Dear Burt

I had a recent very positive experience from an SSA
X-C instructor. What a blast of fresh air. Totally
thorough, totally professional, and never nitpickety.

I'm thinking the SSA Master X-C program is great. And
I look forward to some time in the mountains with
the Carl Herold's and Rolf Peterson's of the world.

But I also get a LOT from reading and listening about
X-C flights of non-instructors. ENSURE for 24 hours before the
flight to help with "relief" issues. Cautions about
oxygen use and importance. The continual focus on landouts
throughout X-C flight and the extensive landout preparation.

Really great stuff from a lot of sources. Although I agree
about the SSA Master X-C program, the info from non-instructors
is great too, I think. Just like I think getting two pilots
together for a flight is sometimes more enlightening than
flying repeatedly with the same old instructor.

In article ,
Steve Hill wrote:
It's nice to hear others question the validity of useless statistics. How
many privately owned L-13's or 2-33 are there in the US and how many of
those ever embark on an cross country flight??

If all you want to do is train in 2-33's and L-13's and fly around within a
5 to 10 mile area of your local airport...then I'd agree you are at less
risk in some ways and more in others.

That's not what I do however. I take off and leave and come back generally
many hours later. Are there risks?? Damn straight. But I accept them and
understand them and work my butt off to have a logical plan to deal with
them. And hope that I never need to excercise any of those plans, based on
my ability to evaluate my own risk/reward equation and to always remember
that flying is, at the end of the day a very personal reward.

In a way, I believe you have cemented my view that in many cases, students
are not receiving the information that helps them to attain their goals, and
so they have to get it from osmosis, instead of an instructor. The SSA
Master Instructor program is a great idea as well as the mentoring programs
that some areas are fortunate enough to have...we need a ton more of that,
from qualified sources. And again, not to sound like a broken record, but I
believe that the training must become more dynamic and less static. The
pearls of wisdom accrued over the years need to have a better venue to be
shared.


That's about it from me.



Steve.






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Mark J. Boyd