"Peter MacPherson" wrote in message news:dBLkd.496080$mD.366210@attbi_s02...
Owning a plane and flying it all over the place is one way to get this
experience. Flying 135 could be another.

Agreed, but instructors can also fly "all over the place" with their
students. Like someone else said, the x-c's don't have to be 1000 miles
to get good wx experience.

I 100% disagree with that. You just don't run into the situation of
real world cross country weather in the training environment. You
aren't crossing weather fronts very often and you aren't flying long
enough that forcasts get old. You just aren't crossing enough weather
boundries on little 200nm training flights.
Having lived in both environments, I really see a difference between
flying 200nm around your "back yard weather" and flying around the
country experiences other pilots' "back yard weather".


A lot of part 135 pilots don't tend to
fly very far. As another example, Cape Air which flies from Boston
to the Islands(Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard) and other short hops,
probably have some of the best wx pilots around. They fly through
all New England wx....fog, ice, etc.. and they probably never fly
more than 150 miles. So if these pilots are able to get this experience
(difference in equipment noted) why do instructors need to be going
"all over the place" to give their students some great wx experience?

They fly in pretty predictable weather. They know when and where the
ice will come. If they were flying some longer cross countries they
would experience a different type of weather that they would be less
equipt to predict.

I don't agree that with teaching you either have it or not. I think
if you have the aptitude, over time you become a better teacher every
day you teach. I doubt that the best teachers you know were that good
on their first day because "they had it".

That may be true but I've never actually seen it work that way. Some
people have the patients and personality to teach adults and some
people don't. I've never seen a poor teacher because a good teacher.
I've seen a poor teacher become on okay teacher.

-robert