"Crash Lander" wrote in message
...
"gpsman" wrote in message
oups.com...
Kyle Boatright wrote:

When you have 5 hours you haven't yet had the opportunity to have
learned the subtle points, nor develop much "touch" to lose.

The less you know and the less experience you have the less skills seem
to be necessary and the easier everything seems to be... since you
haven't yet broken the surface of knowledge or skill.

Point taken, but not entirely agreed with. The fact remains that a pilot
who is at the circuits part of the training, regardless of how many hours
he's taken to get there, has sufficient "touch" to be able to control the
aircraft with minimal to no input from an instructor. True, the instructor
must be with the student at all times, but the idea is for the student to
actually 'fly' the aircraft, with the instructor leaving the controls
alone unless necessary to avoid an incident. The fact I'm not solo yet
doesn't mean I can't fly. I can fly, well enough for circuits at least,
just perhaps not well enough to get myself out of trouble should anything
untoward happen, hence the requirement for the instructor to be with me.
Surely if a student can get an aircraft off the ground, around a full
circuit, and back on the ground again in one piece, without the instructor
touching the controls, he has enough "touch" to lose!
Oz/Crash Lander

You are absolutely right about this CL. A good instructor will only fly the
airplane long enough to demonstrate something to the student then give the
airplane right back to the student. For all intent and purposes, the student
should be the one actually on the controls from startup to shutdown.
By the time you get into the pattern you should have a good foundation of
the basics and all the pattern should be is an extension of those basics
flown to tighter and closer tolerances.
A good instructor knows exactly how far to let the student fly into an
error. The exceptional instructor starts talking the student into correcting
any error on their own, without physical intervention by the instructor.
There are of course times when an instructor has to correct physically, but
this should be viewed as the exception; not the rule!
Dudley Henriques