I am in The Killing Zone

But: the wind was 11 gusty 18 (which I can handle ... i handled 25 gusty to
35 direct crosswind at Linden.

Whoa ! I don't think the statistics are your biggest worry, that's
some serious x-wind...

At 75 hours I feel like crap in fact and the more I fly the more I see
things or think about things or consider things that I never thought about
before.

You have, perhaps, put your finger on a phenomenon that I have heretofore
never understood: The "Former Pilot."

We've all met them. He's the guy at the party who says he has his ticket,
but "hasn't flown in ten years." Or he's the guy who "made it to solo, but
quit" due to -fill in the blank- reasons.

Perhaps all of these folks simply hit a wall of failing self-confidence such
as you're describing, and quietly decided to hang it up?

Lately Mary has been going through a period of what I call "increased
sensitivity" to flying. She's loudly voicing her displeasure with
turbulence, and -- when acting as PIC -- rapidly over-corrects against
bumps. This, of course, induces even MORE "turbulence," which makes her
MORE tense, and soon she's fighting the plane rather than flying it. And
having a crappy time doing it.

She passed through a similar period at around 200 hours, if I recall
correctly. (She has around 400 hours now.) She slowly worked her way
through it last time, working her way back into a comfort zone, and I expect
she'll be fine again this time, too.

Would she have quit flying at 200 hours, without me there to act as a
steadying influence?

I don't know.

All I can say is "Hang in there" -- cuz it gets better over time.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Yes, "instructor in command" syndrome is insidious.

On the one hand, I do not relinquish "in command" when i fly with an
instructor. If an instructor asks me to do something that is patently unsafe,
I will demur. However, in order to learn anything, I need to trust the
instructor - when he asks me to do something that is beyond my capability
(alone), he =is= there to bail me out. How else am I going to learn to fly
upside down, or in a cloud, or with the nose wheel in the back? But even when
a situation may not be beyond me, an instructor isn't just a passenger. He's
more like a required crewmember, and we need to fly as a team.

This should be understood. I usually treat it as understood. I'm not sure,
upon reflection, how well my understanding would match the instructor's should
we get into a situation.

For example, a passenger pulls the power off and says you lost your engine,
what do you do? If it were me, I wouldn't set up a glide, pick a field, and go
through my emergency checklist. I would smack the passenger one good, and
shove the lever back forward. Then I would contemplate the juxtaposition of
91.3 against 91.15.

An instructor does the same thing, it's a whole different story. As it turned
out, we were over a grass strip. I set up the proper approach, went through
the proper checklist procedures, and made an approach. 200 feet above the
ground the instructor did =not= say I had the field made and to go around. He
said go ahead and land it. Well, I'd never landed at a grass strip before
(renters are prohibited from doing so). I mentioned this and he replied
(correctly) that it only applies without an instructor - it was ok to land on
grass with him in the plane. Ok, cool! I did a nice landing, we went around
and did it several more times, then went home. I learned something and got
some nice grass experience (though being winter it wasn't quite the same).

Later on I looked up the airport we had landed at in the AF/D and found out it
was closed to transients in winter.

So, whose bad? Pilot in command (me) or instructor in command syndrome? What
would you have done? Why?

Jose




--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

Are you saying the whole thesis in The Killing Zone is based on such
an elementary methodological error?

Not entirely. But you are dealing with such small numbers here that
the only way to make them valid would be to keep the dead pilots alive
and let them keep on flying.

Fatalities are only caused by people who crash. Once you're killed,
you don't get to play any more, or in this case to accumulate more
hours. Even if fatalities were distributed at random among the entire
pilot population, the survivors would necessarily have more hours than
the ones who were killed.

It's like the old pilot justification: "He *****ed up!" If he crashed,
then he ****ed up. Since you won't **** up, you won't crash. QED.

In this case, the pilot is saying: "He was low-time!" Since we aren't
low-time (well, I have just over 300 hours), then obviously we won't
crash. As Hemingway said: "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?"

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

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com

If an instructor asks me to do something that is patently unsafe,
I will demur.

I did this on my flight check

We were trained to make a right turn only at 1,000 feet, so as to stay
out of pattern altitude, which is 900 feet, in case someone were
landing the other way. (We trained NORDO, and I took my flight check
in the Cub.)

The examiner called for a turn to the west (right) at 600 feet. I just
said "Roger, turning west at one thousand," and did so.


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

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com

Or he's the guy who "made it to solo, but
quit" due to -fill in the blank- reasons.

I came very late to flying, and one of the things that astonished me
was how many of my contemporaries had taken flight lessons in their
youth. (None of them are flying now. Indeed, I probably wouldn't be
flying now if I'd gotten my ticket in 1954.)

One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find
her way back to the airport.

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

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
news

Are you saying the whole thesis in The Killing Zone is based on such
an elementary methodological error?

Not entirely. But you are dealing with such small numbers here that
the only way to make them valid would be to keep the dead pilots alive
and let them keep on flying.

I don't think that's correct. The percentages are small, but with hundreds
of fatalities per year, the magnitude of the "killing zone" difference would
pass a statistical-significance test. It's just that the author isn't
measuring what he claims to be measuring.

Fatalities are only caused by people who crash. Once you're killed,
you don't get to play any more, or in this case to accumulate more
hours. Even if fatalities were distributed at random among the entire
pilot population, the survivors would necessarily have more hours than
the ones who were killed.

Not by a noticeable amount. The fatality rate is only 0.05% per year. If the
fatality rate per hour of flight time were constant as a function of total
hours flown, the distribution of flight-time hours among the dead would be
virtually identical to the distribution among the survivors. (If the
fatality rate were, say, 20% per year, then your point would apply.)

--Gary

One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find
her way back to the airport.

Well, GPS has pretty much fixed *that* problem...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find
her way back to the airport.


Happened to me, on Block Island. Landed, went for dinner and a walk, decided
to walk back to the airport, it was getting dark and the four of us took a
wrong turn on one of their roads and ended up walking around half the fat part
of the island. It may be small from the air, but it sure is big once you're on
foot!

Jose

--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

Later on I looked up the airport we had landed at in the AF/D and found
out it
was closed to transients in winter.

So, whose bad? Pilot in command (me) or instructor in command syndrome?
What
would you have done? Why?

Jose

My undestanding is that whether the insturctor is there or not YOU are PIC.
You are responsible.

It might be ok for insurance purposes to land on a grass strip with the
instructor on board but that doesn't absolve the PIC from making sure that
what you are doing is safe.

That being said, in your place I would have trusted the instructor, I would
have done EXACTLY as you did.

Why? Cause I am a sucker for instructors. In the cockpit I am a BIG sucker
for the "instructor in command" syndrome. I rarely question what the
instructor says cause he's a figure of authority, has more experience and I
always automatically assume he/she knows what they are doing/asking.

Is it bad? Absolutely. I know I am PIC. I know what that means. Something
else I need to fix in my "aviation mental patterns". Then again, I just got
out of primary flight school and back then I was NOT PIC. I was just a
student.

More than in the "killing" zone I am starting to think that I am in the "I
can't believe I am PIC" zone.

I need to get used to the fact that I am PIC.

Just my thoughts ...

--
Marco Rispoli - NJ, USA / PP-ASEL
My on-line aviation community - http://www.thepilotlounge.com