The Differences Between PPLicensing And Learning

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:13:27 -0500, WJRFlyBoy
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:46:14 -0500, Roger wrote:

snip for brevity

It's a bit more complex figuring out the reasoning though.
There are many reasons for the rate peaking in this range.

Let me give you one I am intimately familiar with. Strength training
injuries.

It is customary for newbies to go thru several phases of experience (in
most any new learning paradigm)and related performance.

As a rough analogy "to me" it's not all that bad although I've never
noticed it quite that way in weight training. Then again it probably
depends on the subject's goal(s), age group, body type, and
personality. Then again we do agree pretty much on numbers 3, 4 and
5.

This would be an ideal list for adult ice skaters be it hockey or
figure skating.

1) Fear - performance poor
2) Less fear - performance moderate
3) Comfort - performance gains
4) Relaxed comfort - performance excellence
5) Carelessness, lack of fear, lack of details - injury

In #5 I'd look at it in a more general way such as attitudes, however
both get us to the same point. These are the same attitudes that get
pilots and drivers in trouble. Invulnerability, antiauthoritarian are
two that come to mind. IOW It always happens to the other guy, not me,
and don't tell me how to do things, I've done it this way for years,
or the rules are for other people. I often see men working out in a
manner that is likely to cause injury and unless they are dedicated
enough to be working with a personal trainer do not want to hear any
suggestions from anyone and that includes the pros. At best they
might defer to the pro, but revert back to their way as soon as the
pro leaves.
Of course the ones dedicated enough to be working with a personal
trainer aren't usually the ones getting into trouble unless they are
really pushing such as the RUSSIAN power lifter whose leg broke on a
lift.


This progression to digression is common to many complex tasks. The next
would be auto racing.

In flying the student may or may not have fear to start, but they
depend on the instructor and defer to their way of doing things.

Even after leaving the nest with their newly minted PPL they still
tend to defer to that instruction. Once out on their own they enter a
new learning curve and start developing more confidence. As time
builds some become complacent in their confidence. It's now in an area
where the invulnerability and antiauthoritarian attitudes coupled with
complacency rear their ugly heads.
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

WJRFlyBoy wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:29:58 -0500, Dudley Henriques wrote:

I enjoy the sim myself and have opted to retain FS2004 rather than go to
FSX for various reasons.

A couple quick ones in favor of both?

FS2004 is a superior product. I find no positives for FSX.

--
Dudley Henriques

WJRFlyBoy wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:18:00 -0500, Dudley Henriques wrote:

Additionally, the student can experience things in the simulator that
he/she can't or shouldn't do in the actual aircraft. The PC simulator
is, in my opinion, a valuable tool if used correctly.

I would respectfully disagree with this analysis based on hundreds of
hours spent working with both primary students, flight instructors, and
Microsoft.
Sims have their use, but if used before solo can actually be detrimental
for various reasons, some of them absolutely critical to student progress.
After solo, and when used with the proper supervision, the sims have
their productive side as well.

Is this the duty of a good CFI to point out where an individual student
would benefit and why?

Yes. Why is obvious.

--
Dudley Henriques

In article ,
Clark wrote:

" wrote in
:

On Feb 28, 4:11 am, WJRFlyBoy wrote:
I have been reading the various threads about spins, forced landings,
[snip]

Own all the fundamentally necessary flight gear (i.e carry-ons in
flight bag or on person)

This one takes years...

Oh hell. All it takes is a headset and a chart to get started...and pen and
paper keeps the school happy.

To get started...

I think you're in mildly contentious agreement with danmc61 here. :}

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:21:56 -0500, Roger wrote:

This would be an ideal list for adult ice skaters be it hockey or
figure skating.

1) Fear - performance poor
2) Less fear - performance moderate
3) Comfort - performance gains
4) Relaxed comfort - performance excellence
5) Carelessness, lack of fear, lack of details - injury

In #5 I'd look at it in a more general way such as attitudes, however
both get us to the same point. These are the same attitudes that get
pilots and drivers in trouble. Invulnerability, antiauthoritarian are
two that come to mind. IOW It always happens to the other guy, not me,
and don't tell me how to do things, I've done it this way for years,
or the rules are for other people. I often see men working out in a
manner that is likely to cause injury and unless they are dedicated
enough to be working with a personal trainer do not want to hear any
suggestions from anyone and that includes the pros. At best they
might defer to the pro, but revert back to their way as soon as the
pro leaves.

I wrote new programs for every training session then adjusted them
on-the-fly, on the floor. The educational piece was exacting and thorough
which allowed a single trainer to have as many as 25 trainees in session at
one time.

Then, like you said, given a month or more on their own, many would revert
to whatever is the norm for their peer group or gym or personal preference.
It is thus for human nature be it any complex task (generally) piloting
apparently is no different.

What was very interesting is those trainee/athletes that did not revert,
they were almost always the better athletes or received the highest
benefits of their training (in terms of increased athletic performance).
This clinically recorded relationship between an academically oriented
training environment and their on field success...it is what drives me,
academically, in my opening stages of learning to fly. I am hopeful that
there will be a carryover which will either remove or reduce the chances of
# 5 above.

If that makes any sense to you.

Of course the ones dedicated enough to be working with a personal
trainer aren't usually the ones getting into trouble unless they are
really pushing such as the RUSSIAN power lifter whose leg broke on a
lift.

Back to f,m,a here where the forces are very high even though the kilos are
comparative to max-lift, weight training, low.
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:21:56 -0500, Roger wrote:

5) Carelessness, lack of fear, lack of details - injury

In #5 I'd look at it in a more general way such as attitudes, however
both get us to the same point. These are the same attitudes that get
pilots and drivers in trouble. Invulnerability, antiauthoritarian are
two that come to mind. IOW It always happens to the other guy, not me,
and don't tell me how to do things, I've done it this way for years,
or the rules are for other people......
Even after leaving the nest with their newly minted PPL they still
tend to defer to that instruction. Once out on their own they enter a
new learning curve and start developing more confidence. As time
builds some become complacent in their confidence. It's now in an area
where the invulnerability and antiauthoritarian attitudes coupled with
complacency rear their ugly heads.

Your analogies are right on and almost laughably correct. I mentioned auto
racing, same thing, skiing, same thing, flying...all high(er) risk
activities or at least high fatality activities (in terms of percentages of
deaths to catastrophic mistakes. All of this behavior in the face of
obvious fact is pride driven, imo.

Which comes back to my thinking that the higher the academic pursuit, the
greater exposure there is to the undeniable facts. The physics is physics,
it's your physics and mine and they are the same. There is no luck involved
if you defy the physical sciences, or the mechanical ones (checklist,
regular maintenance, pre-flight structural inspections, etc) and
vulnerabilities don't choose people unequally.

Jay Honeck made a good point, he said I was making too much out of flying,
it was easier and it was settling to have that thought.

Now I can go back to obsessing on the educational part. Now that I will be
much less likely to f**k up ( the task is easier than anticipated) and I
will be sooo far ahead of any potential complacency syndrome. lol
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:32:07 -0600, Michael Ash wrote:

Maybe I misunderstood. You are relating the advanced disassembly of a
glider with post flight travel arrangements of motorized aircraft as
comparable deficiencies in training?

Sounds like you are unfamiliar with glider assembly/disassembly. There is
nothing "advanced" about it. It's something that all glider pilots are
allowed to do and all should be able to do. On the average day when my
club operates with good soaring conditions, there are several gliders
assembled in the morning and disassembled in the afternoon after the day's
flying is done. The average glider takes two or three people 15-20 minutes
to assemble or disassemble.

Never done one, seen it done only.

And yes, I am comparing it to the non-flying portions of traveling using a
powered aircraft. If you feel the comparison is not apt, perhaps you could
elaborate.

You said:

Of course this is pretty glider-specific. The equivalent for "normal"
flying would, I imagine, be how to travel with a plane, how to deal with
courtesy cars and arrange transportation at the destination and so forth,
which I've seen talked about here as lamentably un-discussed during
training.

I don't see the comparisons between a manual task that requires physical,
hands-on work and picking up a telephone or using a computer. Relative to
capabilities, the glider would be world's different than the travel
arrangements for me. Others, maybe you, if you were stunted socially, I can
see the latter being more difficult. I am stunted mechanically.
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:35:15 +0100, Stefan wrote:

WJRFlyBoy schrieb:

You are relating the advanced disassembly of a glider

There is nothing advanced in assembling and disassembling a glider. Most
glider pilots are doing this before and after each flight.

I think we might be talking about two different types of gliders but I am
sure that I overstated their difficulty now that I have seen several
videos.
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

On 29 Feb 2008 20:59:29 GMT, Clark wrote:

" wrote in
:

On Feb 28, 4:11 am, WJRFlyBoy wrote:
I have been reading the various threads about spins, forced landings,
[snip]

Own all the fundamentally necessary flight gear (i.e carry-ons in
flight bag or on person)

This one takes years...

Oh hell. All it takes is a headset and a chart to get started...and pen and
paper keeps the school happy.

Aw, c'mon, I may be a newbie but I saw Top Gun.
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

WJRFlyBoy wrote:
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:21:56 -0500, Roger wrote:

5) Carelessness, lack of fear, lack of details - injury
In #5 I'd look at it in a more general way such as attitudes, however
both get us to the same point. These are the same attitudes that get
pilots and drivers in trouble. Invulnerability, antiauthoritarian are
two that come to mind. IOW It always happens to the other guy, not me,
and don't tell me how to do things, I've done it this way for years,
or the rules are for other people......
Even after leaving the nest with their newly minted PPL they still
tend to defer to that instruction. Once out on their own they enter a
new learning curve and start developing more confidence. As time
builds some become complacent in their confidence. It's now in an area
where the invulnerability and antiauthoritarian attitudes coupled with
complacency rear their ugly heads.

Your analogies are right on and almost laughably correct. I mentioned auto
racing, same thing, skiing, same thing, flying...all high(er) risk
activities or at least high fatality activities (in terms of percentages of
deaths to catastrophic mistakes. All of this behavior in the face of
obvious fact is pride driven, imo.

Which comes back to my thinking that the higher the academic pursuit, the
greater exposure there is to the undeniable facts. The physics is physics,
it's your physics and mine and they are the same. There is no luck involved
if you defy the physical sciences, or the mechanical ones (checklist,
regular maintenance, pre-flight structural inspections, etc) and
vulnerabilities don't choose people unequally.

Jay Honeck made a good point, he said I was making too much out of flying,
it was easier and it was settling to have that thought.

Now I can go back to obsessing on the educational part. Now that I will be
much less likely to f**k up ( the task is easier than anticipated) and I
will be sooo far ahead of any potential complacency syndrome. lol

I am now working directly with professional members of the air show
demonstration community as an adviser on human factors relating to
accidents in our venue. That coupled with a 50 year background in flight
instruction and flight safety have given me at least a bit of expertise
on the topic you are discussing.

First of all, I would like to respectfully submit to you that you might
be approaching this issue seeking entirely too much structure.

Although the learning curve involved in flying (and driving a race car
for example) might seem structured if one takes a look at the FAA
suggested procedures for flight instructors teaching you to fly,and
considering the fact that a certain path must be taken to achieve the
certificate, contrary to all this"structure", in reality, these
activities involve a constantly changing lifetime learning curve
achieved both on the ground and in the highly dynamic atmosphere of a
machine in motion.

What all this pedantic text above amounts to is simply that when you
enter this arena to learn, it's optimum for you as a student to
seriously consider an integrated learning curve rather than the black
and white...1...2...3..method.

There are two ways to look at getting your license. You can crash it
through by getting the "steps" out of the way quickly, or you can enter
relaxed and integrate your flying with your other requirements.

You can do it either way.

The reason I suggest the less structured and less rigid path is because
flying itself, as well as driving a race car for that matter, is itself
the antithesis of structure. It's true you need the "checklist" type of
structure and that doesn't change all through your flying career, but
the very act of flying an airplane requires that you be able to preempt
and react to a constantly changing dynamic in real time.

So the optimum way to approach this endeavor is to start right at the
beginning in realizing that it is this world you will be in while
flying. So the stress on your learning curve right from the start should
be pointed directly at training to be able to think and act on the fly.
Training in this way points to a relaxed and integrated curve that mixes
ground school with flying so that things mesh together naturally.

When you look at flight training as this never ending learning curve I'm
describing to you here, you might begin to see that it's not getting
through the program that will keep you alive in the air, but what you
RETAIN and form into HABIT PATTERNS that is the important factor.

I always tell a new pilot one thing that I hope they never forget;
that is that what they learn that might save their life one day while
flying might very well NOT have been learned yet.

--
Dudley Henriques