Private Pilot Flight Training and Instruction Flight Training Article Library | Back To 4VFR.COM Instruction Initially, the ground instruction begins with basic background and theory. The flight lesson is predicated by the use of preflight and Postflight briefings. Elements of the lesson that contain required knowledge preparation are covered and emphasized. There is considerable advantage in having the instructor do both the ground and flight training since this assures adequate coverage of material. Even so, the student must supplement with a planned comprehensive academic program. All questions should be completion type. Flying is not made up of multiple choices. A student must be made clearly aware of why a specific lesson or drill exercise is required. The preliminaries of slow flight at altitude must be seen as a prelude to takeoff and landing. The stall has an additional value in familiarizing the student with the idea that it is normal for things to disappear below the nose. If possible the short and soft procedures should be taught under actual short and soft field conditions. This is too valuable a lesson to be taught otherwise. It takes a blend of student and instructor planning and initiative to get the best mix of academic study and flight training. It is counter productive to let flying get too much of a lead over the studying. Greater frequency in flying is only an advantage if the academic aspects keep up. Confidence is not based on hope. It is the result of advanced planning and preparation. The pilot has made an analysis of the flight and accepted the challenges exposed in the process. The confident pilot has done the flight preparation required to make certain the safest possible flight. The preflight, aircraft condition, flight route, and alternatives are all known values. By flying as precisely as you can when just flying for fun makes it much easier when you must. Two pilots in the cockpit make it all the more important ant the non-flying pilot act as a performance monitor for the pilot-flying. A teacher is a role model. Even the poorest teacher has a value to the student by serving as a bad example of what should be. I have spent the greatest portion of my two careers in striving to correct the problems created by poor teaching. The flight decisions made by an instructor should not be made without revealing to the student as many of the large and small nuances that influenced a given decision. These revelations will occur in part in the planning stage, then expanded during the flight, and further reinforced in a post flight review. In the planning stage the choices made are over a wide range of risk. A straight line is both relatively easy to draw and fly. The options for flying other than a straight line must be planned, flown and analyzed for relative risk. Only one person is responsible for how well a given flight is safe and follows the FARs. The PIC is the final authority in what is allowed to happen. However, the FAA gets to second-guess your every decision. In the past thirty years I have flown the Sierras about five or six times each year. In those years I have had two memorable weather flights. I have had perhaps two weather flights that I have chosen not to make each year. Since most of my Sierra flights are shared expense flights with students I have tried to present a role model by demonstrating that even the experienced have no-go standards of risk. I best serve my students by demonstrations of judgment. Last year we drove back from Nevada rather than face uncertain conditions. A lesson gains in importance when the exercise of judgment dominates the other aspects. My most recent flight met unforecast clouds at 9000' just past Sacramento. Rancho FSS called ahead to Truckee AWOS and found that it was reporting scattered conditions. We continued and landed without a problem. To have gone ahead without knowing could have been both expensive and dangerous. Know when and how to ask for help. There are three different ways a pilot may use his competence and experience. The full VFR flight over an oft flown route is first and perhaps most common. Second, would be a flight in marginal conditions that might require a SVFR departure or arrival. Third, would be one in which either a departure or an arrival would not be possible. A pilot must know his limitations. He must know just how complete his knowledge is of the area and obstacle locations. Aircraft capability and personal competency all these come together in making aeronautical decisions. Even not making a decision is making a decision. The flight responsibility of a flight instructor extends beyond the immediate flight. A student is being given criteria for why some decision choices are made as well as why others are rejected. It is vital that the reasons for the choice of decisions are selected. Decisions are not so much choosing between right and wrong as it is in between good, better, and best. Their is no flying skill involved in making decisions but rather a matter of judgment of risk and consequences. You can never go wrong making the safe decision. If an instructor is limited to teaching by only one method then he is only certain of reaching a limited number of students. Instruction requires that you adapt your method of teaching to the manner in which a student learns. A student learns best by doing. Great improvement of this doing can be accomplished by having the student talking his way through the lesson. Ability to talk through a given procedure requires considerable anticipation. There is much to know about flying. There is much to know at varied levels about the same topic. When writing I 'shotgun' what I say hoping to cover levels from beginning to end as much as possible. When teaching an individual student I 'rifle' my material by aiming at my perception of what the student knows now and can absorb as new material. I always try to ad a pearl that will come of value later. Flying consists of a multiple sequence of complex situations. Often the actual performance is the simplest thing to do but the most likely where something will go wrong. With performance at the 100% level we find that 95% of what happens is mental and only 5% manipulation. If you should begin to manipulate more quickly than your mental capability can control bad things happen. You are entering a sphere of reaction instead of anticipation. When your are mentally prepared to do what you are supposed to do, you have entered the sphere of anticipation. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to watch a competition aerobatics pilot go through the entire timed routine in the middle of a small room. The aerobatic pilot is exercising the mental 95% of the performance knowing that the remaining 5% will be in place. What does or can the average pilot do? Every flight should be a planned lesson with a sequence of simple parameters. How can you make what you do in the cockpit more orderly? How can the complex sequence be ordered into a simple flow pattern? How can your pencils, charts, and frequencies be ordered by sequence and discarded when no longer needed? You cannot properly order your cockpit and materials without doing the 95% of mental performance prior to a flight. When I teach a lesson, we--the student and I--go through as many aspects before the flight as I deem necessary. This means we walk/talk through the routes, radio procedures, maneuvers, responsibility sharing, and the standards of performance sought. Every flight has some potential hazards that need to be opened to the student. Avoidance is always an option but not always. Some hazards must be faced since student exposure is in itself a valuable lesson. For example, flights over water, marginal conditions, higher terrain or through Alert Areas. After the lesson the entire flight is reviewed as to areas of excellence, satisfactory, and needs improvement in performance. Getting behind the aircraft requires that the pilot do the important things first. This means that he sort out the degrees of importance of things to do. With many possible options you must be able to simplify both your thinking and performance in coping with complex situations. Only by being fully prepared for the worst thing that can happen do you have some assurance that it never will. I approach flight instruction as the most complex kind of flying that I do. Written by Gene Whitt Flight Training Article Library | Back To 4VFR.COM