the student) emergency. Acceptance of accountability is essential for a successful learning experience.

An instructor is loaded with pearls of wisdom. Good instructors share these pearls at every opportunity and even make opportunities for sharing. A good instructor shows and tells a student how to maintain control by letting the aircraft do as well as it can without his help. Pilots who fly the plane without making use of the aircraft's ability usually fly a pilot induced oscillation route. Flying any airplane is easier and better if the pilot understands how the aircraft engineers designed the inaction of the structure and control authority.

A major factor in learning to fly well lies in learning the range of performance capability possible in the aircraft and matching that relatively wide range to the initial narrow range of performance capability in the student pilot. The preflight presentation must be designed so that the student is introduced to what will be done in light of these ranges.

Airspeeds and changes in them are a good example of the varied and conflicting performance capabilities that exist between planes and student pilots. Aircraft have their speed ranges shown somewhat on the airspeed indicator. The mid-ranges of the indicator are those where the greatest 'safety' seem to exist.

Like a bicycle, once you get going, steering and control seem relatively positive and certain. At the outer limits of the airspeed indicator critical differences in what can go wrong appear. Initial instruction occurs in the middle of the performance range. Then gradually the outer-limits are explored.  

With slow-flight as an illustration, an instructor may discuss why slow-flight skills are a necessary part of learning to fly. He may demonstrate slow-flight and recovery. Then talk a student through the process. Slow-flight turns, climbs and descents come later along with the use of flaps. Stalls and minimum controllable soon follow. Where, previously, training existed in the mid-range of aircraft performance and student capability, now we are exploring the outer-limits of both aircraft and student capability.

You can phone ahead to your destination airport and get the ATIS. More and more uncontrolled airports are getting ASOS and AWOS they are phone accessible.  Call the FSS and have them make the phone call for you. Pilots will need to become proficient in selecting the 'preferred runway' using wind numbers and pattern directions.  You should have an AF/D with the numbers and pattern info.. Knowing what to expect is what makes radio work easy. Don't try to write everything down. Get the essentials on paper and remember what you can of the rest. I suggest that you use the back of your hand to write the ATIS numbers on. Should you be fortunate enough to be left handed it works best. Make a half-inch + sign on your hand and write the essentials in each corner. Wind direction in one corner, wind velocity in the next. Altimeter setting next and then runway in use. At the top write the letter of the ATIS. If you think of the vertical line as your runway, you can draw a / one way or another to show about what crosswind you are expecting.

I insist that my students always copy the ATIS with the engine running. There is nothing like having something costing you money by the minute to focus your attention. Learn to play craps if you need this point proven to you. Take pride in getting it all in one full ATIS transmission. Being able to get it the first time will save you time and money for the rest of your flying life. The best proof of this axiom is learning to gamble. Of interest is the item that smokers lose, on average, eleven percent more than non-smokers when gambling.  Poor judgment crosses all activity boundaries.  I have never taught a smoker to fly.

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