"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:CSe7e.15587$8Z6.12366@attbi_s21...
Perhaps you would prefer that all pilot certificates be issued with
restrictions stipulating precisely what it is the pilot was actually
taught?

No, but I do wish more emphasis was put on learning to fly rather than on
hitting new pilots with dumb "gotcha" questions that require mass
memorization to answer.

I guess I just don't see what you mean. Part of learning to fly is
accumulating important *factual* knowledge (as opposed to hand-eye
coordination, muscle memory type stuff). Operating the aircraft is just one
element of flight.

As far as memorization goes, I guess that depends on your learning style. I
try to avoid rote learning as much as possible. While there are some things
in aviation that simply cannot be learned any other way, much can be.

Even things like nav light positions (wingtip light on the other aircraft
tells you whether you can "go" or not) or cruising altitude (it would make
sense for "eastbound" flights to fly on "even" altitudes, so of course the
FAA doesn't do it that way) can be reduced to some sort of logical, non-rote
approach. Many other things, such as temperature effects on indicated vs
true altitude for example, have real underlying learnable reasons for their
existence, and can be derived "on the spot" if you go past the rote
learning.

IMHO, if you feel that most of your flying education involved rote learning,
you did not have very good instructors.

As you can tell, most of my gripes are with the written exam. I scored in
the upper 90s (admittedly over 10 years ago now) but only because I almost
literally memorized the test before taking it.

Don't confuse the written exam with learning. As you say, the exam is
as much about filtering the pilot population as it is about encouraging any
specific knowledge. After all, when you can just read all of the questions
*and answers* ahead of time, it makes the test a lot easier.

That said, the problem there is with the testing methodology, not the facts
being tested. Because of the "pick randomly from a large database" method,
it's true that almost every test winds up having one or two useless
questions. But in the big picture, most of the information is actually
useful. There's a reason that the written is just one small part of the
overall certification process, but that reason has to do with the method,
not the content.

If we're trying to weed people out, that's an excellent method. 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.

The Recreational Pilot was a feeble, failed attempt at this. We'll see
how the "Sport Pilot" fares.

We'll see. I have high hopes, and given that the Sport Pilot certificate
does dramatically reduce the training time and costs (something the
Recreational didn't really achieve), I think it has a good chance. But note
that the pilot who gets a Sport Pilot certificate has some pretty
significant limitations regarding what they are permitted to do. And I
think those limitations are well-justified.

The Sport Pilot certificate is, in fact, an example of the tiered
certification I was talking about. My example was the extreme, taken to the
absurd limits. But you can see how we probably wouldn't want many more
tiers than what we've got now that the Sport Pilot certificate is a reality.
Even adding the Sport Pilot has noticeably complicated the regulations and
certification process. I think the benefit will be greater than the cost,
but that wouldn't be true if we did that exercise many more times.

Pete