Bare Bones X-C

On 31 Jul 2004 13:36:35 -0700, (SelwayKid) wrote:

Selway Kid (Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness)

Say hello to Roland Turney if you see him!

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

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Andrew Sarangan wrote
OK, let me slightly change what I said. If you can fly a 50 mile xc, you
should be able to fly a 2000 mile xc.

If you have forever to get there.

The real purpose is to make you navigate in an
unfamiliar area.

In the age of electronic nav (especially LORAN and GPS) navigation is
probably the least important part of XC training. Back in the old
days, when everyone navigated by map, compass, and stopwatch, what you
say was true. It no longer is. Navigation has become dramatically
easier in the past decade. Weather hasn't.

If the weather gets bad, land at the nearest airport.

If you land at the nearest airport the first time the weather is iffy,
you will NEVER complete that 2000 mile XC. Before that happens, your
charts will expire, your airplane will need service - you name it.
For a recreational pilot, what you say makes sense. For a private
pilot, whose privileges include flying in support of his business and
family vacations, it does not. You should be training him to a
proficiency level that allows him to exercise private pilot
privileges, not telling him to limit himself to recreational pilot
privileges. In other words, train for the privileges of the
certificate, not the requirements of the checkride.

The overall result is that safety has improved.

Sure. It has improved on a per-hour basis, because most private
pilots today don't go anywhere. While the recreational certificate
never really caught on, the reality is that most private pilots fly to
recreational privileges most of the time. It's hard to get hurt if
you never do anything.

As for an instrument rating - that's not a substitute for being able
to fly VFR in iffy weather but an addition to it. Iffy weather is
HARDER to handle when you are in the soup, not easier. Most IFR in
most of the country is associated with other ugly weather phenomena
most of the time.

You may have reasons to believe that the training standards
has degraded over the years, but the statistics clearly prove that we
are training much safer pilots today than we did in the past.

And of course safety is the most important thing. Once we have
stopped everyone from doing anything other than going up on blue sky
days to look at the pretty scenery, we will have a spectavular safety
record. In that sense - and ONLY in that sense - are we training
safer pilots. Of course the result is also there to see. People
conclude that flying is not useful - and if you approach it the way
you suggest, it's NOT. So long term pilot retention is way down. The
pilot population shrinks every year. One day, there will be none
left. Then we will have total safety.

Michael

zatatime wrote
Isn't this still required? Not trying to nit pick, I was surprised to
see you say it isn't expected any longer, but I've not heard that
before. I don't remember if it was a reg, or just the culture that
required it. Anyone with a little more info?

It was the PTS. The PTS was changed several years ago, and not for
the better. Some of the more egregious damage has been undone (for
years, slow flight was done at 1.2 Vso rather than at the edge of
stall) but some remains.

Andrew Sarangan wrote
On-the-spot planning might be useful if
you fly for a living and your employer gives you 30 minutes to plan a
flight.

Did you forget about flying in support of your business? We are
discussing private pilot privileges, not recreational.

The only time you have a time crunch is if you are
running low on fuel

This is not even close to true. The most likely time you are in a
crunch is when the weather is going to crap around you.

A properly planned flight with a backup plan is
unlikely to run into that situation.

This is absolute nonsense. Weather is unpredictable. On a 2000 mile
trip, you WILL encounter weather you didn't expect, and you WILL need
to plan a way around it.

Michael

"Dan Luke" wrote
Slow flight now requires you to fly at a low enough airspeed
that any additional load factor will cause it to stall.

Then how do you turn?

You add power to turn.

BTW - slow flight today is now defined the same way it was 10 years
ago - but there was a period of a few years in between when the
definition changed. It was fascinating watching CFI's who had never
done real slow flight adjusting to the new reality when the FAA
finally fixed that blunder.

I'm looking forward to the FAA fixing one of the other major blunder,
and once again requiring that a XC flight be planned on the spot in 30
minutes.

You see, the first time you plan a XC flight, it really takes hours.
That's because too many things that should be second nature still
require thought. I know it did for me. I couldn't see how I could
possibly ever get it down to 30 minutes. But my CFI assured me it was
required (without actually telling me how I would do this - he wasn't
much of a teacher) and so I practiced.

By the time I took the checkride, I was doing it in 25 minutes. In
the years since, when I've had to plan an inflight diversion due to
weather or plan quickly to beat weather moving in, I've been truly
grateful that I was made to do this. It's really an essential skill.
Needing hours to plan a XC flight is a major liability.

Michael