What would you do?

[stillaboo]

What IS good flight training?

Don't pay a dime extra for upolstry, and anywhere that stresses the use of GPS is not where you want to fly. Airliners don't use GPS, and no pilot learns basic instrument skills with GPS either. Same thing with autopilots. Don't use 'em, and don't go anywhere that stresses them. Any monkey can fly a GPS direct straight and level with the auto-pilot on. You don't have to know anything to do that. Pilots are there for the unexpected, the un-anticipated, and the abnormal. We fly the plane from the airport up to cruise, working with ATC to dodge traffic and re-route over a different departure. We know the systems of our aircraft and can take a quick look at the guages and instantly know the state of our aircraft. We can look out the window and see what the weather will do before it even knows what it's doing. We don't panic when we lose an engine. We fly the airplane, do our jobs, and return the airplane safely to its destination. Pilots make their $ everywhere but 'at cruise when everything goes right'. Don't accept any training program that just puts you up at cruise building time and no real experience.

When you're flying professionally, you're expected to have the knowledge and skills to back up your position. #'s in a log book don't make experience. Experience doesn't happen in a book, and nobody builds instrument proficiency flying straight and level at cruise. Don't spend $ learning to do nothing.

Fly out of un-improved strips. Land and take-off at real short fields (1500' or less). Fly approaches in busy class C airports, mixing your 172 on final with a 737. Fly into mountainous terrain in the summer to learn what hot, high and heavy REALLY means. Fly IFR in the northeast or pacific west, were fog and clouds really happen. Fly into light icing conditions to see how ice builds up and how it affects handling. Spin an aircraft at altitude to learn how to recover from it, and what it feels like to scew it up.

Do all of this with your CFI, a guy who's done it all before, and will be there to prevent you from digging in on a soft field, over-running the short field, getting in the way of the 737 or messing up ATC's flow, hitting the mountains, VMC rolling in IMC, continuing on into iceing you can't handle, or spinning the aircraft when you're close to the ground. In short, give yourself as much variety as possible. That is experience your future employers want to see, and it will provide you with the radio skills, instrument proficiency, flying skill and decision making processes that will be the basis for a successful flight career.

A FL flight factory cannot offer all of this, nor can a hour building program where you just cruise around on auto-pilot everywhere. Find a school that can train you for the greatest variety of situations. It will take at least a year to get all these experiences. Anybody who says they can do it in less time is cheating you out of experiences you need, experiences that build the fundamentals of a great career instead of a tragicly short one.

-Boo!

 

[bobbysamd]

Bells and whistles

Don't pay a dime extra for upolstry, and anywhere that stresses the use of GPS is not where you want to fly. Airliners don't use GPS, and no pilot learns basic instrument skills with GPS either. Same thing with autopilots. Don't use 'em, and don't go anywhere that stresses them. Any monkey can fly a GPS direct straight and level with the auto-pilot on. You don't have to know anything to do that. Pilots are there for the unexpected, the un-anticipated, and the abnormal. We fly the plane from the airport up to cruise, working with ATC to dodge traffic and re-route over a different departure. We know the systems of our aircraft and can take a quick look at the guages and instantly know the state of our aircraft. We can look out the window and see what the weather will do before it even knows what it's doing. We don't panic when we lose an engine. We fly the airplane, do our jobs, and return the airplane safely to its destination. Pilots make their $ everywhere but 'at cruise when everything goes right'. Don't accept any training program that just puts you up at cruise building time and no real experience.

In other words, the only thing you need to learn, and to pay for, are good, sound fundamentals. To understand how GPS and RNAV, etc., works, you have to be able to calculate and fly a cross country using only your charts, arithmetic, normal weather sequences, and your E6-B. In fact, you need an instructor who will teach you how to fly cross-countries strictly by pilotage and ded reckonings and without navaids altogether. If you're paying for all the fancy bells and whistles and are being taught to use them to the detriment of the basics, your school is cheating you.

Eleven years ago, I had a student who had a hand-held GPS. He took it with him when he rode as an observer. I disliked that intensely because I felt he was using the GPS as a crutch instead of learning basic cross-country flying.

I appreciate Stillaboo's comments about learning how to fly from real, soft-fields and dirt fields. I disagree slightly with him, though, about schools not teaching these techniques well. For one thing, most schools will not let training flights use real soft-fields and dirt fields. But that doesn't mean that the techniques cannot be taught effectively. The point is to be able to fly competently you need to have all the diverse knowledge and experience you can obtain. You don't learn much if your learning experience is narrow and easy.

Good luck with your training.