Have you ever...

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:28:15 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote in 30a7e.12275$Bb3.8317@attbi_s22::

Just off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen stupid, pointless
things I was forced to puke back on the written that I've never, ever
used
again...

Are you talking about flight training, or High School? :~

Well, flight training, in this thread.

I personally would eliminate all the stupid "look at the picture of the VOR,
and tell me your position from the station" crap. Same with the ADF.
(Hell, I don't even *have* an ADF in my plane.)

And you could eliminate all the "pressure altitude" versus "density
altitude" computational B.S., too. Never used it yet.

And while we're at it, the FAA could simplify the ridiculous VFR versus IFR
ceiling/visibility rules, along with the almost laughable alphabet-soup
airspace designations.

I couldn't agree less.

Larry Dighera wrote:

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:28:15 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote in 30a7e.12275$Bb3.8317@attbi_s22::

I personally would eliminate all the stupid "look at the picture of the
VOR,
and tell me your position from the station" crap. Same with the ADF.
(Hell, I don't even *have* an ADF in my plane.)

During my IR checkride, I spent time under the hood while the DE kept
putting the airplane into unusual attitudes (he wasn't a terribly good
pilot, obviously {8^).

After I got tired of that and removed the hood, I asked "so, where are we".
He laughed and told me that I was supposed to figure it out. So I did.

This seems rather useful to me. Why eliminate it?

And you could eliminate all the "pressure altitude" versus "density
altitude" computational B.S., too. Never used it yet.

What do you mean? How can you understand density altitude w/o understanding
pressure altitude? And how safe can you be in the summer w/o understanding
density altitude and its effects?

And while we're at it, the FAA could simplify the ridiculous VFR versus
IFR ceiling/visibility rules, along with the almost laughable
alphabet-soup airspace designations.

How would you propose it be simplified? The only way I can imagine that
occurring is if some of the less restrictive rules be make more restrictive
(ie. VFR in all airspaces (but B, I'd imagine) requiring 1000' vertical and
1 mile horizontal).

I expect a lot of GA would dislike that simplification.

Or did you mean something different? I'm not sure why you mentioned IFR,
for example.

- Andrew

What would YOU eliminate from the Private Pilot training curriculum?

As things stand, the FAR's are what they are, the NAS is what it is,
and the PTS is what it is. The typical private pilot training
curriculum is something of a joke - even when it actually exists and is
followed, it's merely an organized process for making sure the
applicant arrives at the checkride with the Part 61 (or 141) experience
requirements met and with the ability to pass the oral/practical
(meaning answer questions on PTS topics and fly PTS maneuvers to PTS
tolerances). Nothing can be removed from it because in the interest of
cutting costs, it has already been pared down to the bare minimum.

In order to streamline the process of making pilots, we would have to
bring the FAR's and the NAS into the 21st century. Here are the
changes I would make:

Revamp the weather briefing system. It's still a holdover from the
days when bandwidth was critically limited. AIRMET TANGO? WIE UFN?
Hooks and dots that must be memorized to know that you have light rain
and not showers? Get over it. If you need to condense the chart and
thus use symbols, they should be defined in a legend on the chart -
like they are on sectionals, low altitude enroutes, and all the other
charts people actually use. Write the text weather out in plain
english. Spend the time that need no longer be spent on memorizing
weather symbols and abbreviations on teaching about how weather
actually works.

Change the PTS concept. Right now, the private PTS is full of
maneuvers that have no real value AS THEY ARE TESTED. They all have
real value when you understand what they're actually about, and they
all need to be taught - but not as they're tested.

Consider slow flight. Why do we teach it? So the student can practice
control of the airplane at critically slow airspeeds - airspeeds so
slow that we normally encounter them only in the flare for landing and
maybe on rotation. This makes sense - it's hard to get any good at
something you can only practice for a couple of seconds at a time, only
a dozen times on even a good day. So how do we teach it?

We teach it at altitude. This is sensible. You don't want to teach
this at 25 ft, or even 250. Too much chance of something going wrong.
So we do it at 2500 ft. But we also require the student hold altitude,
+/- 100 ft. At 2500 ft, you will not judge altitude to within 100 ft
by looking outside the airplane. You will need to look inside, at the
panel. This is the LAST place you want the student looking during the
landing flare. So just by teaching the PTS maneuver before solo (as
required by Part 91) you are developing bad habits in the student -
habits that will make it harder for him to learn to land.

We SHOULD be doing slow flight without reference to the altimeter at
all, and in fact without reference to ANY instruments. That's because
the only time the skills developed are relevant, meaning in the flare,
you need to be 100% outside. But that's not the way the maneuver is
tested. As tested, it has no real value. Any flight intructor worth
his salt can tell if the student had solid skills in airplane control
at critically low airspeeds after one takeoff and one landing anyway.
The only problem is that if you drop slow flight from the PTS, it will
get dropped from most training syllabi - and there goes ANY exposure
the student would ever get to flight at critically slow airspeeds.

Slow flight is only one example. In reality, the way we test MOST of
the PTS maneuvers is inherently flawed, and makes extra work for the
student with no real benefit.

Streamline the regulations. We spend too much damn time teaching them
because they're too complex by half. A medical is good for 36 claendar
months, not three years. But a student pilot certificate is only good
for 24 calendar months. But you need 3 takeoffs and landings in the
last 90 days, not three months. And winds aloft are given in degrees
true, but tower winds are in degrees magnetic. And distances are
always in nautical miles, but visibility is always in statute miles.
And ATC will give you VFR flight following but won't open your VFR
flight plan (generating a strip manually instead). And a VFR tower
will close your IFR flight plan but not your VFR flight plan. WTF?
Pick a sensible system and stick with it.

Of course the design of the aircraft has its own issues. Even an
advanced aircraft like a Cirrus still has a mixture control. We've had
altitude-compensating carburetors since about 1938, but here we are in
the 21st century and even the most advanced GA airplane being made
still has a mixture control. And magnetos. Bloody-be-damned magnetos.
So we spend time on engine management. How to cold start. How to hot
start. How to lean for best power vs. best economy. Don't think it
makes much difference? A couple of local CFI's recently ran a C-152
out of gas. They used the 75% endurance chart, but they leaned for
best power (lean until RPM drop, then enrich to max RPM) and ran out of
gas at 3.2 hours, just a few minutes from home, when the chart clearly
showed an endurance of 4.2 hours - at best economy. For that matter,
why are we still seeing new airplanes shipped with the inherently
inaccurate (by design) ball-and-float gauges and no fuel flow
measurement, when a set of capacitive gauges and a fuel totalizer for
marine applications go for less than $100 each? So instead we spend
all this time on fuel management - and people still crash. If the
planes had accurate fuel gauges and fuel totalizers, how much time
would we really need to spend on fuel management?

Of course the truth is that the aircraft are the way they are because
of the FAA. In fact, until the FAA changes the way it does business,
it will not be possible to streamline private pilot training. Nothing
can be removed from the syllabus at this point.

Michael

I got a nerve-racking but painless lesson in density altitude a couple of
years ago in sounthern France. I'd flown my girlfriend and I in a
Taylorcraft BC-12D from the UK to Chateau Chassagne near Dijon. The
temperature in the UK rarely gets much above about 80 or 85 even in the
summer, but the performance of the airplane is noticably different than in
the winter.

While at the chateau, the temperature got up to about 100. I offered to
take the chef up for a ride in the Tcraft. He was a big lad. I taxied out
to the end of the grass strip (surrounded on the right and departure end by
trees, naturally), turned into nearly zero wind, and firewalled the
throttle. As the grass went by and went by and kept going by, every bit of
my knowledge of density altitude shot through my mind in a serious "Oh,
Sh*t, I hadn't thought about this!" moment. We finally broke ground way too
far down the runway and she wasn't climbing like she should have. I kept
the nose up as high as I dared, pleading it to just clear the trees - that
was all I wanted; just to clear the trees and we could sort everything else
out after that. The trees kept coming, the plane kept not climbing, and it
was looking pretty dire there for a few moments.

Well, we finally reached the tree line and cleared it by a mere few feet.
No harm done in the end and my passenger didn't know enough to know just how
close it had been. But I was sweating bullets for the next 20 minutes and
it had nothing to do with the heat.

Lesson there - when you're not flying in your normal environment, take a
moment to think about all those things you take for granted on your home
turf! Density altitude DOES matter, you just might not need to think much
about it where you fly.

Cheers,
Shawn



"Corky Scott" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:54:29 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

It would be child's play to make a chart that says "when the temperature
is
'x' and the altitude is 'y' your runway must be 'z' length" for each
aircraft type. In fact, I'm surprised that this isn't a required part of
the POH.

There in fact IS such a chart. It's actually one of those adjustable
cardboard devices that allows you to dial in various parameters such
as temperature, altitude, wind, direction of wind, runway surface
type, whether it's sloped up or down and by how much, what type of
airplane etc. etc.

Dial all that stuff in and the calculator reads out the necessary
runway length. Compare that to the runway you are about to use.

I found mine at Sporty's Pilot Shop. Saw it recommended in the "Hold
on Harvey (or whatever the name was) FAA video about density altitude.

There were three very sobering video's in the VCR. The above
mentioned one was poor quality because the Video cam wasn't found for
several years or so in the wreck. It was shot from a Cessna L-19, or
the civilian version of it and there were two guys in it flying up a
mountain range that kept getting higher and higher. They got
themselves trapped heading into a mountain canyon that rose faster
than they could climb and attempted to turn around. The pilots last
words were "Hang on Harvey (or whatever the passengers name was)" and
you see the ground go upside down. You can hear the stall warning
horn going off as the pilot attempts the turn (to the right). He
drops the nose, but then has to pull it back up right away because the
ground is so close. The stall warning horn goes off again and the
ground goes upside down.

In the second accident you are looking at a scene in a really rugged
canyon from the hikers viewpoint. They hear the sound of an airplane
and a Cessna goes by at about their eye level. You hear them
discussing it and then the airplane noises come back and you see the
airplane coming back at them, but below the rim of the canyon. It
smashes right into it below them.

The third accident was the best quality video because it was shot at
an airshow. It looked like it was a Beech T-34 or something very
similar. It was at a high altitude runway and it was apparently very
hot. The pilot goes up for a loop and as he's rounding out for the
pull out, he runs out of air.

All of these accidents were due to the pilots not understanding the
affect of density altitude on the performance of their airplane, and
not allowing for it.

In addition to the crash video's there is a comprehensive discussion
by a very heavy set FAA crash investigator who had an ego to match.
He was impressively overbearing and caustic.

Most density altitude misshaps occur in the high plains or mountain
area's of the west, but not all of them.

There was a density altitude related accident here at a local turf
runway airport in Vermont a number of years ago. A pilot (think he
was flying a Cherokee) was visiting and decided to take off with three
passengers during the heat of the day (it was high summer). Several
of the local pilots got in his face and aggressively spoke to him
about the situation pointing out how hot it was and that with the full
load what effect that would have on his marginal performance and tried
to persuade him to wait.

He relented and waited another couple of hours then decided he was
going to go and loaded his passengers, one of whom was his son. Again
the pilots intervened. One offered to drive the passengers to the
nearby Class D airport (KLEB) which has mile long paved runways. He
could fly there, pick up the passengers and take off with his full
load no problem. He refused the offer.

His takeoff was to the north, which is slightly uphill. The airplane
broke ground abouth 3/4 the length of the 2500 foot long runway and
wallowed nose high along the runway without gaining much height.

He wandered off to the right in this condition with his nose so high
he probably could not see the tall pinetree he flew into that bordered
the runway.

The airplane clipped off the top of the tree and crashed nose down on
the far side of it killing the two front seat occupants. His son and
the other rear passenger survived.

Corky Scott

It would be child's play to make a chart that says "when the temperature
is
'x' and the altitude is 'y' your runway must be 'z' length" for each
aircraft type. In fact, I'm surprised that this isn't a required part of
the POH.


This post after you so strongly advocate AGAINST rote learning? You don't
make
sense!

Keeping a simple chart in the plane, versus trying to teach someone the
difference between "pressure" and "density" altitudes, and how to compute it
on the fly?

Makes sense to me.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Every year, pilots get hurt by disregarding DA effects on their flying.
And you want to do away with at least trying to educate them on it?

Not at all. Density altitude is extremely dangerous, and must always be
considered, especially in underpowered aircraft, or at high altitude
airports.

Which has NOTHING to do with the Feds asking absurd questions about
"pressure" versus "density" altitude in the written exam. These questions
could be easily replaced entirely with questions that were actually relevant
to the problem.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In order to streamline the process of making pilots, we would
have to

(BIG SNIP OF GREAT STUFF)

Thanks for sharing that, Michael. Great points, all right on the money.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

If we're
trying to be more inclusive, and get more people into the sky, I think we
need to make the process not just easier, but more logical.

I believe the aim of pilot certification is not to "get more people
into the sky," but to train safe pilots.

If we don't do the former, we won't need the latter.

Or, at least, not very many of them.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

After I got tired of that and removed the hood, I asked "so, where are
we".
He laughed and told me that I was supposed to figure it out. So I did.

This seems rather useful to me. Why eliminate it?

You figured out your position using VORs? What decade was this? ;-)

Can I do that? Sure. Can I name the last time I needed to know that?
Nope. Can I even name the last time I did it? Nope.

If, in ten years and nearly 1000 hours of flying, I've never needed to
figure out my position by looking at the face of my VOR, as if I'd suddenly
awakened in my plane and didn't have a clue where I was, what the hell is it
doing on the written exam for Private Pilot? Who in the world uses VORs
for daily flight anymore?

I know, a lot of you guys do. Despite the fact that you've probably got a
Garmin/Lowrance/AvMap on your yoke that is 500 - 1000 times more accurate
and intuitive than your old 1953 Narco 12, you feel compelled to "follow the
needle" cuz that's what you're used to doing. Have fun, but don't fool
yourself into believing that this is a necessary or common way of flying
anymore. It *can* be eliminated from the Private Pilot curriculum, right
along with ADFs.

Which isn't to say that tracking a VOR isn't kind of fun, and (for those of
us at the bottom of the aviation food chain) still necessary for IFR flight.
But for regular, VFR navigation, VORs have pretty much outlived their
usefulness.

Oh, well. Keep VOR questions on the written exam for Instrument Pilot, for
the moment. In five more years everything will be GPS based, and
interpreting a VOR will be like knowing how to gauge your position by
listening to two tones in your headset.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:30:55 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote in 3qA7e.14340$xL4.8899@attbi_s72::

If we're
trying to be more inclusive, and get more people into the sky, I think we
need to make the process not just easier, but more logical.

I believe the aim of pilot certification is not to "get more people
into the sky," but to train safe pilots.

If we don't do the former, we won't need the latter.

Is this what you're saying:

If we don't aim to "get more people into the sky,"
we won't need to train safe pilots.

If not, what do you mean?