Poor RG...

That's their right to do as a business, but again, don't hide the reason behind some BS excuse of "we're preventing an unsafe operation," and be up front with "we're trying to not lose any revenue." Safety is not something that's to be used as an excuse for some other ulterior motive.

Agreed.
 
The ultra rare occasion that you have to do a go around once you are planted on the ground(I have never had to do this but could think of several reasons why I would need to) a pilot who has never practiced cleaning up a complex aircraft on the runway and taking off again is going to find themselves in real trouble if they panic trying to get off the runway because they have to.

I don't think it is that "ultra rare." I would say that it is common enough that you should always be ready if necessary.

Common causes I have seen - operations in both directions at uncontrolled fields, skydivers landing on runways, vehicles pulling onto runways, tower issuing a landing clearance anticipating an a/c to clear a runway (that somehow doesn't fast enough), running out of runway, determining you won't comply with a LAHSO clearance, loss of directional control (taildragger), the list goes on.
 
That's their right to do as a business, but again, don't hide the reason behind some BS excuse of "we're preventing an unsafe operation," and be up front with "we're trying to not lose any revenue." Safety is not something that's to be used as an excuse for some other ulterior motive.

This whole thing was set off by me saying "every flight school needs a no T&G policy"

It is about safety and it is about dollars to flight schools.

Which should have been understood when I said it was risk management for Flight schools. If you want to talk about a blanket ban on T&Gs, that is a whole differant conversation and opinion from me.

I do think it is funny how some took it as a personal afront to their pilot skills, I'm in shock and awe by their ability to do a touch and go.
The comment was not about you the pilot, it was about flight schools. It only becomes about you when you have the mental lapse and end up like dude.


MikeD, your talking about teaching/training and that is a valid argument, putting it into everyday training with results is another.

In my mind the benefits of the T&Gs in a flight school aircraft do not out weigh the price of a gear up for the students record and flight schools books, and I see that as not just valid but practical.
 
The people who inadvertently pull up the gear have hundreds or thousands of touch and go's under their belts.
OK, don't know where you get that concrete statistic, but it only means the training was done in a 'hurried' fashion. The T&G's were fast slammers, which are very wrong. The underlying cause of most every accident is 'insufficient training'. A hundred or thousand T&G's in a fast furious slamitup&go method is bad training.

In all my statements about any kind of training, I mean that the training is done properly. You certainly are right if you are speaking of a poorly trained T&G procedure.

You are 100% correct that hundreds or thousands of T&G's done improperly will cause an accident. I see many pilots slam the throttle in full in 1/2 second, and slam the flap handle up in the other 1/2 second. This is the4 guy who will raise the gear handle up on roll-out or T&G.
BTW, raising the gear instead of flaps on roll-out is as much a problem as doing it on T&G, so the training needs to be on not confusing the two.
It ain't rocket science, but it is a skill that requires repeated eye-hand coordinated drill, like many other flight skills that we develop in training.

We develop those specific skills required to pass a checkride, but blow off many other necessary skills because the 'risk' is determined to be not worth the effort because it ain't on a checkride. These other skills can be taught just as effectively if we give it the time. But 'we' don't, so the accident rate makes it look 'dangerous'.

I am talking from the point of view that we, as instructors and mentors of pilot proficiency, have the goal of teaching proficiency and ability to deal with whatever may come to you in flight.
 
flaps 10...set power....

there is nothing wrong with teaching proper go around techniques while in training. we were doing touch-and-go's in the T-6 the very first flight...that was the first flight in a complex aircraft for a lot of people....as long as you teach proper habit patterns it SHOULD be okay.

i guess its pretty hard to mix up the two handles in the T-1

FTS_T-1A_Cockpit_USAF.jpg
 
In all my statements about any kind of training, I mean that the training is done properly. You certainly are right if you are speaking of a poorly trained T&G procedure.

I think you're a coin-flipper that has got 20 heads in a row and so thinks himself to be a great coin-flipper.;)
 
Not anymore in the Seminole at DCA.

When did they change that? When I was there it was touch-and-go's on runways over 5000ft.

When I do some requal landings in the 310, I'll do touch-and-go's (daytime), but I like to be on a runway of atleast 5500ft. That way I can touch down safely, make sure I get the flaps all the way and then smoothly add the power back up to full.
 
For those saying people pulling gear up on the ground have hundreds or thusands of hours. If so, that means they weren't trained to properly identify which is which and were probably signed off after an hour.

The problem with the complex endorsement is that I feel at least 5 hours is needed to really see how a pilot's procedures are. Just doing an hour flight, then telling the student he/she better not land gear up is not only a dis-Servce , but such a small part of it. Any inadvertent gear up situation is a failure on the pilots part whether forgetting, not using a checklist or not paying attention. If you break those habits and teach properly that kind of stuff would never happen and flight schools wouldn't need to impose these immature rules like no touch and goes. Might as well take away stall/spin training.
 
For those saying people pulling gear up on the ground have hundreds or thusands of hours. If so, that means they weren't trained to properly identify which is which and were probably signed off after an hour.
I too have heard that the people who pull the wrong lever up have thousands of hours. Another Axiom i've heard is that there are two type, those that have and those that will have a gear up landing. I think the point behind that is that sometimes feces happens. Regardless of training, sometimes we just do stupid things. Complacency hurts.
 
This whole thing was set off by me saying "every flight school needs a no T&G policy"

It is about safety and it is about dollars to flight schools.

Which should have been understood when I said it was risk management for Flight schools. If you want to talk about a blanket ban on T&Gs, that is a whole differant conversation and opinion from me.

Nah, we're on the same page regards T&Gs for flight schools. I see their reasoning for it, though I personally disagree with it in the sense that they're putting pilots out there who will not have had opportunity to exercise judgement, etc (see my 182 example explained previously). I fully understand that flight schools aren't rich, and that hikes to their insurance rates after one accident or so (T&G or other cause/operation) could conceivable bankrupt them, so I get why they're trying to mitigate risk. I just think that some mitigation can go a little too far to where now you're affecting the quality of the pilots you're producing, when you have a better mitigated risk by training them for said operation. If they don't want the training, then they don't rent RG aircraft. If they get the training, then when they rent they should be capable of doing all normal ops. It's the same thing with many flight schools that require an instrument rating for rentals in order to fly night VFR. I see what they're trying to do, and again that's their purview to do so, I just don't always agree with it.

I do think it is funny how some took it as a personal afront to their pilot skills, I'm in shock and awe by their ability to do a touch and go.
The comment was not about you the pilot, it was about flight schools. It only becomes about you when you have the mental lapse and end up like dude.

No personal affront taken, I just don't like it when someone arbitrarily slaps the "it's unsafe" tag to a certain maneuver when the true reason is because it's about dollars. T&Gs in an RG aren't unsafe at all, if one wants to compare the number of ops that happen with the number of brain-fart incidents that occur. Again, I could pull down the NTSB database on GA accidents, pickout any number of accidents that have occurred while doing X maneuver, and call that maneuver unsafe. We'd end up doing nothing in aviation.

MikeD, your talking about teaching/training and that is a valid argument, putting it into everyday training with results is another.

In my mind the benefits of the T&Gs in a flight school aircraft do not out weigh the price of a gear up for the students record and flight schools books, and I see that as not just valid but practical.

I disagree on one part of the training perspective, in the sense that T&Gs do save time and money for the student and can result in more training being accomplished; and also keep patterns going smoothly with other aircraft in them, etc. Again, I undestand the logic behind why some flight schools are implementing this, but to me, if a flight school is so worried about risk to that anal-retentive of an extent, then they should find another line of work; as they're not putting out the best quality, most confident pilots they could for those being trained in RG ops. IMO, if you're going to train (as a flight school) be willing to go the distance and not half-assed, that's the risk of being a flight school and incidents are the cost of being involved in the business of flying sometimes..........but the real-world of $$$ reality comes into play too, which I again understand.
 
Earlier this week one of the students or renters had a mishap with the plane I was doing my commercial training in. Pilot wasn't hurt, but the plane definitely was....and this is after it got a fresh engine, gov, and prop just 3 months ago.

From what I was told, he was doing touch and goes, and on the go he didn't retract the flaps, added full power resulting in this.....

Just glad the pilot is ok...the plane can be replaced.


photo.jpg
Doh! At least the pilot is alive.
 
What's your reason to do the touch and go? What are you accomplishing that you can't accomplish with a full stop landing (other than increasing the workload when it's unnecessary)?

-mini

Learning about increased workload is part of learning to fly. If you shield your students from being stressed in the airplane, they will have trouble when they are actually stressed at a critical time later. I just started reading through this thread, but damn, really, "NO TOUCH AND GOES!!!"

Its been awhile since I flew anything with a gear handle, so take my opinion on this with a very large grain of salt, but I've never had a problem differentiating between the levers because my CFIs taught me to be methodical. E.g. you reach to the position where the gear handle is at, you grab the handle, and retract/extend the gear. You never just "reach over and flip stuff." That may be the problem here. I've found that I fly much more precisely when I don't fly by muscle memory. In other words, think about what you're doing and it won't be a problem. If your student isn't thinking, they're just doing, then they have a problem.

Maybe we should think about something else that is similar in its applicability. For quite a while when I was learning to fly, I always went to flaps up in the 172 on my touch and goes. It was second nature. Reach over, and slap the flap lever up to the stop, and for long airports, with few obstacles this wasn't a problem. However, one day, my instructor realized that I was doing this, and took me to someplace much shorter and had me do some touch and goes. So we come in on the first one, and the guy says, "Alright, give me a shortfield, with a touch and go." So down we go, I put it on the deck, and instinctively reach over, and slap the lever up to "flaps zero." And threw the whips to it. The instructor said nothing. Needless to say, I was much much closer to the trees at the other end than I had ever been before at that point (though in no way were we dangerously close) and was somewhat alarmed. It was a huge lesson for me. Don't just "do." Think!

In my career (a measely 2700TTish) the best captains, and pilots I have seen think for themselves. They think about what they're doing without jumping to any conclusions.

Even a go around. The mantra is "CRAM CLIMB COMMUNICATE!!!" but really, even here, you need to think before you through that power lever forward. "Am I configured correctly, do I have options if I lose an engine at this speed with the power at max, should I call ATC yet, or am I not finished flying the airplane, should I try to climb right now, or get my speed up and then climb." Think. /rant.
 
Whatever. We did bounces in our new 747-400 when we were getting the initial cadre of pilots up to speed.
We do them in our fancy shmancy Cj during training/checking events, too but we call them "rejected landings". What we don't do during a rejected landing that most do during a "touch and go" is reach over and start re-setting flaps and trim. We get the power in, while maintaining directional control. We rotate at Vref, yadd yadda, then the checklist.

You can do the same in a single. There's no reason to do a touch and go when you could be teaching the student how to do a rejected landing. So he didn't see the deer in the flare, has both mains planted down and is letting the nosewheel kiss the pavement when "OH SHNAP! A DEER!". At that point, is it better to slap the flaps up or give it the go juice and start flying again?

There's teaching how to deal with an increased workload and there's teaching how to do crap that increases your workload. I'd rather do the former.

-mini
 
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