Simulated Problems While Instructing

[Brother Francis]

1) 141 school I used to work for had spins in the curriculum. 2 or 3 lessons after the student was proficient at recovery, and after reviewing spin entry and recovery in the pre-brief and advising we would review it in flight as well, I would kick a rudder at the break during a departure stall, inducing a spin entry.

Aside fron the advantage to them of having to deal with an unexpected sudden and critical situation, the real value was the "real world" implications if this situation were to occur inadvertantly after they were out from under my wing. I would point out the altitude loss in the recovery and call their attention to the agl altitude where this situation was likely to occur in the real world and the bgl altitude where they would end up if it did. It was very effective at teaching stall awareness and avoidance.

I would then promise never to do that again to them and extracted a promise they would not narc to the other students.

2) Real world unusual attitude recovery. I used this when the students were nearing the end of their training. This only works at night when the a/c can be placed on a heading where there are no ground lights in view. May work over water day or night.

With emphasis during the pre-brief on use of instruments for UA recovery, without the hood I would induce several attitudes with the city lights of PHX clearly visible. Of course, the student recovered accurately and easily using the lights as a visual reference. When I was satisfied they were comfortable with how easy this was, I would turn the a/c away from the city and induce an attitude (nose up with an overcast, nose down without).

When told to recover, they would confidently look out the window for their horizon reference and find a blank screen. After a moment's hesitation, and maybe a friendly reminder if it was longer than a moment, they would return to the instruments for recovery.

 

[ECEx]

stop prop

hey mick, didn't mean to imply that i'm out stopping props in an uncontrolled/ less than clinical method, and not with just any student.

 

[Brother Francis]

One more

3) On pre-solo students, pop a door at rotation. Be ready to take the controls, though. In my experience most students will let go of the controls and start fussing with the door.

A surprising number of people (one of which a friend of mine) spend the rest of their lives trying to close a door that pops open at rotation. A lot of those lives would not have been lost if they had seen this simple but hugely distracting non-emergency in primary training.

 

[TwinTails]

Instructors aren't there to "weed out retards"or cause a simple minded student enough confusion to have nightmares of killing himself and his beloved mentor.

I've had some pretty horrible students in the past and I've been almost certain that some were more than just a little mentally challenged. I still worked with them patiently every time they came through the door. At points, all instructors feel they have tried everything and the person they are teaching has no right living unassisted in society let alone flying an airplane.

Relax take a deep breath and try to take another angle at the problem not being comprehended. With time everyone will get it. You can teach a monkey to fly an airplane, especially a Charokee or one of the like.

I know it's hard for superior pilots like a fresh 300 hr CFI,II,MEI to step down off the high horse and look at things from anothers point of view but go ahead and try. You might find things less stressfull for you and your student. You'r monthly beer expense will go down too.

You'r not there to trick, scare, or confuse a student. If a prospective pilot is so bad they aren't safe just keep on keepin on. After enough dual they may or may not walk away.

Yeah I'm ranting but I see so many cocky young instructors who think and act very much the wrong way with these students. Teach what's been tought, works, and is in the lesson plan.

 

[flywithastick]

Yeah I'm ranting but I see so many cocky young instructors who think and act very much the wrong way with these students. Teach what's been tought, works, and is in the lesson plan.

don't know who you're ranting at/about, but no syllabus I've seen discusses opening the doors, landing without the airspeed indicator, simulating flight with jammed controls. Done in the right situation, they all seem like reasonable & useful demonstrations.

What's all this status quo BS? don't believe there's any room to teach and learn outside the confines of the typical training syllabus? Now that's not getting your moneys worth.

Where in any flight training syllabus does it say to disassemble a gyro, look at failed engine components, mixing some fuel and water to see what it looks like, discussing previous accident reports, providing links to informative web sites, opening the AC cowling, etc? Am I cheating my students in providing these items also?

 

[Dash Jockey]

For what it is worth, i feel that the more realistic the training is, the better the pilot will become. That does include shutting down the engine at least once during training (usually towards the end) just so the student will have seen it once. I believe that by already having the initial shock once, thier reaction time might be quicker the next time. i don't believe in scaring a student. I only do this maneuver with students that are nearing a checkride or have demonstrated to me the ability to handle the situation, and it is used as a teaching aid and nothing more.
Another one of may favorites is to simulate a high dencity altitude situation. This is (in my opinion) very important, especially in a place like PHX where you have high altitude airports nearby and high temps. I didn't ever want one of my students to become a story that began with, "It was a hot day in Flagstaff" and ends with, "the 172 didn't clear the trees"

That being said, it is always the instructors responsibility to ensure that everything is done in as safe a manor as possible. That includes pre and post flight briefings. Ground training is as important as flight training.

 

[bobbysamd]

Emergencies

I know this isn't all that original, but I'll still mention it. On a night flight, turn off all the lights and put your students under the hood, with only their flashlights for illumination. Make them fly the airplane on the gauges (I'll assume you've already given them a little BAI). You can try some partial panel in various forms to give your better students a challenge.

Night (simulated) high and low-altitude emergency approaches and landings are good training. Also, night is a great time for unusual attitudes training. At MAPD, we did stalls at night in A36 Bonanzas with primary students. I was never a real fan of that; I feel that you need an horizon of some sort before you practice stalls in any airplane.

I agree 100% with teaching primary students landings with an inop ASI (to simulate an insect clogging the pitot). In fact, I recall reading either in Kershner or elsewhere to have students who are nearing solo fly the pattern with all instruments inop. I've done it, and it is amazing how close one comes to hitting the correct TPA, target airspeeds, rates of climb and decent, with a good landing at the end.

I like the idea of taking your fuel sumper and mixing fuel with water to show students what it looks like, before they see it for real on a preflight and freak out.

Probably the most important thing you can do is brief these items thoroughly before the flight. After your students have tried them a time or two, it is appropriate to spring them on your students from time to time. Some or all of these things are appropriate for your BFR people, too.

Good luck with your instructing.

 

[Rush Limbaugh]

It's been a while since I did any instructing but there wasa CFI at the FBO I worked at that got fired for pulling the mixture on a student. When you have one engine, it is a serious lack of judgement and airmanship to shut it down in flight for any reason other than for an emergency procedure in the -1, POH or whatever the book is called.

Using the argument of "well pick a point and if the engine doesn't start just land there" is a bunch of crap. It may look like a great spot from the air but when you land on it you may find that you trashed a farmers crop or even worse, a person appears out of nowhere in front of you. If the locals see an airplane land in a field they are going to think something serious has just happenned and there was a case where a CFI was showing a student how manly he was by doing some radical emergency procedure and a police officer did something stupid thinking he was responding to a real emergency and got into a traffic accident. The moral of the story is that after the officer was suspended himself, he pressed the case and won both a civil judgement and an admistrative enforcement case with the NTSB. I doubt that same CFI still does stupid stunts like he did that day trying to be creative. Of course that's assuming he ever got his ticket back.

Just reaching up and pulling the throttle to idle is about as much as you need to "surprise" a student. A CFI's job is to teach students how to fly. That includes how to HANDLE emergencies, not create them. If you are a reckless CFI, your students will be reckless pilots and become reckless CFI's.

 

[TwinTails]

"don't know who you're ranting at/about, but no syllabus I've seen discusses opening the doors, landing without the airspeed indicator, simulating flight with jammed controls. Done in the right situation, they all seem like reasonable & useful demonstrations."

"Where in any flight training syllabus does it say to disassemble a gyro, look at failed engine components, mixing some fuel and water to see what it looks like, discussing previous accident reports, providing links to informative web sites, opening the AC cowling, etc? Am I cheating my students in providing these items also?"

Flywithastick,

All those things have been tought, and do work. Why are you putting up a defensive post again? My first post was off the subject, and a little vague I know. I appologize for that. The point I was trying to make was about instructors and the way they treat thier clients.



I had a discussion with some other pilots the other day about instructors and experience. I was saying it wouldn't be all bad if a guy had to have like 700 hours before getting the CFI, and a few hundered of multi engine time before the MEI. I think a 300 hr MEI is a scary thing, most of the time anyway.

 

[Wiggums]

I know the original poster didn’t ask for a safety lecture, but I don’t agree with some of the ideas posted so far. Shutting down the engine on short final to shock the student isn’t the best thing to do. What if you need to go-around. No landing is assured until you turn off the runway. A number of different situation could precipitate a go-around, and if you bend an airplane because you had the engine shutdown you’ll definitely violated for careless and reckless.

With any engine out you want to exercise extreme caution. An engine out is the most dangerous maneuver that a single engine instructor executes on a regular basis. In what other type of operation do you descend with the power at idle for a few minutes, and then advance the power at low altitude and depend on the engine to get you safely away? I don’t believe that utilizing different methods of simulating power loss other then pulling the throttle provide any benefit to the student. No matter if you pull the throttle or shut off the fuel, it will be readily apparent to the student that the engine has quit and they should execute an emergency approach and landing. I would also argue that pulling anything other then the throttle increases risk. What happens if you pull the mixture and the mixture cable breaks? What if you turn off the fuel selector and it sticks in the off position? If any of these situations occur you’ll be doing some explaining to your employer and the FAA. Giving the student realistic training is an important goal, but keeping your career and certificates should come first.

Use good judgment when creating trying to create a realistic situation in the cockpit. For example, just after clearing 1000’ AGL on takeoff I might pull the alternator field breaker the simulate a failed alternator. If for some reason the alternator won’t come back on then I am only a few minutes away from the airport. On the other hand, I wouldn’t pull the same breaker on a night cross-country because in that situation, losing the alternator would be a much larger problem. Same thing with the gear circuit breaker, I might pull it in the pattern when flying an Seminole, since if I can’t get the thing back in I can always easily drop the gear with gravity. However, I wouldn’t do the same thing in an Arrow during a simulated engine out in the practice area. If a real engine problem developed during the simulated one then I wouldn’t want to deal with that and reset the gear at the same time.

As someone who has wrecked an airplane because something fluky happened at an inopportune moment I am a firm believer that every maneuver should be performed with a bias towards safety instead of realism.