Public perception of pilots...

[z987k]

I think the public thinks everyone has a g1000. And specifically to the military, I think folks think our stuff is a lot fancier than it really is. Most pilots in general are baffled when I tell them we are tacan only as far as approaches are concerned.

I actually had a CFI come up to me a couple of weeks ago and say...
oh you work for X huh? Isn't that dangerous?
Me- Which part?
Him - Shooting VOR approaches and flying around without GPS.

I talked to him a little, and turns out he's never seen anything but glass in front of him... and now he's teaching someone else to be just as worthless.

 

[ClearedToTakeoff]

I actually had a CFI come up to me a couple of weeks ago and say...
oh you work for X huh? Isn't that dangerous?
Me- Which part?
Him - Shooting VOR approaches and flying around without GPS.

I talked to him a little, and turns out he's never seen anything but glass in front of him... and now he's teaching someone else to be just as worthless.

stories like this are why I am happy that in my 2200 hours I've never even touched an autopilot and my idea of a good IFR aircraft is /A.

But did he really use the term 'dangerous'?

 

[scooter2525]

I actually had a CFI come up to me a couple of weeks ago and say...
oh you work for X huh? Isn't that dangerous?
Me- Which part?
Him - Shooting VOR approaches and flying around without GPS.

I talked to him a little, and turns out he's never seen anything but glass in front of him... and now he's teaching someone else to be just as worthless.

I do appreciate my time at X developing those skills. Got me the job I have today.

 

[z987k]

stories like this are why I am happy that in my 2200 hours I've never even touched an autopilot and my idea of a good IFR aircraft is /A.

But did he really use the term 'dangerous'?

Yes. He was also from a very large flight school with multiple locations. This one happened to be in the desert and I imagine he's never even been in a position to see the inside of a cloud.

 

[Qutch]

Agreed on the above Qutch. I'm actually not a big fan of pilot relief modes (our automation is pretty antiquated compared to a lot of the stuff that is out there), though at times they are needed to facilitate breaking out 8 ft charts in a 2 ft cockpit, or studying a GRG during a talk on or such things. FWIW most of us in our late '20's remember the time when we didn't have cell phones and had to remember phone #'s

Military - Actually AMG, I'm not thinking of military pilots as part of the problem, pilots who do strive and push constantly for perfection. Push like nothing I've seen elsewhere. To me, you guys set the standard for enthusiasm and training intensity. Not just in the air, but on the ground and academically. Mil student pilots push each other, even when sitting around the O Club. They grill and challenge each other just for fun. The way Mil pilots train would trigger harassment and abuse lawsuits in the civilian world. I think you know what high regard I view Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force pilots. (I don't know much about Army training, but I assume that it's also pretty intense.)

Civilian - I don't want to lump all civilian pilots together here. But I am thinking primarily of the civilian pilots I come in contact with who do the FAA minimum required, but demand big pilot pay. They avoid learning spins and acro (not required by the FAA), avoid hand flying their planes (not required), call for radar vectors when frustrated, hang out with other relaxed students & pilots, and let computers navigate their aircraft for them. It's not all their fault if that's what they were trained to do, but that's part of the problem in my book. I see many civilian student pilots being trained to accept their role as automation attendants. That's one part of the salary matrix that, if they don't break the habit, increasingly they'll be paid as automation attendants.
.

 

[MikeD]

Interesting, homework for me. Never know when that might come in handy

And vice versa. Can tune up a TACAN freq (such as using a AFB/NAS/MCAS TACAN) into a VOR, and utilize it for DME info.

 

[Hacker15e]

Hacker, really dude? That's frightening! Tell me those weren't 135 guys though? When I got out we still pretty much handflew up to cruise and clicked the toys back off when we started initial descent - very rarely actually even using the flight director. But that was pre-block 40. Maybe things have changed with some of the newer toys.

Strangely, the habit patterns weren't restricted to a particular airframe. To be fair, I also saw some really, really great aviators from across the spectrum of airframes, too, so I don't want it to sound like each and every heavy dude was a paste-eating FMS monkey who could not actually fly an airplane.

The phrase that I use to describe it is that it was an experience issue and not a talent issue. Most of these guys simply had flown for many years by twiddling FGS knobs and punching FMS buttons, and thus were quite rusty on manual flying. Add to it that none of us had more than about 20 hours of actual hands-on flying time in the airplane before showing up in theater, so there was a tentativeness that arose out of the lack of experience in the King Air, too.

Mr Can't-See-Over-The-Panel was a Herk guy!

 

[Hacker15e]

Agreed on the above Qutch. I'm actually not a big fan of pilot relief modes (our automation is pretty antiquated compared to a lot of the stuff that is out there), though at times they are needed to facilitate breaking out 8 ft charts in a 2 ft cockpit, or studying a GRG during a talk on or such things. FWIW most of us in our late '20's remember the time when we didn't have cell phones and had to remember phone #'s

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised to fly an airplane that could do everything for me, including actually fly the approach down to mins. You'd be amazed at how much other stuff you can pay attention to when you're not hand-flying the airplane in a single-seat cockpit. Over in theater, the ability to fly a perfectly target-centric pattern that is geo-stabilized regardless of winds for 5 hours on end was quite useful -- I had to do that by hand on one sortie when the A/P was completely inop, and it was a serious bitch. Worse, it impacted the dudes-in-back's ability to use their sensors effectively because my patterns were imprecise.

The problem I saw with it was simply over-reliance due to habit, and subsequent atrophy of the monkey skills.

 

[Qutch]

The phrase that I use to describe it is that it was an experience issue and not a talent issue. Most of these guys simply had flown for many years by twiddling FGS knobs and punching FMS buttons, and thus were quite rusty on manual flying. Add to it that none of us had more than about 20 hours of actual hands-on flying time in the airplane before showing up in theater, so there was a tentativeness that arose out of the lack of experience in the King Air, too.

I'd like to know your opinion on the effectiveness of the available simulators to fill that gap. How much time do you get in them? How structured or supervised are the practice sorties? Any recommendations on them (hardware, software, other) that would make them more useful?
.

 

[Hacker15e]

I'd like to know your opinion on the effectiveness of the available simulators to fill that gap. How much time do you get in them? How structured or supervised are the practice sorties? Any recommendations on them (hardware, software, other) that would make them more useful?
.

For this particular program, the only sim time was at FlightSafety enroute to getting a type rating.

The reality is, I could give you a list of things a mile long that are poorly executed with that program...the training program was the worst formal flying training program I've ever been through. We could kill a handle of Jack Daniels discussing all of the things that, due to the rapid nature of it's acquisition and fielding, were problematic with the program.

Fortunately the airplane itself is fantastic and easy to fly.

IMHO simulators are only about 75% of the solution. They teach very fine understanding and execution of avionics and instrument flying, but lack that last bit of tactile input which leads to actual hands-on flying proficiency.

 

[Soku39]

This subject of TACAN technology used to be my soap box when I was teaching at UPT and assigned to AF R&D. Still is really. I was part of the crowd who argued that surrendering these abilities to technology would relegate future pilots to the status of "aircraft automation attendants," and that the technology couldn't really replace the Zen-TACAN techniques, any more than drones can completely replace pilots.

This is a video that is shown to pilots attending the Air Force's Advanced Instrument School. It reflects the tension within the AF itself over decisions to replace time honored methods (like the TACAN fix-to-fix) with GPS and other technologies.

Google Search Term - "German Fix-to-Fix" (in case the video does not survive)
(my apologies for the cruel comments made about civilian/FAA governed pilots)
.

As an XL student checking instruments this week, I lost it when I saw this. Thanks for this.

 

[wheelsup]

I don't care what the perception is that commercial is awesome

I tell people when I sit in back on a DH and they make the customary "aren't you supposed to be up there" remark that there is an app for that now so I can do it from my cell

 

[bunk22]

I would like to fly an airplane that does help out a bit, like an AFCS that can hold an altitude and heading so I don't have to do it for 5-600 miles way back on the power.