I want to thank everyone for their replies to my original comment/question. Instead of quoting everyone I'll just summarize it in one post. This post.
Humans are who they are based upon experiences, i.e. nature vs nurture. You don't know, what you don't know. Flight training here in AZ. we don't have an ocean for a CFI to show me how to navigate in a blackout situation. We also don't really have IFR conditions either, which is why flight schools love AZ. for our near three hundred days a year of sunshine. So learning to fly here is a lot different than learning to fly in California or on the east coast where you actually have weather. So I asked my question to the group for clarification based solely upon my past experience that I could call upon in my training history. I explained earlier about VOR's as a student pilot, but I forgot to mention that yes, we also did some very brief hood work too. Like a lesson, or maybe two. That's it and afterwards I was told that, VOR work and hood work was just a brief intro at my student pilot level, to be taken further during instrument. So, yes... based upon all of that, yeah I had some questions about
@knot4u post. Best of all I got answers to my questions based upon my non-experience from the lot of you. We brought back the old spirit of JC with my question in this thread. Lol.
As
@MikeD stated and
@tcco94 @BobDDuck probably remembers IFR training in PHX is pretty much limited to one airport for like seven (and growing) "big box" pilot mill schools in the valley, mixed in with the scant few mom and pop pilots. That airport is KCGZ. A one runway airport with an ILS, affectionately called the stack. Where you could have twenty or more planes, all circling around, starting the stack at 8,000 ft. You're not going to get many IR approaches, if at all in PHX airports. KDVT is the busiest general aviation airport in the country. KIWA is busy and getting busier, as a reliever airport for KPHX and it and KFFZ have a growing pilot mill presence. KSDL, forget about it. It's a forty-five min. hold at either end of hte runway in a G-1000 equipped 172 to takeoff there because the biz jets have priority. So you're not going to be beating up the pattern at any of the local airports. You're going to KCGZ to get in RNAV or ILS work, you and
EVERYONE else in the valley. One airport. This is the experience level that I asked my question from.
Shark, Shark went further on my point about today's level of flight training. It's all very homogenized. I consider myself to be a very good stick and am often complimented as such. Even
@derg has said that I'm a good stick. But I did my PPL at a Mom & Pop in 2001. Fifteen years later I did the majority of my training in SLC at a "big box" pilot mill. I very well might be a child of the magenta line (gasp). As I went from a six pack 172R, to a DA40 G-1000. The flight school that I went to in 2018, they were quickly transitioning away from being a Mom & Pop shop that made all their money doing discovery flights. To competing neck and neck with ATP and growing too quickly and being called the largest flight school in the entire state of UT. They had like four locations and even one in CA. They closed down all the other locations and now only operate out of their original location at KBTF. They still operated like a small shop while I was there though, while they were trying to be a pilot mill, which they quickly transition to almost overnight, while I was there. The disorganization during that transition was amazing, annoying and super frustrating. But to see where they are now on the socials, its like night and day. They're a very smooth running and professional 141 beast now akin to ATP and pumping out pilots for OO like Slim Shady clones in that video The Real Slim Shady.
Originally we could rent a plane and take it whereever. But then people would rent a plane and take it to KLAS for the weekend, then show back up at the airport ready to fly home Sunday and have low thousands of dollar fees waiting for them. They would then call the school to bail them out, because they didn't have the money to pay the bill. Because they were stupid and wanted to land at KLAS, with the big boys and park their Sportcrusier at the FBO. There were also couple of crashes (no fatalities), people taxiing under hovering helicopters. Students flying back to KBTF or KOGD, trying to beat the sunset, from who knows where. At night in placarded planes, that said no flying after dusk, because the strobes and nav lights were inop. Those incidents and many more caused the management to start to limit the places and distance that you could rent a plane. They also designated specific airports in a 50 mi. range that you could go to for x-countries. Again it all became very corporate and cosomopolitan as they sought to emulate ATP, their main competetior in their training. They said their reasaoning was they wanted everyone to have the same learning experiences traveling to the same airports. KOGD had an ILS and several RNAV approaches, it was my home airport so I did most/all of my IFR approaches from only that one airport.
Before this post gets any longer and circular, that pretty much sums up all of my flight training experience, in this post. That said I'm really looking around pretty hard for a Part 61 mom & pop shop to get my instructor ratings. But none of the mom & pops have access here in PHX to a DPE. All of the many pilot mills have put the DPE's on the payroll and you're gonna wait six to eight months or longer to get your ride as a direct result. And pay $1600-1800.00 for your PPL checkride, the last I heard. Yes you read that right.
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