On Jun 6, 10:56 am, "Dan Luke" wrote:
"Luke Skywalker" wrote:
a 100 hours a year..my question to someone who tells me this is there
anything else in the "complex" category that one does for 2 hours a
week and stays proficient enough to bet their life on it...?

I never had to bet my life on trigonometry, but it's pretty complex and I
mastered it in a lot fewer than 100 hours.

--
Dan

"How can an idiot be a policeman? Answer me that!"
-Chief Inspector Dreyfus

Hello:

I found trig and Calculas (at least basic calculas) not that all
complex.

But even if one found them hard, on the "scale" of how task are
learned trig is a far different task then say programming an FMS or
using a 396 much less interpreting them and not at all similar to the
procedures necessary to operate a "complex" aircraft. And we are not
even talking about "basic" piloting skills that require "motor"
control.

And worse...all this assumes very standardized, procedurized methods
of training.

Most GA training is nothing like that...particularly as one gets into
the various"complex" aircraft that exist today.

I'll give you an example.

about two years ago I gave a pilot a BFR and an insurance renewal
checkout in his Saratoga. He was a fairly "active" (180 hours in the
last year) pilot including some reasonable instrument time. I asked
him "Had any concerns" and he self confessed that he had "almost"
landed gear up at least four times in the last six months.

It didnt take "to long" flying with him to see why. We did six
different approaches and EACH time with no real variation in traffic
he put the gear down at a "different time" in the approach. Sometimes
downwind, sometimes final, in the two instrument approaches, it was
never the same place.

When we met for our next session...I took him to the parking lot of
the local walmart which is on the approach path to a busy metropolitan
airport. We did nothing for 20 minutes but sit and watch the
jetliners approach. his task was to figure out what was the same with
all of them. The answer is that they all put the gear down at the
walmart, and all the 737's went to gear down and flaps 15 right around
the Walmart.

The concept of putting the gear down at the same place at the same
time, had never really been taught to this guy, indeed the concept of
"everything is the same on every landing" was a kind of foreign
concept.

Look at every gear up landing (absent mechanical problems) and I will
show you a pilot whose methodology and procedure skills are non
existant.

If you dont have those and one flies a complex airplane...one is an
accident waiting to happen.

Robert