Student trouble with pattern and landing

[bc2209]

I have a Chinese student of mine who is having a significant amount of trouble with a few things.

His English speaking is excellent. He is well above and beyond his peers in that department. However, as soon as that engine kicks on he gets nervous and scatter brained.

Mr. young student of mine starts to forget everything, and granted, this is his seventh flight total. But his flying partner, who's English is TERRIBLE, is flying leaps and bounds over him.

So the young student of mine is having significant trouble with rectangular patterns, traffic patterns and most serious of problems is the approach.

My student can't fly a straight upwind, decide when to turn downwind, or final. When he does do a halfway not so terrible pattern he ends up WAY high on final and wayyyyy left or right of center line and is all over the place. He continues this until it's basically time to go around. Even with my commands of "we are too far left, etc." it is no help to him.

I'm a very new instructor and he is a very new student. I've taught hours of ground and demonstrated numerous stabilized approaches to this point.

Help me help him!!

The guy is genuine and honest that works his ass off and wants to succeed. Good guy.

 

[Fly_Unity]

This is typical in many foreign students in my opinion.

1. Id take it out to the practice area a few flights and work on basic flight attitudes and ground reference maneuvers with the panel covered up using outside ground references to fly a straight line (find a point far away to point at is much easier than flying a heading), and to turn, climb, descend etc.

2. Verbal commands are not as effective as sight commands according to FOI principles (especially when feeling overwhelmed). Try using some hand gestures in the cockpit to indicate a course of action.

 

[xargos]

He is still 30 seconds behind instead of 30 seconds ahead of the airplane.
To keep the direction: He should understand and see the extension of the current path-i.e look ahead, well ahead.
Always fly toward something, relative to sun etc-you help him to choose the target. Remember to lower the nose to check for traffic upwind -this is a good time to check the course .
To keep the distance : Issues with drift you could train on the ground. Let him walk it first, you be the wind- work by pushing against him, he'll get the idea. Train the drill on the ground, you can stop and correct, talk etc. Easier.
To ease into doing complex maneuvers use building block approach:
In the air you could start by just doing one thing at a time: either turn or climb /descend.

 

[mshunter]

Give him one piece of the puzzle at a time in the pattern. Then add the other pieces as you can. And get him out to the practice area and work on the basics. It sounds like that is what he is lacking the most.

 

[Beefy McGee]

Sounds like you might need to teach the student to use a reference on the aircraft to judge things too.

Is he trying to turn base by looking at a house on the ground or an intersection instead of looking back to see the end of the runway 45 degrees behind him? Is he trying to line up his downwind leg on some road or towards some ground point instead of using his wing strut (example- Cessna etc - runway crossing strut about 2/3 up from the bottom of the strut = good downwind positioning) or point on the wing (say the corner of the angle bend in the leading edge of a Warrior/Cherokee/low wing) to judge his distance from the runway?

I had several students that could only figure out how to position to land on one runway in the beginning because they were using points on the ground that obviously did not travel with them to other airports, whereas references on the plane will go with them. Eventually you can break them of "turning when you get to the big house" and they will figure it out, but you might need to carefully draw out the idea of wind strut references on a chalkboard or something to get the point across.

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

From your description, it sounds like his head is buried in the cockpit. His eyes and attention aren't outside, so he's not seeing the big picture.

 

[nosehair]

Ground reference - not the PTS kind, but flying a traffic pattern out in the woods where you have a long straight road or power line or railroad to line up on like a runway.
Make sure during preflight discussion he understands it is a training drill.
Fly a downwind, base, and final, doing all the procedures he must become automatic with while watching the "runway".
One step at a time. Fly the rectangle pattern at pattern altitude, then start power changes, speeds, flaps, etc. as he is able to take on additional tasks while continuing to track the pattern and keep lined up.
Descend on final to as low as you feel is safe, like you would on a simulated forced landing, then do the go-around.
When he can do it with no help or prompting; get into the actual pattern.

 

[Karnage]

Dim the PFD as dim as it will go and have him fly with his chin up looking only outside. Make him take off his sunglasses and watch where his eyes are looking. The G1000 is great but it leads to quite an easy case of dog and squirrel and then they get fixated and try to fly you into the side of a mountain maintaining a perfect straight line course to their destination 500 ft below the top of said mountain.

Take him down to the green fields and have him do rectangular courses over the roads at 1000 ft AGL. Pick one to use as your runway and have him practice flying with it just under the fuel cap (works great on the DA40 for downwind distance). Then tell him to turn base when the landing spot is half way between the trailing edge of the wing and the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer. He should be able to see the very tip of the stabilizer and it setups him up for a slightly wide but good distance base.

 

[USMCmech]

So the young student of mine is having significant trouble with rectangular patterns, traffic patterns and most serious of problems is the approach.

One thing I do with students in the first few hours is I draw out the airport, traffic pattern, and local area on the ramp with kids sidewalk chalk. You can orient N,S,E,W with the joints in the concrete, or you can use a compass and actually use magnetic north. We once drew out a virtual sectional including major roads, lakes, towns, class D boundries, ect. for a student who was hoplessly lost in the air.

Then the student does a literal "walk through" of the flight. Have them "taxi" from the ramp to the runway, run checklists, and take off. Tell them that once they take off, they can not stop moving (just like the real thing). This helps immensely with radio calls and procedures particularly with students who have a poor sense of direction.

 

[USMCmech]

Another thing to watch, is to make sure that the student is relaxed before even starting the engine.

I had one student who after preflighting and strapping in was literally out of breath, he was so keyed up. I told him to wait till I said to start the engine. We literally sat in the plane for 20 minutes before I saw his shoulders relax and his breathing slow to a normal rate.

I know it sounds extreme, but if your student is stressed before starting the engine they will learn nothing during the flight. Have them spend 5-10 minutes talking about something totally unrelated to flying before turning the key.

 

[Nihon_Ni]

One thing I do with students in the first few hours is I draw out the airport, traffic pattern, and local area on the ramp with kids sidewalk chalk. You can orient N,S,E,W with the joints in the concrete, or you can use a compass and actually use magnetic north. We once drew out a virtual sectional including major roads, lakes, towns, class D boundries, ect. for a student who was hoplessly lost in the air.

Then the student does a literal "walk through" of the flight. Have them "taxi" from the ramp to the runway, run checklists, and take off. Tell them that once they take off, they can not stop moving (just like the real thing). This helps immensely with radio calls and procedures particularly with students who have a poor sense of direction.

This! I disagree with the comments about different flight instruction techniques -- he needs more ground instruction. The airplane is a terrible learning environment, and this student clearly doesn't know what right and wrong look like. It sounds like he can control the airplane, but he doesn't have a reference of what a good traffic pattern looks like, so he doesn't know what to shoot for. You need to spend time with him on the ground describing what he needs to look for so his decision making will improve. Have him talk you through the pattern using a model, and at a variety of points move the model from the correct point to something that's wrong (high, low, close, wide) and ask him how he can determine it's wrong, and what steps he needs to take to fix it. I wouldn't fly again until he can do this exercise perfectly on the ground. If he can't talk you through the pattern with a model, he'll never be able to do it in the air.

 

[shdw]

One thing I like to do on the first few patters is eliminate all the inside work. The student is given control of roll, pitch and yaw. He/she is told to keep a pitch attitude relative to the horizon and I guide them through what distant points to use to fly a straight path. Remember you need two distant points to form a line, not one. I control power and configuration. They just fly and with all outside references.