5 air exercises that IMO every CPL Instructor should do

[Big Pistons Forever]

In the spirit of giving instructors something to think about and discuss, rather then just crapping on them, which seems to be where this forum is going, here are some air exercises I use.

1) Reduced power takeoff ( ie 2100 RPM in a C 172). This will simulate what a approx 7000 ft density altitude take off will feel like. It graphically demonstrates how soggy the aircraft will feel and how important it is to not climb put of ground effect below VY and how much any excursions, either high or low will effect the rate of climb as well as the effect of not having the ball centered.

2) At altitude in the practice area set up a full power Vx climb and when the aircraft is stabilized on speed, without warning smoothly but quickly reduce power to idle. I guarantee the student will be shocked at how quickly the speed bleeds off and the magnitude of the push required to transition to the glide attitude

3) Fly one complete circuit with a normal takeoff to a full stop landing with the airspeed indicator covered.

4) Get the student to do a power off stall but do not let him recover, instead firmly hold the stick full back with ailerons centered and get the student to use the rudder to stop the aircraft from yawing. Prevention of yaw with the aircraft stalling or stalled is IMO the least well taught of the stall/spin exercises. If Yaw is controlled the aircraft can't spin, that should be the principal point of the spin exercise

5) Periodically cover the engine instruments with your hand and ask the student where precisely the needles are. Hint "in the green" is not the right answer I find that almost no students have developed the habit to regularly scan the instruments and this exercise will help them start to unconsciously include all the instruments in their scan.

BTW I am a current Class 1 Instructor and Class 1 Aerobatic Instructor, but beyond that I am not going not going to post a resume of my accomplishments as ultimately I feel the quality, or maybe lack there of in some cases, of my posts will be evident in their content.

[AEROBAT]

Are you saying they don't do #5, partial panel?

[Big Pistons Forever]

Are you saying they don't do #5, partial panel?

Huh ?

[AEROBAT]

Maybe things have changed but it used to be quite routine to cover various instruments with post it notes, including engine instruments.

[gaamin]

Nice exercises. It doesn't hurt to do them to a PPL student either.

One that my Class 1 had me do during my Class 4 rating : dead-yoke circuit. Just rudders, power, trim. Most of my students found it a good fix to overcontrol / lack of anticipation.

[trey kule]

That was a very good post. The only thing I would like to add, that in some of these exercise,, before the instructor actually starts teaching them , it might be wise to have them demonstrate their ability to do and teach them to the CFI.

[winds_in_flight_wtf]

What about harassment in the cockpit? Like lets say your Captain is a 64 year old pedophile - he has nothing to lose and one day decides its time to put you under the hood. Do you think it should be compulsory to teach submission , or proper defense measures while "flying the airplane" ?

[Big Pistons Forever]

What about harassment in the cockpit? Like lets say your Captain is a 64 year old pedophile - he has nothing to lose and one day decides its time to put you under the hood. Do you think it should be compulsory to teach submission , or proper defense measures while "flying the airplane" ?

Do you have anything intelligent to contribute ?

[iflyforpie]

Ha, I did #3 the other day for the first time with 1500 hours under my belt. Damn mud dauber wasps. Didn't bother me too much, I find I fly the aircraft better when I don't look at the A/S....

[SuperchargedRS]

I'd cut some toilet paper with your student, teaches precision airmanship, power management and it's fun, which helps the whole learning process!




+1 to the no ASI thing, thats somewhat of a personal SOP before I let my guys solo (I also like to cover the altimeter and RPM, which leaves next to nothing in our planes except feel)







Big Pistons, how are your hours & ratings relevant to this discussion btw?

[Shiny Side Up]

I got a beef with your #1 BPF. There's a few problems. First we've taught people that if they don't get full power they should abort a take off, but then we're going to undo it with the reason "its good to practice"? Sets a bad precedence. Second, your demo you suggest doesn't seem very accurate. To really turn this into an excersise, it would really deserve some hard numbers on performance that the airplane can produce and still maintain a decent margin of safety for practice. In short, this is getting into being a test pilot which I'd caution against. After all, how much runway does the 172 need for a density altitude of 3000' with 2100 RPM? I don't know either. While I approve of what one is trying to teach, it would hit home more if students actually had a chance to fly out of somewhere and experience high density altitude problems. Alternatively, one could increase weight to decrease performance, and achieve the same goal. We do have numbers for that after all. Either way, CPL students should be encouraged to really explore during their time building to gain experience during those hours, and part of that should be experiencing the airplane in a variety of conditions. In that regard anyone who fast tracks doing a license and "burns off hours" is sorely missing out on the spirit of the whole process. Lastly the such an excersise increases the risk in an unwarranted fashion. I know of at least one instructor out there who thought this was a good excersise and ended up in the weeds off the end of a runway, and fortunately it just ended in some hurt pride and nothing money couldn't fix.

[Dagwood]

An exercise I have done is hide the checklist when the airplane is away from base (on a cross country). Make an excuse (it blew away) and let the student figure out what to do. The purpose isn't to discourage checklist use, but to make the point that the checklist doesn't fly the plane.

[trey kule]

Lost checklist?
What type of aircraft are you referring to?

a.There is a copy of the checklist in the AFM. Not a big deal to simply pull it up. I guess if you did not have a way to copy it, you could remove the pages...What am I missing? Or is your "scenario" mean that a required document (AFM) was forgotten, and a stray dog ate the checklist.?

b. If you are talking about a small simple plane like a 172, .....if a missing checklist is creating a problem you have bigger worries in your life. I am sure there is maybe more than one or two Beaver and otter pilots who have thousands upon thousands of safe flying hours under their belt, and have never seen a checklist for the type. The whole checklist thing is one that has , once again, lost all common sense. In the last few years even the manuafacturers and transport have relaxed and allowed"memory" items. Believe it not, there was one point when some transport inspectors expected you to refer to the checklist before you acted in every situation...result...checklist sat on your knee during the training and ride...Disappeared into a side pocket for the next 11 months. Try reading a checklist, and starting an airplane.. Head down...no monitoring of guages, no looking outside.....yep....you gotta love checklist use sometimes.

This just seems to me to be another one of those silly things some instructors do. I am going to post it again. Before any "scenarios" or new exercises are introduced into a flight training syllabus they should be approved by the CFI, and the CFI should make absolutely sure the instructor themselves can do the exercise, teach it, and evaluate it. Otherwise there are just to many instructors out there thinking up stupid, useless things because they think it is a good idea..

And here is the typical response....."it only takes a minute"....The universal rational for useless "exercises"

[Big Pistons Forever]

I got a beef with your #1 BPF. There's a few problems. First we've taught people that if they don't get full power they should abort a take off, but then we're going to undo it with the reason "its good to practice"? Sets a bad precedence. Second, your demo you suggest doesn't seem very accurate. To really turn this into an excersise, it would really deserve some hard numbers on performance that the airplane can produce and still maintain a decent margin of safety for practice. In short, this is getting into being a test pilot which I'd caution against. After all, how much runway does the 172 need for a density altitude of 3000' with 2100 RPM? I don't know either. While I approve of what one is trying to teach, it would hit home more if students actually had a chance to fly out of somewhere and experience high density altitude problems. Alternatively, one could increase weight to decrease performance, and achieve the same goal. We do have numbers for that after all. Either way, CPL students should be encouraged to really explore during their time building to gain experience during those hours, and part of that should be experiencing the airplane in a variety of conditions. In that regard anyone who fast tracks doing a license and "burns off hours" is sorely missing out on the spirit of the whole process. Lastly the such an excersise increases the risk in an unwarranted fashion. I know of at least one instructor out there who thought this was a good excersise and ended up in the weeds off the end of a runway, and fortunately it just ended in some hurt pride and nothing money couldn't fix.

Shiny

I mostly fly from a near sea level airport so the only way to realistically simulate high density altitude performance is to either restrict power or grossly overload the aircraft.

re: no data to support what am doing. The Lycoming 0 320 engine manual has power charts which give percent power vs RPM for a variety of altitudes. So if you go to the POH cruise charts you will get percent power at full throttle at the higher altitudes. You can then duplicate this percent power using the Lycoming charts at a lower (sea level in my case) altitude.

I do not feel this manoever is unduly dangerous because the option to go back to full power is always available and it is a one time only demonstration. My students have invariably been shocked by how poorly the aircraft performed and will now know what to expect and have a healthy respect for low powered aircraft and high density altitude. They all had a good theoretical understanding of the issue but a 3 minute demonstration of what that theory meant was always an eye opener.

As for the "lost" checklist scenario....this would be a non event for my students because all the checklists I use are organized in a consistent simple logical flow. So the worst thing that would happen would be there would be no list to "check" the actions which you have already flowed.

I would also like to reinforce Trey's message about discussing any "good ideas" with the CFI before doing them.

However I am the last guy to say I have all the answers and am always looking for better ways to teach.

[Shiny Side Up]

I mostly fly from a near sea level airport so the only way to realistically simulate high density altitude performance is to either restrict power or grossly overload the aircraft.

My questions would be why this needs to be simulated when a CPL candidate really should be able to go experience real conditions by themselves. They shouldn't need an instructor to hold their hand to demonstrate this. Some briefing on the subject should happen, then they should be encouraged to fly somewhere and experience it. Something for them to accomplish on their 300 Nmi cross country. Their PPL holding status grants them the ability to go experience this without the aid of an instructor. Why aren't they doing it? Please tell me the CPL candidates aren't burning around the same bit of airspace to "burn up" their time building.

re: no data to support what am doing. The Lycoming 0 320 engine manual has power charts which give percent power vs RPM for a variety of altitudes. So if you go to the POH cruise charts you will get percent power at full throttle at the higher altitudes. You can then duplicate this percent power using the Lycoming charts at a lower (sea level in my case) altitude.

Then I would say your assessment of it is inaccurate. Yesterday we took off with a density altitude of almost 7000 ASL (I figured it to be about 6700 d.alt) and the ol' 172 made 2300 in the full static. The cruise performance chart won't be terribly accurate to what can be achieved in the take off roll. Besides the fact that to be accurate enough, you still got to do a lot of figureing between what you hope to achieve and what you hope to simulate given changing daily conditions - which I doubt many instructors would do on a daily basis if such practice was going to be implemented, especially given that many probably don't have access to an engine manual to boot.

Either way, why can't a density altitude climb be demonstrated at altitude? Its easy enough to climb up to where you desire to show the poor performance and note the differences.

I do not feel this manoever is unduly dangerous because the option to go back to full power is always available and it is a one time only demonstration.

What if full power isn't available when you need it? I think at least here it deserves if one is going to attempt this excersise (which I must strenuously say I don't endorse) a full static check should be done before one starts it.

[Story time]
The incident above I describes occured when an instructor thought this excersise was a good idea. But he didn't take things into account. 1) how much distance he was really going to require for said demonstration, or 2) that the engine was indeed going to generate full power during the take off roll (turned out a bad mag which for some reason wasn't detected during the run up - lots of questions to be asked about what was going on before this excersise, but that's another story) long story short, by the time they determined the only options were to crash fast or crash slow, it was too late. Fortunately there was just farmers fields off the end of the runway, and they just busted up some wheel pants.

[/story]

Question: If you feel this is an important thing to get across, why is it a one time demonstration?

My students have invariably been shocked by how poorly the aircraft performed and will now know what to expect and have a healthy respect for low powered aircraft and high density altitude. They all had a good theoretical understanding of the issue but a 3 minute demonstration of what that theory meant was always an eye opener.

They might have been shocked, but I can guarantee that you just showed the monkeys where you keep the matches. Leads me to my second story about where I encountered this.

[Storytime]
Was working with a student I inherited from another instructor. While we were doing the run-up I noticed he missed checking the one mag and it was left in the off position after his check. Knowing that his checklist called for them to be checked again before take off I waited to see if he would spot his error. He did not and initiated the take off roll. I asked him if he noticed anything was wrong, he answered in the affirmative, that indeed the engine wasn't showing take off power. Oddly enough since he declined to do anything about it, I took control and aborted the take off. I had questions. In spite of the pre take off brief he had said aloud mere minutes before - to which part of it was "If we don't have full power in the roll we throttle off and stop" - why didn't he do what he said he was going to. The answer was straight: My instructor before had me practice a take off without full power to simulate the poorer performance at altitude, so I figured we would be ok because I knew we would get off the runway.

[/story]

Remember what I said about setting precedence? Either the instructor previously wasn't clear enough about the purpose of the excersise, or the student had accepted that since his instructor had done it before, that it was acceptable (and probably safe) to do again. Monkey see, monkey will do. Since you're not the first instructor I've heard of who reccomends this practice, I don't doubt there are many more out there doing it. I also have seen and heard of a lot of pilots electing to continue take offs knowingly without the engine making full power - some of which I know have come to grief (one cherokee pilot comes to mind who I saw take off multiple times on 3 cylinders) and can't help but wonder if the two are connected.

[trey kule]

I had to rewrite my post as SSU covered many of the points in his.

In turbine aircraft we do reduced power takeoffs almost every day.. We have nifty little computer programs in the plane and paper charts to determine the power setting.


The "skill" here is is learning when to make the decision not to try it. If memory serves me correctly most accidents are not a result of runway overrun , but occur trying to outclimb the terrain.

It may be time to revisit your "should do list".
How many people have evaluated this exercise in your FTU? I dont mean hearing about it and saying "great idea..sounds like fun", but actually sat down and questioned the validity of exercise objective. And looked at whether it actually achieves that objective.
Looked at the accident stats to determine if it is an issue, or if this exercise will address it.

when I think about this, my first impression is the time would be better spent helping the student to improve their decision making skills and imprinting the knowledge of go/no in their brain. Helping them to learn to recognize the dangers of high OAT/High altitude, and think about the surrounding terrain after departure. I cannot see how this exercise addresses that. In fact, it just might give a student pilot a bit of overconfidence later and cause them to ignore the conditions.

I really wonder sometimes when instructors are going stop doing so many scenarios and simulations and just spend the time teaching students how to fly the bloody plane well.

[Tim]

BPF, good post, good ideas.

[AEROBAT]

BPF,

As usual your posts lead to interesting discusion. One question I have for you and has bugged me for years... the Cessna trainers are certified for chandelle's yet we don't teach them here.

Any idea why the MOT never included chandelle's in our training? It would be a stretch to say they are an aerobatic manouver when we do spins without an aerobatic instructor.

[iflyforpie]

More useful than Chandelles IMHO are Lazy Eights. A really good coordination and control exercise. It takes a lot of practice to get the movements correct while maintaining your safe altitude.

[AEROBAT]

I was thinking about lazy eights also but I thought one question at a time....

[robertsailor1]

Used to teach those years ago

[Shiny Side Up]

The "skill" here is is learning when to make the decision not to try it. If memory serves me correctly most accidents are not a result of runway overrun , but occur trying to outclimb the terrain.

Indeed. The idea of climb performance, and maximising it and excersise associated with it really belongs in the realm of mountain flying. Simulating take offs at high density alt I don't think serves a real purpose, Either you got performance to get out of a place safely or you don't. In terms of the accidents, they stem from one and the same bad decision. either they get off the ground without the requisit performance with the aid of ground effect then realise too late they don't have the performance to get out of it (crash fast - relatively - trying to outclimb terrain) or pull the plug late in the roll after there's not enough runway to stop and make an "runway excursion" as is described in the safety letter (crash slow usually in the runway enviornment). Unfortunately the former is the more numerous of the two - a recent accident involving an ultralight near Airdrie comes to mind.

[AEROBAT]

The little Murphy biplane is really more of a one seater. Neat plane though.

[YOWza]

I really wonder sometimes when instructors are going stop doing so many scenarios and simulations and just spend the time teaching students how to fly the bloody plane well.

+1

Basics have to be mastered by the student, not just taught by the instructor once or twice.
If a CPL student can't even coordinate in a climb, what is the purpose of moving on to yaw control in a stall?
If the student cannot anticipate and control yaw in the early stages, they should be nowhere near the high angle of attack exercises. You cannot reinforce skills that are not understood. You will know when it is understood when the student moves into the application phase and performs with little intervention.
Moving further, simulations have to be realistic and well thought out. Look up accidents on the NTSB database. Check out all the stall/spin accidents on takeoff and base to final, with commercial pilots. These are in part due to a lack of understanding of basic theory of flight and the applicable skills from the beginning of training. I would say that a useful simulation that could be put together is a cross-controlled stall, but only after mastery of the individual knowledge and skills.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I really wonder sometimes when instructors are going stop doing so many scenarios and simulations and just spend the time teaching students how to fly the bloody plane well.

+1

Basics have to be mastered by the student, not just taught by the instructor once or twice.
If a CPL student can't even coordinate in a climb, what is the purpose of moving on to yaw control in a stall?
If the student cannot anticipate and control yaw in the early stages, they should be nowhere near the high angle of attack exercises. You cannot reinforce skills that are not understood. You will know when it is understood when the student moves into the application phase and performs with little intervention.
Moving further, simulations have to be realistic and well thought out. Look up accidents on the NTSB database. Check out all the stall/spin accidents on takeoff and base to final, with commercial pilots. These are in part due to a lack of understanding of basic theory of flight and the applicable skills from the beginning of training. I would say that a useful simulation that could be put together is a cross-controlled stall, but only after mastery of the individual knowledge and skills.

If you think that I do not make a big deal about the importance of foundation flying skills then you haven't been reading all my posts Of course good anticipatory yaw control is a prerequisite before proceeding to the slowflight/stall/spin exercises. The aim of the exercise of point # 4 in my first post was to demonstrate that controlling yaw really works in stopping an incipient spin, even if the aircraft is allready stalled. It also requires the use of deleberate and significant rudder up to full rudder travel, something the student will likely have never experienced (The spin entry doesn't count as you just mindlessly apply full rudder). The ultimate aim is at the first symptoms of approaching the stalling AOA the student will instinctively simultaneously lower the nose and control yaw and add power as power as necessary. My expereince is that controlling yaw is usually the weakest part of a students flying in slow flight and in the stall. This exercise IMO is a good way to isolate the yaw control component of the stall/spin exercises. It is of course, only of use if all the other aspects of recognizing, understanding and controlling the aircraft in high AOA flight has been taught.