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New Pilot
New pilots seem to think that on passing the practical test, they are expected to know everything. Not so! However, you can never again use ignorance as an excuse. A pilot must know the numbers for his aircraft performance. Failure to know the numbers and to have them accessible is grounds for an FAA violation.
Hopefully, you have learned to be an assertive pilot in command. Believe in your instruction. Believe that your survival depends on doing the right thing. Be prepared to question ATC if what is suggested seems beyond your capability. You will be able to survive flying if you do as you have been taught. Stay with one airplane type or manufacturer and instructor if at all possible. Make flying a part of your personality. Do not accept weak training tolerances in airspeed, altitudes, heading, or control of yourself even if the instructor is permissive.
Your mastery of basic skills will make all future lessons more enjoyable. As a teacher I was never 'easy' on my students. As a flight instructor I try to set standards as high as the student can tolerate. Just yesterday I had a student make two superb landings in a C-172. She was as pleased as was I. As we taxied in I told her how pleased I was but added that I would have preferred not being four feet to the left of the centerline. A student trained to accept wide tolerances in procedure and performance is doomed forever to being less than his best.
An instructor can usually point out an area that needs improvement no matter how well a pilot performs. Flying without enjoyment and safety makes fear a backseat passenger. Good preflight instruction removes the fearful surprises that lie in wait for every unsuspecting student. The more you enjoy flying the easier it is to become a frequent flyer. Frequent flying reinforces your learning and skills.
Fear lives in a bucket of misunderstanding under a sink. Knowledge and empathy will work together to remove the bucket and spread its contents into the light. Teaching flying imparts not only education but personal confidence as well. A good teacher gives of himself and his love for his field of education.
After becoming certified, the pilot must continue to keep the big flying picture filled with current data. Failure to stay knowledgeable and current is becoming prohibitively dangerous. The exceptional pilot avoids the exceptional situation that might require exceptional piloting. Exceptional piloting is reserved for exceptionally unavoidable situations.
Besides intellectual activity, flying requires that a pilot learn very specific motor skills. Every maneuver has a complex of specific motor skills. These skills are combined to make a maneuver possible. First the student must perceive the changes in sound, pressures and forces. Perceptions that are repeated enable the mind to acquire muscle memories that makes repetitive creation of the skills possible.
The skills required, as in a level turn, are a complex of motor skills that become consistent as to performance and result only through repetition. The ultimate application of a skill-maneuver complex occurs when the student is able to modify performance to a different situation. Modification of a skill-maneuver is a new creation. The student uses consistent skills to achieve a specific result. Only when the pilot can explain in his own words how he does what he does is he on the way to being able to explain, demonstrate and teach what he does.
With our new computer ability to determine consistency of performance there will be a greater opportunity to escape one on one instruction and move into automated simulation. Performance will be evaluated and diagnosed by computer. I do not relish the thought of such instruction since it will lack the flavor that chocolate gives to life and flying.
Upward Transition
There are special timing and performance skills that must be re-trained for a new in type pilot to benefit from a higher performance aircraft. Faster comes at a cost but the effective cost can be reduced by efficient use of the performance available. Use your speed for as long as you can. Minimize slow speed operations. Practice your short approaches and long landings. Anticipate and expand your own performance envelope.
A rudimentary transition flight will not provide a low time pilot with sufficient time in type and cockpit orientation to make the transition flight conducive to safety. The instructor must build upon the past experience and background of the pilot. Time in aircraft by the same builder is a plus because cockpit instrument and control layout will be similar. Time in aircraft of the same complexity is, likewise, a positive factor. Skills flying one make of aircraft do not readily transfer to another make.
The mistakes made in transition from type to type or make to make partake of an initial very steep learning curve followed by plateau after plateau. The probability of a stress initiated mistake decreases with increased experience but will always exist. My personal policy has always been to require two flights. The first is to become familiar with the aircraft and the second flight to become capable of flying the aircraft in its slowest controllable envelope. I have done this regardless of pilot background and experience. The second lesson is usually an eye-opener. Most revealing aspect of multiple flights can be the effect of flying at full gross weight on performance and skill requirements.
After the checkout, I urge the pilot to accumulate ten hours of flight time as quickly as possible. The time is to get the pilot through those most dangerous ten-hours of initial transition. Instructor follow-up phone calls are well advised on the chance that unanticipated deficiencies have showed themselves. Follow-up time gives an opportunity to recharge the learning acquired in the transition flights. The required learning may well be restoring to the pilots conscious memory the operational similarities and differences as they exist in the transition. It only takes one regression to an old habit or missed procedure to cause an accident.
Experienced pilots rely on the creation and reinforcement of habit patterns to reinforce their success experiences. Transitions to other aircraft expose these past successful habit patterns as a potential hazard. Timing of what you do as well as the sequencing will cause inexperienced pilots in type to have a higher accident rate. Hence, the ten-hour suggestion for proficiency. Transitioning into more than one new aircraft at a time is a recipe for trouble. Multiple transitions will just multiply the high potential for a transitional accident.
Instructor Advice
What the airlines call transition training, General aviation calls a checkout. It is unfortunate that all the lesson learned by the airlines and the military in training pilots to fly different aircraft has not carried over into G.A. What is involved is using previous basic skills of flying in one type of aircraft, a trainer, and fitting those skills and habits into a different aircraft.
The transition of habits and skills from one aircraft to another is not as straight forward as it might seem. To some degree it is similar to transferring your driving skills from one car to another of different manufacture, size, and performance. You are going to need to blend existing habits into a new and somewhat different sequence. You are going to need to learn the sounds, the controls and aircraft sensitivity. Some planes are quicker than others; not necessarily faster just more sensitive and slicker. How much you anticipate what comes next will require a change in perception, timing. and even personality.
It has always been my objective in transitional training to train my pilots to utilize the best performance capabilities of the aircraft. I cannot accept a pilot who habitually slows a Bonanza to C-172 speeds for airport arrivals. This is a tragic waste of performance capability. The basic proficiency level acquired in a trainer will no longer satisfy the needs of the next level aircraft. Not only do things happen faster, they happen differently. The acceleration time from climb to cruise changes. The number of cockpit adjustments change for each configuration change. You have more things to do and less time to do it in.
When you first see a new aircraft type you have enhanced expectations and apprehensions. Initially, your confidence level will need readjustment. What you know and what you think you know are going to be recycled into a new learning curve. You must enter into a transition with the expectation that the making of mistakes will occur Initially, you will make mistakes but with frequency of practice your ability to anticipate will improve and eliminate them. How well you perform IS related to your basic training and the skills acquired.
The pilot who's basic training included the entire gamut from throttle control, taxi skill, yoke finger touch, radio use, situational awareness, and care of the aircraft is going to transition sooner and better. All of these factors will need further refinement and development to best fit into the requirements of the new aircraft.
How well you fly a new aircraft will depend upon your existing level of training and skill, your level of information retention and how well you reactivate prior instruction. Under stress every pilot can be expected to revert back to first learned techniques. Ideally, there will be sufficient similarity between what you are doing and are expected to do that there will be no conflict of old habits and new training. One should complement the other. Otherwise, considerable unlearning and relearning conflict will exist. The best course, although not always the most practical, is to make a clean break from the old to the new. This will minimize any reversion back to old habits. Experience is not always an advantage.
The first ten hours in type are the most hazardous. It has always been my desire to have my pilots get those first ten hours as quickly and possible. Good checkout/transitional training will expose the trainee to a full gamut of airports, winds, and terrain. The rudimentary 'one flight checkout' will not suffice in today's complex aviation environment. Poor checkouts cause aircraft damage and potentially accidents. Instructors should be accountable for those they 'checkout'.
What flight maneuvers do you all do with somebody when checking them out in an airplane... same stuff as BFR?
I prefer to take pilots on two flights when checking them out in a new aircraft. Once with just pilot and instructor and the second one with a full load. Some aircraft fly so differently that they are like two different airplanes Pipers especially. Run weight and balance both times.
The year of the airplane can make a great difference as well. Read about Pipers and Cessnas of different years. Learn as much as you can about how the same model can be different. Size of elevators, flap extensions, airspeeds. Manual differences. Just because you can fly one C-150 doesn't mean that they are all alike. There is an 18 mph difference in the Vso of C-150 models.
Anybody got a good BFR lesson plan?
Begin by going over the FAR changes in past two years. Then go to the charts and cover the changes there. Special emphasis on how to use and avoid airspaces. Run through the POH and ask questions. Do a W & B.
Prior to meeting have pilot prepare flight to least familiar nearby airport. Set up radar contact to get there. Have pilot prepare minimum radio use flight and maximum radio use flight.
Under the hood, have pilot close eyes at some point. Reach over and make major change in heading indicator. When hood comes off have pilot fly to an unfamiliar VOR. Very interesting disorientation lesson if pilot does not reset HI.
Run through a simulated SVFR arrival with you acting as ATC. Have pilot take off headset and make NORDO controlled airport arrival. (Just advise ATC that you will be monitoring frequency) Don't make it easy for ATC by telling them where you are.
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