Dear Burt

Thanks Terry: Agree we should all be expecting more than barely good
enough. I have seen some examples of examiners making up their own
stuff and it can make you crazy. The standards are a bit mushy, which
makes it more complicated, especially for someone who is new. I'm
sure
all of us that have been doing this for awhile has our own "hot
spots",
that is things I commonly see a weak points in the pilot population.
I'll share a few of mine and maybe some other folks can add to the
list.

#1 Poor energy management in the landing pattern- an over application
of "speed is your friend". I'd estimate that 2 out of 3 pilots I
check
for the first time would hit the fence at the far end of a small
field.
#2 Failure to create a plan for developing events. The simple lack of
recognition of a need for this is far too common.
#3 Poor general airmanship- especially is slow flight. Most pilots do
not know how to fly in the stall range. I include in this flying the
glider in a stalled or partially stalled condition.

The idea that the FAA sets minimum standards, and of course all
instructors will train to higher standards, sounds great in theory.
However in the real world, a large portion of the instructors teach
only what will actually be tested on the practical test. By debriefing
their students after flight tests, they have learned exactly what a
particular examiner will expect. This then allows them to train their
students
for a flight test with that specific examiner, rather than bothering to
train for a thorough test in accordance with the PTS.

A blatant example of this was recently evident when I did some acro
with a pilot who had just passed his Private Pilot Glider flight test.
During the first high tow I asked the pilot to turn the towplane toward
the airport. The pilot then told me he had NEVER done signals on tow
before.

A few other relevent questions about stalls, slips and spins, showed
that this pilot's knowledge base was quite deficient. However we
cannot blame the pilot for these shortcummings. He was trained by an
FAA certificated instructor and passed a flight test given by an FAA
Designated Examiner. Unfortunately for this pilot, his training was
done at an operaton known for shopping around for easy examiners.

M Eiler

At 17:00 04 February 2005, Jim Vincent wrote:
³In reality ailerons and the rudder don¹t turn airplanes;
they allow the
pilot to bank the airplane, allowing the engine to
pull the aircraft around
in a circle. Once the turn is established, controls
are returned to almost
neutral and the elevators and engine do the work of
turning the airplane.²

Hmmm, I wonder what makes a glider turn. Maybe only
motor gliders can turn
and then only after the engine is started.

Lift is what causes an airplane or glider to turn.
Bank the wings and a
component of lift is then in the horizontal, causing
the turn. All the engine
does is control the rate of climb, typically to maintain
altitude.

Jim Vincent

Seems to me this picture is also inadequate. If the
aircraft is banked and a component of the lift is then
horizontal, why doesn't the aircraft just go sideways
over into the next county?

We need a good mental picture of what is happening
to cause the circling flight instead of just being
lifted sideways. We have to bring gravity, centrifugal
force, and the effect of the tail feathers into this
picture.

"Nyal Williams" wrote in message
...
At 17:00 04 February 2005, Jim Vincent wrote:
Seems to me this picture is also inadequate. If the
aircraft is banked and a component of the lift is then
horizontal, why doesn't the aircraft just go sideways
over into the next county?

We need a good mental picture of what is happening
to cause the circling flight instead of just being
lifted sideways. We have to bring gravity, centrifugal
force, and the effect of the tail feathers into this
picture.

You need to remember that this is a 3D vector problem involving both
velocity vectors and acceleration vectors.

The math works out something like this:

Turn Radius = Velocity squared divided by 11.26 time the tangent of the bank
angle.
Velocity is in knots (TAS), bank angle is in degrees and turn radius is in
feet.

The full description of the problem and its' solution can be found on page
178 of the 1965 edition of "Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators."

Respectfully,

Wayne
http://www.soaridaho.com/Schreder

It isn't the examiner's job to verify everything has been taught.
Examiners sample the areas, but are not required or even
suggested to cover everything.

My favorite examiner was a stickler for the instructor endorsements.
I asked him why he was so particular about making sure they were
all correct, and everything was there. He said:

"It's the instructor responsibility to cover the aeronautical
skills and the knowledge and prepare the applicant for EVERYTHING
in the PTS. When the instructor endorses and signs this,
they are saying the pilot is trained. I just give the test.
I can't possibly test everything, and I'm not going to. But if
I uncover something missing, that reflects on the instructor,
not the student."

This examiner is also good at doing exactly what the PTS
says. Buried in the many words in there, one example says:
"Examiners shall test to the greatest extent practicable the
applicant's correlative abilities rather than mere rote enumeration
of facts throughout the practical test."

This examiner never got nitpickety, but would test correlation
for only fundamental areas.

For example, the student might fly coordinated very well,
understand yaw and roll, and describe rudder and ailerons and
even parrot back adverse yaw. But in the air, the examiner
may ask for a slow roll rate into a steep bank, then try the
same thing with a fast roll rate. If the applicant can't
CORRELATE what he was asked on the oral exam, and apply
more rudder pressure during higher roll rates, then they
FAIL the standard.

So instructors are required to cover everything. And they are
required to teach to proficiency not just of rote or
understanding or application. They are required, by the PTS, to
teach pilots to the highest level of learning.

Correlation.

When the instructor signs off saying the applicant is prepared for
the practical test, they are saying the applicant has correlation
for all of the skills to be tested.

Not obscure weather terms, not the manufacturer names of
yaw-indifferent static ports, not the number of pounds of
force exerted on a tiedown at different windspeeds, and
not how density altitude affects variometers.

Not this obscure rote garbage. Correlation. When two
windsock tails a mile apart point at each other, what does this
MEAN? What is happening? What are you going to do about
it?

The minimum standard, straight from the PTS, is correlation,
and I think it is quite a high standard indeed.

Yes, there are instructors who give ZERO ground instruction.
And there are some students who can learn it all on their own
or in the air. But I hear what Terry said, and the instructors
who sign off they've covered wind-shear and wake turbulence,
or assembly procedures, when they have NOT, are simply unethical
and unprofessional.

My CFIG FAA ASI examiner said the same. He said the CFI endorsement
carries a LOT of weight.

Two years ago a CFI signed off a student for an instrument test.
The student got to the "holds" portion of the flight test, and
when asked to do a hold, the student said "I've never done one
of those in flight before." It turns out the CFI had signed off
this as proficient, but had never taught a single hold in flight or
in a simulator. And there was no record of any such training anywhere
in the logbook.

Well, the student got some of her money back from the CFI, the FAA
issued the CFI a letter, and the CFI got a VERY bad rep out of this.

Yes, CFIs and even examiners go bad sometimes. Some are too easy,
some are too hard. I, for one, go through every single line
of the reg and endorse longhand for each item, before I endorse for
a solo or practical test or privilege. I've always missed some
part of it every single time, and take that opportunity to cover
wind shear or assembly or how to evaluate runway lengths at airports
of intended landings or ...

Any of you who think the bare minimum PTS standard, or the
bare minimum regulatory standard of part 61, is too lax,
well, I disagree...

If you're arguing that some CFIs or examiners are signing off stuff
they haven't done, I agree with that, and that is a whole
different subject of ethics.

In article .com,
wrote:

Terry wrote:
That said, examiners who do their own thing can make it very hard
on
instructors.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
UH

================================================= =====================
I hope I did not give the impression that I am making up my own
checkride for I am not. If an applicant meets the PTS during my time
with him, then he passes. As it should be. Any examiner that is
running his own checkride does not deserve nor should he continue to
hold his status.

By raising the bar, I meant as an iINSTRUCTOR/i, I should always
be
looking to higher standards from my students. After all getting the
student there is what instruction is all about.

Terry Claussen
]
Thanks Terry: Agree we should all be expecting more than barely good
enough. I have seen some examples of examiners making up their own
stuff and it can make you crazy. The standards are a bit mushy, which
makes it more complicated, especially for someone who is new. I'm sure
all of us that have been doing this for awhile has our own "hot spots",
that is things I commonly see a weak points in the pilot population.
I'll share a few of mine and maybe some other folks can add to the
list.

#1 Poor energy management in the landing pattern- an over application
of "speed is your friend". I'd estimate that 2 out of 3 pilots I check
for the first time would hit the fence at the far end of a small field.
#2 Failure to create a plan for developing events. The simple lack of
recognition of a need for this is far too common.
#3 Poor general airmanship- especially is slow flight. Most pilots do
not know how to fly in the stall range. I include in this flying the
glider in a stalled or partially stalled condition.

Anybody else want to jump in here?
UH



--

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

The examiner had absolutely no responsibility to test this whatsoever.
If it wasn't one of the required areas, and he didn't
pick it optionally, he was fully correct in not doing it.

The instructor, on the other hand, had complete responsibility to
train this to proficiency, and endorsed as much unethically in the
student's logbook.

Or the student's memory is bad, right?

The FAA as far as I've seen almost always comes after the CFI license.
The most famous cases are the power plane fuel mismanagement
cases. Lotsa accidents from these.

The occasional examiner gets fired too, sometimes for
not ever flying with the applicant at all! But this seems rare.

Most instructors and examiners seem to do it exactly right.
CFIs train the part 61 and PTS areas completely, and to the
level of correlation. Examiners stick to fundamental areas
in listed references and conduct an efficient test of the required
sampling of areas, at the correlation level.

There is some judgement involved. Is training to the
"Handbook for Naval Aviators" standard of explaining
the forces involved while firing a missile, in an inverted turn,
a reasonable standard. I don't think so. Are signals
on tow or spin recovery procedures a reasonable standard?
Sure.

Somewhere in between there is some gray. How big the
gray area becomes seems to be an interesting topic...

In article .com,
wrote:

By debriefing
their students after flight tests, they have learned exactly what a
particular examiner will expect. This then allows them to train their
students
for a flight test with that specific examiner, rather than bothering to
train for a thorough test in accordance with the PTS.

A blatant example of this was recently evident when I did some acro
with a pilot who had just passed his Private Pilot Glider flight test.
During the first high tow I asked the pilot to turn the towplane toward
the airport. The pilot then told me he had NEVER done signals on tow
before.

A few other relevent questions about stalls, slips and spins, showed
that this pilot's knowledge base was quite deficient. However we
cannot blame the pilot for these shortcummings. He was trained by an
FAA certificated instructor and passed a flight test given by an FAA
Designated Examiner. Unfortunately for this pilot, his training was
done at an operaton known for shopping around for easy examiners.
--

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

At 17:30 04 February 2005, wrote:


The idea that the FAA sets minimum standards, and of
course all
instructors will train to higher standards, sounds
great in theory.
However in the real world, a large portion of the instructors
teach
only what will actually be tested on the practical
test. By debriefing
their students after flight tests, they have learned
exactly what a
particular examiner will expect. This then allows
them to train their
students
for a flight test with that specific examiner, rather
than bothering to
train for a thorough test in accordance with the PTS.

A bit chopped out

................. Unfortunately for this pilot, his
training was
done at an operaton known for shopping around for easy
examiners.

M Eiler



This notion of teaching to the test has come up in
political discussions about education. Even our current
US president was drawn into this about 4 years ago
and suggested that 'teaching to the test -- is teaching.'

Consider that the classroom teacher would teach multiplication
by teaching only those examples on the statewide test
for proficiency. No student would learn the entire
table -- just a few of the 5's and 10's and two or
three of the 6's and 7's -- maybe none of the 8's and
none of the 4's.

I sure think we are close to the slippery slope when we start making
comments that imply certain things should ALWAYS be done the same way...ALL
the time.

Low Energy landings are great, when the weather is nice, but in a big stiff
blustery crosswind, you dang sure better know how to fly your machine onto
the ground or you are going to learn all about this pretty little manuever
called the "ground loop".

We may as well just face the music that NO single methodology is ever going
to be 100% correct and that every instructor is going to have his pet peeves
and that's the way life is. So I'd suggest we'd do well to explain and
demonstrate the multitude of different methods to students...I'd further
assert that there are plenty of pilots who simply shouldn't be flying in on
the brink of a stall, because they are not keenly enough attuned to the
voice of the sailplane and it's subtle ways of letting us know what it needs
to keep us flying. There are many safe club pilots however, who fly their
gliders onto the ground and while they may not perform flawlessly in an
outlanding scenario, most of them will probably never pursue cross-country
flight and have the need arise to truly utilize those skillsets. I have met
MANY pilots...who are uncomfortable flirting with the stall, and the main
reason is a general lack of understanding and training...we should help them
work on those skills.

For Every flight...there are a hundred different methods to accomplish the
same thing...we should just patiently teach and share the information we
have and particularly share with a person why we think the way we do, when
we see a pilot do something that we think they would be better served by
being enlightened by additional information. I've never yet met a pilot who
wasn't willing to tell you why they do the things the way they do them...and
discuss differences...


Steve.

Unlike the knowledge (written) test, in the USA, the
PTS is comprehensive. At the examiner discretion, it
covers everything the FAA believes a pilot needs to
know in order to fly safely. This is my understanding.
One could certainly argue that the PTS is either vague or
incomplete. But by design it is supposed to be comprehensive.

So everything in it is testable, and that is comprehensive.
This doesn't mean everything is TESTED during a given
practical test, just TESTABLE.

The written test seems an example of what you point out, however.

****Are examiners the best solution?******

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.

The FAA ASIs do not get "looked at" harder for passing 100%

In any case, there is some statistically significant inconsistency
in these results.

How about eliminating Designated Pilot Examiners altogether?
Although they certainly put a human face on the FAA, are they
entirely necessary? If glider DPEs are failing 10% of the
applicants, and the FAA during it's mandatory random
flight test checks thinks 100% are fine, then there seems
to be a statistically significant standardization problem.

What do you think? Does the DPE 90% FAA 100% pass rate
surprise you? Are you thinking maybe you have a better shot
going to the FAA instead of a DPE for your next glider
practical test?

http://acra.faa.gov/iacra

is the automated FAA application system.
It can check the numbers by some computer formula to see
if the application is correct. And it can match data to the
student pilot license and medical info already in the database.

Beyond that, a "proctor" could put a logger with ENL in the
aircraft. Noise approximates engine RPM, gives buffet or stall horn,
and/or can record the voice of the pilot "That's the impending stall."

So give the guy a logger, have a "proctor" verify the takeoff, and
have the applicant do the manuever series off a clipboard or
audio tape instruction.

Land, and upload the flight log to FAA. A computer blindly
checks the data, and you get a pass or fail instantly.

I have not figured out how to test for coordination yet.
How do you know if the pilot is coordinated? Maybe a
360 45deg with a fast reversal to another 45deg 360.
The reversal would show differently on the track log coordinated
or not, maybe.

This would certainly provide consistency enforcing
the mathematical standards. It wouldn't test whether the
pilot was sweating profusely or crying during parts of the test,
however...and those are things we sure wouldn't want to see
once they carry a passenger.

But this seems pretty straightforward to implement.

Even if the DPEs remained to do the oral exam part,
the flight part could be done at one's leisure.

Hmmm...loggers are sure an interesting new device I
didn't know anything about until recently. Maybe
the FAA doesn't know about them so much either.

In article ,
Nyal Williams wrote:
At 17:30 04 February 2005, wrote:


The idea that the FAA sets minimum standards, and of
course all
instructors will train to higher standards, sounds
great in theory.
However in the real world, a large portion of the instructors
teach
only what will actually be tested on the practical
test. By debriefing
their students after flight tests, they have learned
exactly what a
particular examiner will expect. This then allows
them to train their
students
for a flight test with that specific examiner, rather
than bothering to
train for a thorough test in accordance with the PTS.

A bit chopped out

................. Unfortunately for this pilot, his
training was
done at an operaton known for shopping around for easy
examiners.

M Eiler



This notion of teaching to the test has come up in
political discussions about education. Even our current
US president was drawn into this about 4 years ago
and suggested that 'teaching to the test -- is teaching.'

Consider that the classroom teacher would teach multiplication
by teaching only those examples on the statewide test
for proficiency. No student would learn the entire
table -- just a few of the 5's and 10's and two or
three of the 6's and 7's -- maybe none of the 8's and
none of the 4's.





--

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

This is exactly my point! Why don't we all already know what makes an
aircraft turn? Many pilots feel they do, but if we sit several
professional pilots down, separately, and ask them how an aircraft
flies from a pilot's perspective, you'll get three substantively
related, though specifically different answers.

I can demonstrate with an equation (F=ma), a rectangular piece of stiff
paper, and a paper clip that an aircraft in a bank will turn (establish
a circular flight path) unless the pilot intentionally prevents it from
turning by applying rudder or reducing AoA. The point, for the sake of
this thread, isn't to define a theory of flight suitable for aviators.
Rather, it is to recognize how informal and untested many of our
theories really are. A theory that demands tail feathers to initiate
turns (as opposed to the wing just dragging the aircraft sideways
through the air) doesn't sufficiently explain the flight of hang
gliders, boomerangs, frisbees, or my paper clip ballasted flying wing.

Some might say, well, the model serves well enough.... but does it
really? How many accidents do we have each year that are preventable?
Why do competent pilots spin in? Why do well-trained pilots demonstrate
a lack of competency in basic flight skills like slipping and stall
recognition?

I'll return to slips: it's my favorite example becasue so few people
can do them well or describe them accurately. What factors need to be
considered during a slip? Are you aware that the ailorons contribute a
nose down pitching motion during a slip? Have you considered that
during a slip, you must increase the angle of attack because the lift
verctor is no longer antiparallel with graivity (as in a turn)? Are
you aware that the pitching moment of the elevator decreases with
increased beta? What effect on lift and drag does the effective
reduction of wing aspect ratio have? What differences in stick use can
be expected in a high performance versus a wide-body glider during
slipping? Is there any aerodynamic difference between a forward and a
side slip? If there isn't, why do we bother differentiating them? Have
you ever seen any of these ideas discussed in a flight primer? Why not?
I consider all these questions foundational. Yet it took me a long time
to start asking them. I learned to do slips by rote, but never did them
really well until I began to ask these questions. Hopefully, you'll
recognize I've only asked some of the less obvious questions. There are
plenty of others, some taught, some ignored, some simply not
recognized. An example of the latter... how do you measure airspeed in
a slip?

OK, I'm dancing on the head of pin, but I needed an example to drive
home what we don't know about something so "simple" as slipping. A good
pilot should be asking questions and looking for answers all the time.
A good instructor should be looking for new and better ways to pose and
answer such questions. One last example, if I asked "What is the
primary yaw control in a glider?" how would you react if I answered,
"its the ailerons?" And why might this be a better answer than "the
rudder?"

There's alot left to learn, and discuss, and apply. And alot of bright,
"mis-informed" people out there who have something to contribute. I'll
address myself to Burt again... if the RAS is misinformed, isn't the
source culpable? Isn't the first step to recognize that we're ALL, to a
greater or lesser degree, misinformed so we can get about the business
of improving our understanding?

Mark James Boyd wrote:

Maybe the FAA doesn't know about them so much either.

Or... maybe they do.

..igc files are very handy for post crash analysis. A logger file was
used in a very recent glider accident investigation.

Jim