Where is your instructor?!

[Colonel Sanders]

A recurring theme here is ....

Where is your instructor?!

From some of the questions being asked, I get
very worried as to what kind of involvement
flight instructors have with people's training.

Are the flight instructors not involved? Do they
not know the answers to simple questions?

Where is the CFI? The supervising instructor?

[boogs82]

Self-learning has a lot to do with the types of questions being asked. That being said if we're self-learning we should be able to research the stuff. I guess this (besides money) is why it takes 55-60 hours for most people to get PPL now.

[Colonel Sanders]

The thing to remember is that you are travelling
a road that others have gone down before.

So if you have a question, probably a million other
people have asked the same question before.

This is where internet search engines such as google
come in handy. For example, if I wanted to learn how
to bake a cake, I might do the following:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+do+I+bake+a+cake

And there are 27 million results.


Learning to do a "site specific" search is extremely
valuable. Let's say you want to find information about
ELT's on TC's website, which no one can find anything
in, and even if you did, it will be gone in a month, so
there's no sense in bookmarking anything.

This is what you do:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ELT+site%3Awww.tc.gc.ca

Neat, huh?


Another neat thing: let's say you wanted to know
about night ratings, and you sort of remembered a
discussion here on AvCan about it. This is what you
would do:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=night+rating+site% ... vcanada.ca

[boogs82]

For sure. One thing I wish we had access to that doesn't seem to be on Google or Youtube is demonstrations of the flight exercises. I know it's what we're taught when we're going through training but it's always nice to have a visual point of reference (at least for me) to go back to and see how things should look. The two key pieces of information that I just stumbled across that I know are important for the rest of my training are the C172L and C172M POH's in PDF. I remember most of the stuff from the 152 I was training on but where I plan to finish the last 10-15 hours they only have a couple of 172's so I have to get into them and check on the differences. I'm really hoping to finish up by the end of 2013 :/

[Colonel Sanders]

demonstrations of the flight exercises

I'm rather fond of this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKIk-dqml6U

[boogs82]

Love that video! As for the rest of the exercises I've found a few just by searching the name of the exercise rather than the number. Who'd have thought that would help me.... I have to stop checking this stuff when I'm tired.

[KnownIce]

Sometimes I wonder if part of the problem is the current culture of flight schools billing every 0.1 of instructor ground time and operating strictly as a business and not as an old-fashion flying club where people hung out before and after flights, actually discussed flying for fun, etc....

Not saying if this is right or not but I would imagine paying $50-60/hr for every answer from someone with less than 2 years flying experience would have deterred me a lot from asking some questions if this was in place when I did my primary training.

[photofly]

A flight school owner I know gets extremely angry at students who hang around getting free advice from instructors. Ground instruction is $65/hour, which enables him to pay the rent and heating bills for the hangar and office those students are loitering in. If you don't think your instructor is worth $65/hr he'll find you a different one, or you're free to go learn somewhere else.

To the extent that he's running a business and not a club, I see his point.

[Rookie50]

A flight school owner I know gets extremely angry at students who hang around getting free advice from instructors. Ground instruction is $65/hour, which enables him to pay the rent and heating bills for the hangar and office those students are loitering in. If you don't think your instructor is worth $65/hr he'll find you a different one, or you're free to go learn somewhere else.

To the extent that he's running a business and not a club, I see his point.

I do too. I'll add that students should seek out mentor pilots when they actually want to add some practical experience to their book knowledge they get from the puppy mill instructors checking their iPhones in the cockpit.

Little things like actually talking to someone with actual IFR experience while learning IFR, something rare among instructors, which boggles my mind they are allowed to teach it then. Can actually anyone take a shot at claiming this is thorough, effective training, btw?

[photofly]

If you can pass the flight test for the Instrument Rating, it must be thorough and effective training, since that is what they're training to get.

People don't sign up saying "make me a pilot competent to fly in heavy weather" - they say I want an Instrument Rating. Which is what they get. Where's the issue?

[PilotDAR]

People don't sign up saying "make me a pilot competent to fly in heavy weather" - they say I want an Instrument Rating. Which is what they get. Where's the issue?

So true!

Candidate pilots have to be prepared to pay the cost for the training that is appropriate to the skills they would like to have. And, like a family, the aviation industry should be expected to enable some mentoring - but not to the determent of people who are in the flight training business, and providing a quality service.

I occasionally encounter someone who would like a floatplane rating. They find that the MINIMUM skills can be acquired in 7 to 10 hours. Then, they are surprised to find that being insured on a floatplane is difficult without an additional 20 hours of training, and thorough training is a 50 hour course. That's what it takes to master the skills to an environment competent level.

As long as candidate pilots seek out the lowest price, they'll get the lowest service. No one in aviation is in business to give things away. If all candidate pilots insisted on training from multi thousand hour, multi decade pilot instructors, willingly paid the price for that service, and came for training well prepared there would be few complaints.

My helicopter training was like that, very expensive, but no missed experiences, and I'd better be prepared to learn, and learning. I never baulked the cost, or the need for an additional hour of practice. I did not go through in minimums, despite coming to it with many thousand fixed wing hours. But it was made clear that as I was paying well for the flight instruction, the occasional phone question, or half hour of ground briefing, if things were not busy, was free. That's just a business courtesy of a well run service.

Candidate pilots: Eagerly pay for the service and quality you expect to receive. Then... make it clear that you expect to get what you paid for!

[Rookie50]

People don't sign up saying "make me a pilot competent to fly in heavy weather" - they say I want an Instrument Rating. Which is what they get. Where's the issue?

So true!

Candidate pilots have to be prepared to pay the cost for the training that is appropriate to the skills they would like to have. And, like a family, the aviation industry should be expected to enable some mentoring - but not to the determent of people who are in the flight training business, and providing a quality service.

I occasionally encounter someone who would like a floatplane rating. They find that the MINIMUM skills can be acquired in 7 to 10 hours. Then, they are surprised to find that being insured on a floatplane is difficult without an additional 20 hours of training, and thorough training is a 50 hour course. That's what it takes to master the skills to an environment competent level.

As long as candidate pilots seek out the lowest price, they'll get the lowest service. No one in aviation is in business to give things away. If all candidate pilots insisted on training from multi thousand hour, multi decade pilot instructors, willingly paid the price for that service, and came for training well prepared there would be few complaints.

My helicopter training was like that, very expensive, but no missed experiences, and I'd better be prepared to learn, and learning. I never baulked the cost, or the need for an additional hour of practice. I did not go through in minimums, despite coming to it with many thousand fixed wing hours. But it was made clear that as I was paying well for the flight instruction, the occasional phone question, or half hour of ground briefing, if things were not busy, was free. That's just a business courtesy of a well run service.

Candidate pilots: Eagerly pay for the service and quality you expect to receive. Then... make it clear that you expect to get what you paid for!

All so true. +1. In my training, which never really stops, I don't cheap out. I expect quality and am happy to pay for it, and if that includes an extra flight(s) so my slow brain can get to standard -- not the gov't standard, but the operational standard I expect -- I am grateful to pay for someone else's experience. But I'm different. I don't seek praise when I train, I want to be sharpened.

When I did my IR, I demanded to be trained to be competent and safe. Flight test?? That should be a byproduct of training to that standard.

Here's one issue, that seems to raise itself here as well. Its become some kind of a competition; how fast to pass the PPL. ( I completed mine in 62 hrs -- no records set as I needed a few extra flights). I gladly took extra time, in the air and on the ground, with my IP's, because I believe it made me a better pilot, especially setting a good foundation in PDM and simple maturity. And that -- takes more than minimums.

[PilotDAR]

how fast to pass the PPL. ( I completed mine in 62 hrs -- no records set as I needed a few extra flights). I gladly took extra time,

Haha, me too! When I did my helicopter PPL, I deliberately languished as a student, and did many solo cross country flights, as a supervised student pilot. Because, I knew, that once I earned my PPL, I was no longer a student, and I could no longer fly solo as a rental pilot on it, and that turned out to be the case. I only finished my HPPL, as I was offered a free MD500 type endorsement, and I had to have a license to endorse. So I got the HPPL, and got the endorsement. And I have not flown a helicopter solo since!

Oh, and by the way, the pilot who did my MD500 endorsement was a 29,000 heli pilot. Through 30+ hours of training, the mantra was always, "Sure,you can do that, let me follow through with you while you try..." I amazed myself many times....

[Beefitarian]

DAR couldn't you sign up as a CPL student and do cross countries solo?

[PilotDAR]

Nope, tried that, their insurance company thought I was trying to play games with them. I would have had to do all the CPL dual with them first..... Fair enough....

[Shiny Side Up]

A recurring theme here is ....

Where is your instructor?!

From some of the questions being asked, I get
very worried as to what kind of involvement
flight instructors have with people's training.

Much of the time I would suspect that the flight instructor is involved, but for whatever reason students feel compelled to throw a wider net. Sometimes its warranted, sometimes its not. I usually notice that often questions get asked here that I was asked sometimes earlier that same day and can't help but wonder if:

a) it is random coincidence
b) the question asker is the same person I spoke with earlier, or
c) there is a signal that goes out to pilot/students' brain that triggers a similar inquisitiveness globally.

c) would be similar to that signal that seems to go out to recreational flyer's brains that compells them all to need to go flying at the same time which I've observed. I digress. In the case of b) (of which on occasion I'm certain is the case) the person asking was clearly disatisfied with the answer, which might be just because it maybe tastes bad to get even a correct answer from someone you don't like. I've noticed this phenomenon often with my wife, where Mike Holmes is somehow has even more correct knowledge about home repair, in her opinion, even if I've said the exact same thing. I guess the people at TC are right, I am clearly not someone to be trusted.

Either way, I find that it is a frequent occurence that you will get a questioner who wants to hear a certain answer, thus will keep asking until they get one that lines up with their previously held assumption, no matter how outlandish it may be - this is how I found out that someone indeed does sanction going out and practicing with a hood by one's self.

Others also come up with burning questions that must be answered immediately, sometimes with very little fore thought as to the answer. This is why I don't give out my home number to students, if you do, you're guaranteed to get roped into a discussion about what a spin is at three in the morning. Or have to tell people that you clearly weren't awake when you told them to have sex and travel. The internet of course is the fix for that. Not that there aren't sometimes pertinent, interesting and necessary questions, but there are going to be a lot of random brain misfires that are going to show up too. I wouldn't worry about most of them, the asker is likely to get bored with flying quick and go back to golf.

I believe its you who mentioned that pilots aren't a cerebral lot?

[Colonel Sanders]

You're back! We were starting to get worried
about you.

pilots aren't a cerebral lot?

Smart pilots are like intelligent cops - theoretically
there could be one somewhere, but they're about
as common as honest politicians.



Columbo always required a pretty good "suspension
of disbelief" that any 1970's police force would tolerate a
short, one-eyed jewish intellectual that drove a Peugeot -
let alone promote him to detective!!!

Back on topic. A few years back, I wrote a little note
explaining how people could safely do low-altitude
aerobatics, and not kill themselves, hitting the ground:

www.pittspecials.com/articles/airspeed_radius.htm

To the best of my knowledge, not a single pilot has
ever finished reading it to the end, and understood
and applied what it described.

[Shiny Side Up]

To the best of my knowledge, not a single pilot has
ever finished reading it to the end,

Shouldn't suprise you, pilots as a group aren't big on reading I've discovered. I'm not sure why, but its generally held in high esteem amongst pilots to have learned how to fly without being able to read, which to me sounds like doing it the hard way, but feel free to hold your own opinion. Either way, there are untold numbers of Cessna POH's, FTMs and FTGUs that go unopened. I get a lot of questions, where I know the answers are clearly explained in one of said sources, and the student is so adamant and so sincere that I have to check to make sure its still there. As you said, its uncertain why many students feel their problem is unique, there's no new ground to tread at this point.

Granted, some questions work well with some delving into the why's of things as well, to which another point to consider is how many students are doing an online/self study program and don't reasonably have a person to ask their questions. Its possible they are starting on their path without an instructor, which again while it may be chamipioned since everyone is self made, seems like the hard way of doing things. Yes, there are lots of bad instructors, but there are many good ones too. If one spends a bit of time shopping it shouldn't be too hard to find some in person help - but then that might take time, and these days its all about now.

You're back! We were starting to get worried
about you.

Well, while it might not seem so, I do spend a lion share of my time doing that flying thing, and occasionally I take a day off (from the flying and here). Life is good, two new airplanes to try out in the last week, doing self check outs is fun.

[Rookie50]

One problem: lazy instructors not committed to excellence.

Much Bigger problem: lazy students not committed to excellence

[Shiny Side Up]

The problem is one becomes the other. Instructors suddenly didn't become bad the day their rating was signed off.

[photofly]

I sometimes wonder, for all the bitchin' and cussin' of bad instructors, how many instructors do those doing the bitchin' and cussin' actually know?

[Shiny Side Up]

Unfortunately I know many. Then again, I make a point specifically to know many. It would be rare that I could open a log book of anyone younger than myself and not find the name of one instructor that I have met in person, or at the very least have seen previous incarnations of their work. For the most part performance-wise they follow a standard deviation, so its really to be expected. The thing is though, the pool is large, so the people on the left of the curve are legion. That curve does lean slightly to the left though - good instructors tend to move up and on or quit, while bad ones tend to persist.

[Colonel Sanders]

two new airplanes to try out in the last week, doing self check outs is fun.

Ain't it great when your first flight on type is solo?

good instructors tend to move up and on or quit, while bad ones tend to persist

Don't worry, TC will snap them up! Look forward to seeing them at a PVI near you!

[PilotDAR]

how many instructors do those doing the bitchin' and cussin' actually know?

For me, in the last five years, I've flown with maybe a dozen. A few horrible, more than half excellent, and a couple memorably magnificent. However, would a candidate pilot know if they had one of the horrible ones?

I recall one memorably uninspiring instructor, whom I never heard say a kind word, and never saw smile. I flew him home from a delivery one day in my 150. I told him I was going to slow down and loiter for a couple of minutes, which I did. He said nothing - to me. Later his boss told me that the instructor reported me as: "....being an idiot, and flying my plane around below stall speed." The boss told me that he replied to the instructor: "If he was flying around below stall speed, why did he not stall?". Apparently no answer came. I never did see that instructor around much after that.....

Seeing as I did some of the STOL kit installation set up flight tests for the boss, telling the boss that I was an idiot pilot, was probably career limiting for him!

Another instructor at a renowned Toronto area school, asked me to demonstrate a roll in a 172 while he oversaw my check ride. I thought he was joking, or setting me up - turns out he really wanted to see a roll! He did not see it with me - but what if someone had taken up the challenge?

[Shiny Side Up]

Ain't it great when your first flight on type is solo?

Yes, except that because of my OCD and your cursed introduction to that essco site, I buy more books before I do it.

Don't worry, TC will snap them up! Look forward to seeing them at a PVI near you!

Don't joke about that stuff man, it happens. Though I had heard that even TC turned down the application of one particularly bad instructor I know (and was unfortunate enough to recieve instruction from... once), so on rare occasion there is some justice in the world. That said, it sort of makes you wonder, when someone is so spectacularly bad that you won't hire them, yet they have made it through a system you designed. Makes you think, or not.