photofly wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:09 am
It may or may not be; but if it was demonstrably an inefficient way to achieve competency compared to dual training, a million impoverished PPL and CPL students would bite off your arm to skip it.
Fair, but that standard is set by TC. I don't know the efficacy of building time by taking a plane solo to ... build time. It might be crucial, I haven't seen a study done on the sweet spot of solo hours. They certainly have a role to play, but with the design of the RCAF training system I don't see tremendous advantage in giving more solos. They achieve their purpose well, extra flight hours per student (if they were available) would be better allocated to dual instruction.
But we're comparing apples to grapefruit. Wings standard is not to build a fully qualified pilot, without taking away from what an achievement it is or how difficult it is to achieve, from the Air Force's perspective it means you are merely able to carry on to more training. This typically means several more flying courses, lots of flying (in many cases including solos,) and years of training before you're dropping ordinance.
Comparing Ph2 'Basic' flight training to a CPL, they have many similar maneuvers that are probably evaluated to a similar standard, plus a lot of other maneuvers that aren't in a CPL and arguable some things evaluated to higher standards. But on completion of a 68-ish flying hour BFT course (more hours in sim), there is no professional licence or qualification. It's merely a means to carrying on to further training. So while it may look similar to a CPL, it's not meant to qualify anyone, just provide the skills and knowledge to do the next course. Phase 2 'Basic' Flight Training is not a wings course. It used to be yeast ago and it was a much longer course. Wings are now earned on a Phase 3 'Advanced' Flight Training course - which often includes more solos.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:09 am
I don’t see a qualitative difference between that and a steep turn, or power-on stall and recovery; one is more sophisticated than the others but they’re all technical manoeuvres.
Some maneuvers are more complex than others and really benefit from instruction. We're not talking about slow fight or stalls, it's aerobatics, final turns, closed patterns. You can teach a guy to fly a barrel roll, safe for solo, let him practice it solo. Students go solo get some practice, build confidence, but the benefits of adding in another 25 hours of solo isn't going to really compare to a couple of hours of dual. The maneuvers are involved enough that they really need instruction to progress quickly. Additionally, a student gets to see a maneuver a couple of times but there's not much time spent on each maneuver. They have to progress within a few quick flights to be safe for solo, get a solo in, get a little more dual instruction but generally the syllabus already has them moving on to other new maneuvers. There isn't time to spend 25 solo hours mastering slow flight and circuits. And it wouldn't be productive. Once they've reached the level, they move onto other new maneuvers. There's too much material to teach to dwell for hours.
This is partly because the training system needs to generate throughput to keep the Air Force fed with new pilots, ie production requirements with finite resources. But it's also by design. The training system isn't meant to give you 25 hours of joyride time. It's designed to be a limited amount of time to learn something to a specified level, and then move onto something else. By design the learning curve is steep, it's intentionally not giving more hours because the system needs to make it difficult enough to evaluate students for ability to learn quickly with minimal time solo or dual.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:09 am
Are you suggesting military flight students don’t learn to self-evaluate?
That's a non-sequitur. Seriously? Of course the training system puts a massive emphasis on self evaluation. The terminal level required is for 'minor' errors only, self analyzed and self corrected, zero instructor input.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:09 am
Why does the CPL syllabus *require* “30 hours solo flight time including: 25 hours solo flight time emphasizing the improvement of general flying skills of the applicant” if solo flight is unimportant for achieving skill?
Great question. Maybe that isn't valuable. Perhaps half that time with extremely well delivered instruction would produce a better result. Speaking from experience, if you gave BFT students 2 hours of solo it certainly wouldn't hurt them. Any flying experience is enriching and beneficial. But they will never get better as efficiently or reach as high a standard of proficiency as they would with well delivered instruction. Those extra hours also mean graduating few pilots per year.
The two training systems are different enough, teaching very different types of maneuvers to different standards for different purposes, using different candidates, some of whom are junior officers who are directed, in the civilian world they're often paying clients, etc. etc, that a direct comparison is difficult and likely irrelevant.
Our syllabus is very similar to that used by the USN and USAF. We regularly send our winged jet candidates to the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program (ENJJPT) to complete their Basic Flight Training course on the Texan 2 (same airframe as Harvard) and follow on to Fighter Lead in Training on the T-38. Our students generally perform very well and are usually well within top top 3rd of the course. We have 850 hr total time guys upgrading to Aircraft Commander (captain) on 650,000 lb 4 engine jets, running missions globally. There's lots that I would change if I were king for a day. But much of what the RCAF system achieves is pretty good. A lot of other air forces from around the world have or are currently sending their guys to CYMJ to get our training. Even with the solos hrs.