RST Engineering wrote:
It has long been my goal, and I'll probably achieve it after I retire from
teaching engineering, to establish what Richard Bach called "School For
Perfection". (c.f. "Gift of Wings", R. Bach)

Four students per class, three classes during the first 4 weeks in June,
July (or August, depending on the Oshkosh schedule), September, and October.
(July or August is preparing for/recovering from Oshkosh.) One scholarship
student per class, chosen from essays written by the applicants themselves
... age limit 17 up.

50 hours of wet time in a 172 and 25 hours of CFI time up front, cash, no
refunds. $1000 into the "scholarship" fund each. You finish early, you get
the balance back. You need more time, pony up per hour.

You commit during those four weeks to come to our little mountain airstrip
and stay in a local hotel; your significant other is welcome. Morning
briefings at the hotel conference center. One flight in the morning of 1:00
with one observer in the back seat of the 172. Two students on the ground
listening to the radio or studying ground school in the FBO. Land. Pilot
gets out and gets to be one of the radio persons. The back seat gets into
the left front, one of the radio guys gets into the back. Another 1:00
lesson. Rotate. Lunch at the airport deli. Another 1:00 in the afternoon
using the same sort of rotation. Dinner somewhere together, be it at a
local bistro or bbq over at my place. Ground school prep for the written
back at the hotel until 9 pm.

Do it again next morning. Sunday mornings off. Sunday afternoons wrenching
on "your" plane getting ready for Monday morning lessons.

Gotta go back home for an "emergency"? Unless it is a medical emergency in
your immediate family, you are gone, never again to come back. Bye. No
refund. Medical emergencies get to come back in next year's "class".

When it gets to cross-country time, the schedule changes, but you've got the
idea.

Expensive? Nowhere NEAR as expensive as wet flight time at $120 an hour for
100-200 hours to get your ticket over a three or four year span.

And, I believe, turning out pilots as opposed to airplane drivers.

I'd dearly LOVE to do it back in Iowa City using Jay's place as the hotel,
but I just can't handle four months away from home. And, I've got all my
wrenching tools out here. It would be difficult, but it would be ideal.



Drake: "...You ask about a flight school...young Mister Terrell is just
beginning to fly, but he has spent a year and a half studying the wind and
the sky, and the dynamics of unpowered flight. He has built forty gliders.
Wingspans from eight inches up to the one you saw ... thirty-one feet. He
has made his own wind tunnel and he has worked with the full size tunnel on
Level Three."

I said, "At that rate...it is going to take him a lifetime to learn how to
fly."

Drake: "Well of COURSE it will." (R. Bach)



Jim



I've always had a problem with crash courses for pilots, ESPECIALLY for
primary training. The reason is that most of the actual learning you do
in training isn't done during dual while under the pressure of flying
the airplane but rather in between flights where the relaxed mind can
better understand and comprehend what was done by rote in the air with
the instructor. In other words, the time spent between dual sessions is
in my opinion a necessary part of any OPTIMIZED training program as it
is during these periods where maximum retention is attained.
In any good training program, you need a constant schedule of dual inter
spaced with periods away from the aircraft. ANY program that pushes a
student on an inflexible ridged time line is in my opinion not an
optimized training regimen.


--
Dudley Henriques