Dear Burt

Good questions Chris but requiring a long answer some of which would
certainly scare the public. Let's just say that there are many ways that
new residents (and even some not so new residents) could off a patient.
Probably the simplest way to explain it is that all of the medications used
for euthanizing prisoners and terminal patients (in other countries) are
used by anesthesia providers each and every day. It is a matter of dose and
timing. So you can see that if not paying attention (esp in my area of
pediatrics) it would be easy to do harm.

I would thereby submit that you and I have similar situations wrt how far to
let them go before reeling them back in and not allowing harm to in my case
another person and in yours to themselves as well as you. I think with
years of teaching most of us get a good sense of students in a short period
of time. Do they ask appropriate questions? Do they know when they are in
trouble and if so do they ask for help or try to muddle through? I will
take a student with average intellect that knows when to ask for help any
day over an extremely bright one that is clueless or that refuses to admit
failure. Those types are dangerous not only in my field but would be in the
air as well.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with your statement that "we do the
majority of learning in the air alone". It certainly has not be true for
myself at least. After days that were the most frustrating learning to fly
(and in the OR) I would come home and go through it again and again in my
mind until I had a solution that would work for the next time. That not
only helped me to learn it also solidified things so that they became second
nature. Interestingly though I'm not so sure that is a good thing for an
instructor. You remember when my wife took flying lessons...she would come
home and ask me how to keep the nose straight on the initial roll and I
realized that it had become so ingrained that I had trouble giving her an
adequate answer.

We have to face up to the fact that some folks are never going to be good
teachers no matter how hard they try. Others will never be able to solo an
aircraft no matter how good the teacher. Those are the minority but
nevertheless it our responsibility as students and teachers to look them in
the eye and tell them such.

Learning is a dynamic process. If a student wants to simply "get by" i.e.
learn just enough to pass the test, then they are a danger to themselves and
others. If not today then sometime in the future. At least in the areas of
medicine and aviation.

Pretty sure this only scratched the surface. Boy would it be great to sit
around a fireplace and discuss this over a beer!

Casey

In article ,
Steve Hill wrote:

I have
just always sorta felt that the PTS and ensuing exam is based on passing the
test in a 2-33 and going for 20 minute sled rides.

Real world in a 45:1 sailplane...that test doesn't even scratch the surface
of what's required.

You may be correct about the test. OTOH, if people are flying things
similar to what they've lerared in then they are probably OK. At our
club, at the moment people learn in 38:1 sailplanes, but in 18 months or
so we'll be switching to 45:1 sailplanes from their first flight.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

Mark James Boyd wrote:
The FAA collected statistics for pass rates of pilots for
various certificates. They compared the pass rates of
pilots flying with an FAA ASI for a practical test vs. the
pass rates for Designated Pilot Examiners.

The pass rates for both glider initial and add-on ratings
for DPEs was around 90%.

Over the same period, the FAA ASI pass rate for all types of
glider tests was 100%.

What is going on here? Well, the sample sizes were significant
(at least 30+) so that can't be it. One major difference is that
if a DPE has a string of perhaps 20-30 passes, they get
"looked at" a little bit harder.

Mr. Boyd since your quoting numbers and statistics that many of us have
never heard of before. Could you provide us with the name of the FAA
publication or the url for the site where the FAA publishes this
information? Interestingly one of our regional directors had requested
this type of information from the local FSDO just last year and was
told that the data was not available.

M Eiler

Kilo Charlie wrote:

far as I'm concerned if your approach is identical whether landing on a
7000' paved runway or an outlanding in a short field you have missed the
boat somewhere.

In our club, the approach is: No matter how long and wide a runway is,
every landing is a spot landing because every landing is a training for
that outlanding to come.

Of course, a busy airport with commercial traffic may be another story.

Stefan

In article ,
Bruce Hoult wrote:
In article ,
Steve Hill wrote:

I have
just always sorta felt that the PTS and ensuing exam is based on passing the
test in a 2-33 and going for 20 minute sled rides.

I agree COMPLETELY. The nuances of water ballast, tail ballast,
convergence, weather details, PIO, etc. are far beyond the scope of
anything one could possibly test in a 4 hour period.


Real world in a 45:1 sailplane...that test doesn't even scratch the surface
of what's required.

Fortunately, real world in a 2-33, it does perfectly well.
And real world beyond that the insurance company will require
enough (sometimes 10 hours+ in make/model) so that their $120,000
glider doesn't get hamfisted.


You may be correct about the test. OTOH, if people are flying things
similar to what they've lerared in then they are probably OK. At our
club, at the moment people learn in 38:1 sailplanes, but in 18 months or
so we'll be switching to 45:1 sailplanes from their first flight.

How many of them have "ZERO" instruction between a 2-33 practical test and
their flying 45:1 solo?

In the "real world" insurers, clubs, Darwin, and wallets all value
time in make/model quite strongly. The FAA relies on these
four mechanisms to finish the job they have laid a rudimentary foundation
for.

The fatal accident reports from the US don't suggest to me that
all, or even most, of the fatalities were preventable by more
dual instruction. Many/most of these accidents look to me like
pilots pushing the aircraft to the naked edge of performance and
exceeding the limitations of aircraft/weather/pilot. There are some
personality types of students that I have seen who consistently
overestimate their abilities and consistently underestimate the
limitations. No amount of dual instruction seems to have any
effect on this attitude. I have identified 5 pilots during my
instructing who I felt had this propensity. 4 of 5 have seriously
dameged or destroyed aircraft and/or injured passengers, despite
my strong warnings and even refusal to continue training.

I will review the fatalities again and see how close this is to the
mark generally, but I must say that from reading the glider
accident reports, I wasn't terribly surprised at the fatalities, and
I didn't see a huge percentage of low-time pilot fatalities either.


--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------


--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

A student pilot with 5 hours bought an experimental taildragger
"midget mustang II" and proceeded to reconstruct it into a
nosedragger. When he was done, I convinced him to fly with the
old owner, and to get the former owner to train his CFI.

This happened. During the test flights the stall was 82mph IAS.
The student also mentioned the engine was "sometimes rough
or unresponsive." I mentioned quite plainly that if it failed
on takeoff, he would die. And I told him the squared business.

So he redid the leading edge. No difference. Same stall speed,
and a dramiatic, instant wing drop during stall, with a spin
entry and 500 foot recovery (if you were doing it intentionally).

I recommended avoiding full stall landings for a bit, and also
calibrating the ASI.

Turns out the stall is 56mph (48 kts?). He's working on the
calibration some more now.

And then I mentioned to him again that he would still be severely
injured. 35 knot stall in a Cessna 152 vs 48 knots in a
Mustang II means about 2 times as much energy. Then, drop
the wing at stall and cartwheel into the ground, and it's
worse.

So he's working on getting the stall speed down with fences.
Hmmmm...I hope it works.

All this because the published performance was better. 1100 NM
range. And speed. But no safety whatsoever.

I've told people the difference between a 2-33 and an ASW-20
is simple. Just take all of the built in safety for the
design and replace it with higher workload and
higher required pilot proficiency for the same level of safety.
As Bob K. is apt to say "it goes like stink." The
downside is the naked edge of safety vs. performance.

In article ,
Nyal Williams wrote:
At 17:30 05 February 2005, Vaughn wrote:

'Vaughn' wrote in message
...



the simple formula 'E= M * V^2',

Typo. Actually, the formula is 'E=.5M * V^2'
but the important thing is
the relationship between mass and velocity. Double
the mass of your glider and
you 'only' double the landing energy, double your speed
and you quadruple the
energy!

Vaughn


Thank you for that simple statement. It is clear and
concise, the way our instructions should be. Many of
us and many, many more do not 'read' formulae. I have
no personal knowledge of the meaning of the '^' symbol
in the above equation, but I know very well the truth
of what it purports to state.





--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

http://registry.faa.gov/faqam.asp
historical airmen stats is the second from the bottom.
Look at 2003 stats, table 19 and 20, in the xls format.

I don't have Excel on this machine or I'd post the actual
stats directly. Mr. Eiler, if you or someone else could please
translate format and post it, I'd be grateful

If I recall correctly, the 100% pass rate for FAA ASIs
for gliders vs. 90% for DPEs was interesting. But also interesting
was the 66% or so pass rate of FAA ASIs for airplanes (?) compared
to DPE 80% or so. Hmmm...maybe this was instructors? I dunno,
somebody post the info here so we can all take a looksie...

Anyway, the stats seem to show that DPEs are not standardized
to ASI standards completely, and there is a statistically
significant difference in some areas.

Hope this is interesting!

Mark

In article . com,
wrote:

Mark James Boyd wrote:
The FAA collected statistics for pass rates of pilots for
various certificates. They compared the pass rates of
pilots flying with an FAA ASI for a practical test vs. the
pass rates for Designated Pilot Examiners.

The pass rates for both glider initial and add-on ratings
for DPEs was around 90%.

Over the same period, the FAA ASI pass rate for all types of
glider tests was 100%.

What is going on here? Well, the sample sizes were significant
(at least 30+) so that can't be it. One major difference is that
if a DPE has a string of perhaps 20-30 passes, they get
"looked at" a little bit harder.

Mr. Boyd since your quoting numbers and statistics that many of us have
never heard of before. Could you provide us with the name of the FAA
publication or the url for the site where the FAA publishes this
information? Interestingly one of our regional directors had requested
this type of information from the local FSDO just last year and was
told that the data was not available.

M Eiler



--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

A point well taken Stefan and that scenario should be practiced enough to
make it ingrained. Soaring is a very dynamic sport however and we need to
teach students not only to react to certain situations reflexively but to be
able to evaluate each one and to stay tuned into what is happening around
them.

My point is more of a mental issue.....if a pilot/student is not able to see
that there is a difference between landing in an unknown short field and a
huge paved runway then there is something very wrong with their processing.
Whether that leads to a problem with an outlanding is not so much the issue.
I would argue that they have a basic failure to evaluate situations
adequately and that failure will lead to a problem with another situation
that is yet unseen.

Not to point too fine a point on it but I would also argue that by ALWAYS
doing approaches like you are landing in a small field you are unnecessarily
putting yourself at risk. It is worth the risk to be slow on final if you
must stop short but if you do this each and every time you land eventually a
gust or sudden change in wind direction may cause you or the glider harm.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

KC

I am just beginning my soaring career with only 60 flights in 10
months. I would like to explain our clubs handling of approaches as
explained by our instructors and as practiced in everyday operations.

We attempt to fly all approaches at our club as PRECISION approaches.
Not SLOW! Every proper approach is handled this way and our landing
zone is a 250X50 meter marked area. Improper\unusual approaches are
also expected to end up in this zone, although not at the risk of
flight safety. The point is that (almost) every approach into our field
is handled this way. This, per instructors, makes field/outlanding an
adjunct of your normal operations i.e. lowers the options and
requirements for the outlanding. If you want to land long to put the
plane away or to end up near the launch point you make the approach to
land in the zone and apply less airbrakes. @20/1 from 20 meters you can
fly most of the way to the far end of the field. No slow flying until
the flare at 2-5 meters. As a matter of fact I have only
unintentionally missed stopping in this zone 2-3 times in my 60
flights.

Two weeks ago I had an unusual approach to the field, low at IP so very
much shortened downwind-base-final (all one turn and much too low over
the trees). Had no trouble landing in the "Zone" but had lots of
friendly queries about my approach. At no time during this approach was
I flying slow and the safety envelope is quite large (to tell the truth
I have a speed issue, I have a problem keeping my speed down on the
base to final turn but can now keep it within 10KMPH.)

Bob McDowell

Kilo Charlie wrote:

Not to point too fine a point on it but I would also argue that by ALWAYS
doing approaches like you are landing in a small field you are unnecessarily
putting yourself at risk. It is worth the risk to be slow on final if you

Fly the yellow triangle (plus correction for estimated wind) and you are
safe. If you are not able to fly the yellow triangle, you're not ready
for solo. It's as simple as that. Under no circumstances fly the final
slower than that triangle, especially not when outlanding.

That said, of course a pilot should be able to analyse a situation and
adopt his behaviour accordingly. We train for this by choosing a
different touch down spot for each landing. Likewise, on a busy airport,
he should be able to hurry up.

Stefan