chris writes:

As for flight instructors, I know a number personally. I think you
might be getting a bad impression because people only write about
instructors when they are bad!!! Of the instructors I know, many are
pretty good, several are excellent, and a couple are bloody legends!!

What percentage are bad, what percentage are so-so, and what percentage are
good?

From what I read, most instructors are just trying to accumulate time so that
they can get lucrative jobs flying big iron. They don't really care about
teaching. If so, that's a bad attitude for an instructor to have, no matter
what subject he is teaching.

Or maybe it's just our aero club that has all the good instructors??

Are they paid or working for free? The ones with no fundamental interest in
teaching would certainly not work for free, unless there were something else
in it for them.

Nahh... You still gotta fly the aeroplane!!! And land it, and stuff
like that...

But that's like learning to ride a bicycle.

I have no idea if that is true or not..

Evidence that it might be true is the speed with which many VFR pilots get
into grave trouble as soon as they are deprived of visual information (as
during an encounter with IMC). If they didn't depend on that visual
information, they wouldn't have any difficulty. And if sensations could
really be trusted, they'd have no trouble. And if they weren't dependent on
sensations, they wouldn't have trouble. But they _do_ have trouble, which
implies that they depend a lot on sensations, even though sensations are
unreliable, and that they unconsciously depend most of all on visual
information.

Yeah, we know they are unreliable.. Vision is very important...

And if sensations are unreliable, then being accustomed to them doesn't serve
much purpose.

There is no way to know unless you were to do it, so I won't tell you
I think it isn't, because then it would just be my word against yours,
so I will just shut up now...

I am obviously speculating as well. But aviation is no different from a
thousand other areas of human endeavor, and many of the same principles apply.

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