PhotoPilot
New Member
Last weekend, I was one of the CFI's at the local WINGS weekend. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it's an event sponsored by our local FSDO to promote safety and recurrent training for GA pilots. They do safety seminars and provide free instruction for participants who bring their own planes.
I was paired up with a very cool guy who owns a Warrior. We flew for three hours and spent about an hour each on upper air work, patterns and landings, and hood work. It was my first real experience flying with a GA pilot who wasn't a product of my school. Though he was safe, I was shocked by how little precision there was in his flying. When he began to drift from his altitude, he would typically catch the error after about 100 feet . . . but wouldn't do anything to fix it. His patterns were much more oval than rectangular and there was no effort to correct for wind drift. His preplanning and resource management were sufficient but not as thorough as they could have been. When I pulled the power for an emergency from altitude, he made the field he was after, but certainly lacked the planning and processing that we're trained to utilize.
As I said a moment ago, he was safe. I had no qualms about signing off on his WINGS program ticket. However, I went home thinking about attitudes within the GA population as a whole. I don't think that pilots should be robotic and follow an X-Y-Z formula is every situation. On the other hand, I also think that consistency in flying and the desire to correct those 100-foot altitude deviations and oval patterns would greatly contribute to an increase in overall awareness and safety of flight.
I'm interested in everyone else's take on the topic. How much precision is a resonable amount to expect from GA pilots? From commercial pilots and CFIs? What are the areas in which you strive for precision and what areas do you let slide?
Just the musings for a newly minted CFI. Probably old hat for a lot of you . . .
I was paired up with a very cool guy who owns a Warrior. We flew for three hours and spent about an hour each on upper air work, patterns and landings, and hood work. It was my first real experience flying with a GA pilot who wasn't a product of my school. Though he was safe, I was shocked by how little precision there was in his flying. When he began to drift from his altitude, he would typically catch the error after about 100 feet . . . but wouldn't do anything to fix it. His patterns were much more oval than rectangular and there was no effort to correct for wind drift. His preplanning and resource management were sufficient but not as thorough as they could have been. When I pulled the power for an emergency from altitude, he made the field he was after, but certainly lacked the planning and processing that we're trained to utilize.
As I said a moment ago, he was safe. I had no qualms about signing off on his WINGS program ticket. However, I went home thinking about attitudes within the GA population as a whole. I don't think that pilots should be robotic and follow an X-Y-Z formula is every situation. On the other hand, I also think that consistency in flying and the desire to correct those 100-foot altitude deviations and oval patterns would greatly contribute to an increase in overall awareness and safety of flight.
I'm interested in everyone else's take on the topic. How much precision is a resonable amount to expect from GA pilots? From commercial pilots and CFIs? What are the areas in which you strive for precision and what areas do you let slide?
Just the musings for a newly minted CFI. Probably old hat for a lot of you . . .
