, I spent the first 200 hours teaching right out of the Jepp syllabus/my colleges syllabus. The result was getting a few guys through their solo and hating what I saw in my post solo students, stupid rudimentary errors. The method teaches by means of showing maneuver after maneuver with very little time spent linking it all together or teaching just basic flight operations (only about 2-3 hours on pure basics).
I'm with you, shdw. You have an innocent arrogance about you, because you are trying to be a better instructor. It is absolutely refreshing to me, an old-timer, to see a new instructor stirring up the training pot. You remind me of me when I was young. The fact is, gentlemen, that a new refreshed face can give us old-timers an opportunity to re-invent ourselves.
The primary part of the wheel does need re-inventing.
I've been turning this wheel 45 years and I have been through many changes in myself 'knowing' I was dead right about things, then later realized differently, through experience sometimes, and sometimes the knowledge takes on a different meaning after experience.
The thing about your experience with the Jepp syllabus, or ANY syllabus that I have seen in any 141 flight school, is that it only devotes a couple of the first flights to basics, and even then the lesson is crammed with preflight/runup/atc/etc., so that the students head is already scrambled before he takes the control yoke and tries to 'feel' the airplane. Bad. Bad. Bad.
There is a very big, VERY BIG, difference in teaching primary and teaching advanced.
Primary is taking one thing at a time:
~This is what the rudder does-demonstrate, practice, and review.
~this is what the ailerons do-demonstrate, practice, and review.
~This is what the elevator does-demonstrate, practice, and review.
~This is what the throttle does-demonstrate, practice, and review.
~This is what the trim does-demonstrate, practice, and review.
There is no attempt at flying straight and level, or making coordinated turns; those are maneuvers to begin after the student becomes reasonably skilled at making all control inputs to experiment with control movement/pressures and 'feeling' and seeing the resultant aircraft movement. That's all controls, including throttle and trim.
This will take a few flights - not one demo and move on - that is one of the biggest wheels that need re-inventing. I say re-inventing because that was the way it was a long, long time ago. Before nosewheels. Before ATC. Before long taxi lines. Learning to fly was simple and easy. We solo'ed in 8 hours because the 8 hours was basic stick control, not umpity-ump procedures.
Those procedures come after solo, or at least after having gained a mastery of the fundamental control response.
A fellow co-worker of mine teaches the takeoff like this: roll onto the runway and apply full power, check instruments in the green, airspeed alive, and scan between the instruments and outside till a rotate speed of 55 and then rotate, climb out again scanning airspeed/outside so you don't stall. Now I have had 3 of his students and they spend about 50/50 with their head inside vs outside on a typical rollout and climb out, this pattern stays true for the rest of the flight.
Instead I teach the takeoff as follows: taxi out and apply full power just the same, take a second to verify engine instruments, another second to verify airspeed alive (see its working), then eyes outside straight down the runway, as speed builds start to apply gradual back pressure bringing the glare shield to the horizon and when the airplane is ready it will fly, once airborne a sanity check of the ASI to ensure you are at a safe operating speed and then outside for the remainder of the climb setting a pitch attitude.
See? You're teaching "Old School". Good. The initial introduction to any maneuver should follow the basic outline of control input and aircraft response that you started with. Make a control input and look outside at aircraft response. Learn to 'feel' the airplane by slight aft elevator pressure 'til it flies off the runway. You're teaching feel and response by situational awareness rather than a rote pull back at a rote airspeed number. This is an advanced maneuver to be done by a pilot in an advanced machine. It is not appropriate to do this in primary. It sets a bad habit and bypasses the fundamental objective of teaching overall awareness and control feel and aircraft response to a specific control input.
Keep pluggin' away, my friend. You're on the right track.
