Did we forget that flying is fun?

[challenger]

There's people like this all over aviation and not just 141. I know you're mad at a large school in the upper midwest, but there's always going to be an uptight guy out there no matter where he came from.

True, just like the idea of being able to choose what I am paying for. Do not get me wrong my flight instructor was a great guy, it is just to expensive there, among other things.

I am certain that I will become a better pilot elsewhere so its a win win. :bandit:

 

[youngflyer]

True, just like the idea of being able to choose what I am paying for. Do not get me wrong my flight instructor was a great guy, it is just to expensive there, among other things.

I am certain that I will become a better pilot elsewhere so its a win win. :bandit:

Training is what you make it.

 

[Crism]

I'm thinking about putting out an anonymous survey on the ERAU-DB campus asking whether students find flying at ERAU fun. I can almost guarentee that the response I'm going to get is an overall "NO". As to why? The curriculum is so strict here that it makes flying not fun. Granted, that depends on the school and the culture of where you're flying.

And tlewis, that was one thing that turned me off about SIU. The idea that I can't even go rent an airplane absolutely blows my mind.

At ERAU the curriculum is so strict, instrument students get 2 cross countries IFR in the entire course. Mind out at a Part 61 school they need 50 hours of XC period. I honestly think that that's a bunch of BS with the 2 XCs so here's what I did with my student. The course is set up so students do an Oral on VORs, 2 sims, and 1 flight, then move on to an oral on GPS, 2 sims, 1 flight, continuing on for ILS's. One some of those flights, I made my student FILE AN ACTUAL IFR FLIGHT PLAN (oh no god forbid we don't stay in the local area and get our "local IFR" clearance and never learn to file for real) to St. Augustine for some approaches. The GPS flight we stayed local in Daytona and on the ILS flight I made him FILE to Sanford.

In doing that, I feel that my student gained a whole lot more "real-world experience" than had we stayed in the Daytona area. We got to the cross country portion of the course and I barely had to show him anything because he already knew how to file a flight plan and knew what the IFR system was all about.

Around here, it's all about what the instructor makes of the training. I stay loosely within the confines of the curriculum while trying to give the student the best possible learning experiences that they will have in the real world. Have I overstepped boundaries? I don't think so. My one instrument student (just described above) passed his checkride without an issue, but he was actually one of the few that studies and does a good job.

 

[scooter2525]

Sounds like the kind of guy I want on my flight crew. He will be able to hit "D" better then the rest of them and pick the highest altitude to ensure we are as far away from the ground as possible. Not knowing how to manuver an aircraft except at checkrides is the way to keep those stick and rudder skills sharp!

 

[Orange Anchor]

The friend apologized but I still dont think he gets it. Hes all for straight and level only. Which I guess is fine for him but I agree with my uncle that if your not comfortable doing things like stalls, steep turns, slow flight etc in the aircraft your flying you really have no business flying.

Flew with a friend who only recently got his private license. We went up in a slightly tired Grumman Tiger and the first thing I did was go through some stalls and turns and a few phugoids just for funsies. Why would anyone want to spend the flt just straight and level?

And yes. In all fields, some insecure weak weenie will huff and puff about being a professional which is usually a tacit admission they are a weak and insecure weenie. Which also says, "You guys should be like ME!"

Wimp.

 

[mwflyer]

I'm reminded of ppragman's (?) story about the sightseeing flight with the Riddle God, who freaked out at the less than 1 mile downwind.
And, 18 posts and no Mav/Iceman locker room picture? WTF people?

One of the funniest stories ever!

 

[challenger]

Training is what you make it.

Well I can't make anything of it at UND it is too expensive

 

[tonyw]

Eff people like that. I know plenty of them who hate HATE flying GA and are just about ready to quit if they don't get "to the airlines soon." Why? An airplane is an airplane. If you don't like to have fun in one, then why waste your life getting paid to fly them?

You know, I recently worked with someone who works for a trade association. She was a line pilot for a United feeder, and she's now flying planes for the trade association she works for.

She joins the long list of people getting paychecks for their piloting who have told me that the most fun they have flying is when they're just flying low and slow on a VFR day where it's clear and a million and they have nowhere in particular to go.

 

[Douglas]

And I apologize now if you are a 141 product and dont fit that because I know alot of you arent like that.

So why even bring it up if it doesn't fit the bill?
Either way that guy sucks and wouldn't fit in with my recreational flying at all. I think wrxpilot probably hit the nail on the head, he was white knuckled in the back seat and spoke out in fear while trying to hide it with "professionalism". pfft, he should turn in his epaulettes. The longer I do this, the more I hate instructors. (BS instructors anyway)

Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet this same "CFI" is probably terrified...

 

[Muff3n]

My first instrument instructor came from a pilot factory ( I am not going to say the name but lets say they are based in atlanta, and have a 0 time to CFI 90 day rush curriculum).

This guy was a complete tool, all he kept talking about was how hardcore ATP ( whoops I said it) is and how amazing all of the pilots there are. He kept trying to act all big and bad when he only had 700 hours and was by far the worst instructor I have ever had. I stopped taking lessons for 5 months ( 2 month long battle with pneumonia/ school/ work) and he moved off to texas for some airforce desk job.

The next time I talked to him was on facebook chat when I told him I had gotten my instrument ticket. He then proceded to tell me "Unless you want to be seriously considered for an airline job, don't go to ATP"

I preceded to tell him that I will take my advice from people with 20 years of flying experience and kindly removed him from my friends list

 

[Ramsey]

Nothing wrong with air work while en-route.

*edit - unless you have PAX that are uneasy, get sick etc.

 

[GlenA]

:

Nothing wrong with air work while en-route.

*edit - unless you have PAX that are uneasy, get sick etc.

:yeahthat:

Yeah, I wouldn't do that stuff in a plane with someone who was uncomfortable or nervous about it... but that being said I think way more accidents are caused by people who don't practice those skills. I like to go out and practice my power off emergency landings whenever I get the chance coming back in from a job, especially if the conditions aren't pristine. Because the way I figure it, Murphy's always watching, and those are the days the engine is gonna decide "No, i don't feel like it" .

 

[Muff3n]

:

:yeahthat:

Yeah, I wouldn't do that stuff in a plane with someone who was uncomfortable or nervous about it... but that being said I think way more accidents are caused by people who don't practice those skills. I like to go out and practice my power off emergency landings whenever I get the chance coming back in from a job, especially if the conditions aren't pristine. Because the way I figure it, Murphy's always watching, and those are the days the engine is gonna decide "No, i don't feel like it" .

Your exactly right man. It is good to practice stuff like that because one day the engine is just going to not want to go.

 

[esa17]

Your friend is a weenie.

 

[germb747]

So this morning me and my uncle decided to take a friend of mine out to eat in the cherokee. My friend who will remain nameless, just got his cfi at a large 141 university. On the way to breakfast me and my uncle decided to have some fun we were doing some steep turns on the way there and some slow flight to see if we could hover over a house etc etc. At breakfast my friend decided to go into a 20 min speech about how what we did on the way there is very unproffessional and uncalled for. There was no reason to be doing steep turns if not doing so for training and no reason to be doing slow flight for the same reason. He said it is goofing around like that that gets people killed.


Now seriously people have we forget that flying is supposed to be fun. I understand that the professional types want to push for more proffesionalism etc etc but really com on. We did the clearing turns and we were talking to atc and let them know what we were doing. At what point was having some fun doing steep turns and slow fight dangerous. I enjoy going up and flying aerobatics in a Super D when money allows. Does that makes me dangerous as well?

I know I am ranting but it just drives me crazy. It seems like all the 141 types I run into are so damn uptight and have no idea how to just go and have fun in a an airplane. And I apologize now if you are a 141 product and dont fit that because I know alot of you arent like that. But it drives me crazy to meet these people because they are the ones killing GA.

Go practice your stalls and steep turns regularly and don't think twice about it. Theoretically, the FAA could re-examine your pilot skills at any time, so you had better be able to maintain the proficiency of the PTS that apply to the certificate you hold. In the Air Force, we're required to practice and maintain specific currency in scores of maneuvers and procedures, to include tactical maneuvering at the "edge of the envelope". It keeps you a sharp stick, and that's important.

Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet this same "CFI" is probably terrified of stalls and will never show his students incipient spins, or even let them get into fully developed stalls, see the results of dropping a wing, etc. I've flown with a couple of nervous CFIs before, and it is a truly miserable experience. These insecure pilots pass on their nervous traits to students, and it's just a real tragedy. It can be a real mess trying to mop up after them, having done so a couple of times in an attempt to fix their damaged students.

Is that a trend these days? It's been since 2004 since I've done any serious GA flying, but I got checked out a couple months ago in a C172 at a local FBO. I tried to let my stalls fully develop and drop a wing before initiating recovery (the way I was taught in primary training in the mid 90s). The brand new CFI was insistent that I recover at the first indication of a stall (the horn), which seemed a little cheesy to me. Is this the way it's taught now? Obviously, in a real-world stall situation, I'd recover at the first clue. But for training, I think it makes sense to understand how the aircraft behaves if you don't catch the clue bird.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

Is that a trend these days? It's been since 2004 since I've done any serious GA flying, but I got checked out a couple months ago in a C172 at a local FBO. I tried to let my stalls fully develop and drop a wing before initiating recovery (the way I was taught in primary training in the mid 90s). The brand new CFI was insistent that I recover at the first indication of a stall (the horn), which seemed a little cheesy to me. Is this the way it's taught now? Obviously, in a real-world stall situation, I'd recover at the first clue. But for training, I think it makes sense to understand how the aircraft behaves if you don't catch the clue bird.

I think it depends where you go. My PPL spin training (back when it was required) was more thorough than the CFI spin endorsement I did recently.

Stall recovery is different in GA aircraft - you can't always power your way out of a stall, and I think that teaching stall recovery in a 172 the way it would be done in a turboprop is a mistake.

 

[dbrault17]

Three pages of the same thing. esa17 summed it up best, the guy is a weenie.

Is there any one out there who agrees with this CFIs views? Anyone?

Well I do. You should not do anything besides straight and level flight unless its part of a controlled enviroment such as flight training. Its just asking for trouble when you do things like bank the plane to 45 and try stalling it. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. And you call yourselves professional pilots.










I'm just kidding. I just thought this thread would be so much more interesting if someone had come out and agreed with him .

 

[Xiph]

I got checked out a couple months ago in a C172 at a local FBO. I tried to let my stalls fully develop and drop a wing before initiating recovery (the way I was taught in primary training in the mid 90s). The brand new CFI was insistent that I recover at the first indication of a stall (the horn), which seemed a little cheesy to me. Is this the way it's taught now? Obviously, in a real-world stall situation, I'd recover at the first clue. But for training, I think it makes sense to understand how the aircraft behaves if you don't catch the clue bird.

There is a school of thought that says that if you decide "okay, normally we would recover at the first clue, but we're going to ignore it for training purposes and continue to the full stall", you're subtly planting in the student's mind that it is okay to ignore the stall warning because it's a controlled situation and they know what is going on. And in the future, if they hear the stall warning and think they know what is going on, they'll continue to ignore it, and get themselves into a bad situation. Teaching recovery at the first sign of the stall avoids this.

I don't necessarily agree with it, because I do think it's important to know what a full stall looks like, and to be able to recover from one, but I do see the merit in that argument. I try to do both with my students, so that they can recover from a full stall, but so they also have the experience of recovering at the first indication of the stall, which is the procedure they'd be using when not deliberately practicing stalls (either with a CFI or on their own, which I have no problem with as long as they do it in a responsible manner).

 

[BrewMaster]

Go practice your stalls and steep turns regularly and don't think twice about it. Theoretically, the FAA could re-examine your pilot skills at any time, so you had better be able to maintain the proficiency of the PTS that apply to the certificate you hold. In the Air Force, we're required to practice and maintain specific currency in scores of maneuvers and procedures, to include tactical maneuvering at the "edge of the envelope". It keeps you a sharp stick, and that's important.



Is that a trend these days? It's been since 2004 since I've done any serious GA flying, but I got checked out a couple months ago in a C172 at a local FBO. I tried to let my stalls fully develop and drop a wing before initiating recovery (the way I was taught in primary training in the mid 90s). The brand new CFI was insistent that I recover at the first indication of a stall (the horn), which seemed a little cheesy to me. Is this the way it's taught now? Obviously, in a real-world stall situation, I'd recover at the first clue. But for training, I think it makes sense to understand how the aircraft behaves if you don't catch the clue bird.

If I remember correctly (haven't instructed in a while) that for private standards, stall recovery is initiated after a full stall(nose drops) and commercial standards have you recover at the first indication of a stall.

 

[nocturnalaviator]

YOU'RE DANGEROUS!