On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:46:58 GMT, Jack wrote:

Tom Conner wrote:

Personally, I think the mindset required to master the technical details
associated with learning to fly is similar to the mindset needed to get an
engineering degree.

I hope not.

Not being an engineer, my perception of what it would involve might turn
me to the law instead. The flying mindset could be related to both, I
suppose, but I am thankful I never had to find out first-hand.

I doubt there is much in flying for a pilot that even relates to
engineering, at least I see no correlation.

"To me":
Stick-and-rudder flying is an art and it is learned as a harmony of
the senses. Sight, sound, balance. A good stick-and-rudder pilot
needs little else.

Sure there is the book stuff needed to learn the regulations which is
no different than any other discipline, but it technical or business.
They both have their rules and regulations.

About the only real calculations are for distance. If a person can
understand a wing can go through the air at an angle rather than
straight then they can understand angle of attack. When you are
pushing the limits for the AOA you can feel it regardless of speed,
direction, or attitude. In relatively simple planes including most
high performance singles, you don't need an indicator to tell you
when your are getting near the edge. You really don't need a stall
warning indicator either.

Flight planning is little different than creating a spread sheet and
one whale of a lot easier than creating a relational database.

If you really want to pick nits and call it technical, a pilot needs
to learn to think in terms of time traveled instead of distance and we
have a lot of seasoned pilots who have failed at this, but overall it
is no more technical than any business course.

I had far more math in CS than it took to get my PPL.

Even creating an IFR flight plan, It consists of "abouts" .
Well, to the first intersection its 20 miles SW with the wind from the
south with our cruising speed we'll be getting "about"180 MPH. That's
3 miles per minute so that leg will be about 7 minutes or slightly
less. Heading? Oh...bout 10 degrees left of course then we'll see if
we need to make any corrections.

Except for training and for the check ride I've never done it any
other way. Actually on the check ride the winds were different than
forecast and I reverted to the ... Wellll...the winds are higher than
expected and it's causing us to parallel the desired course so we need
about another 30 degrees to intercept and then back to this heading to
hold course. It also means we'll need a heading about 30 to 40 degrees
right of course when heading north. So, even on the check ride a good
portion was "abouts".

If we use common sense there are no normal flight figures that require
any knowledge at the engineering level.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Jack