IDAHO FATALITY

On Aug 21, 9:27*pm, Bruce Hoult wrote:
On Aug 22, 8:47*am, John Cochrane
wrote:

A little rudder
to help the turn along, a little back stick because we're not as high
as we thought, and in the glider goes.

I can't help but wonder how many fewer people would ever have the idea
to try the above if it hadn't been suggested to them by their
instructor's patter during training.

I don't think any instructor suggests this sort of thing actively.
Instructors try to remove these bad thoughts and unconscious habits,
and sometimes are not able completely to do so.

Becoming an instructor has been a great learning experience, as I have
been able to see these things happen. You can have a student with
great coordination and glidepath control at altitude, and who can
explain everything perfectly on oral quizzing. Then, things get a
little tight in the pattern, like he's too close and too low. His
attention gets focused elsewhere and stress goes up, and next thing
you know the yaw string is right over to the side on base to final and
he wants to pull the stick back. Instructing makes you a better
pilot: If he can do this, I can do it too, and helping the student
avoid the bad thought patterns helps the instructor as well

Tom Knauff has been very insightful on this. It's not bad ideas put
there by instructors. It's subconscious bad ideas that only bubble to
the surface in times of stress and attention focused elsewhere. And
detecting these, giving students experiences with high stress
situations, purging the bad thoughts, and all of this safely, is quite
hard.

John Cochrane