BroomstickPilot

Hi Flyingmac,

'Sorry, I didn't mean to irritate you. But I still feel poor theoretical training is at the very back of much bad flying, if only because it prevents some people from spotting the questionable veracity of some of the stuff they are 'taught'.

However, let me try to respond to some of the actual points you have very correctly raised. For this purpose it is relevant to mention that I obtained my PPL in 1960, so it is interesting to compare how I was taught then by instructors, who were almost all ex wartime RAF aircrew with heavy, tail-dragger experience, and how people are being taught now.

In the 60s private pilots were always taught to control rate of descent with the throttle. Although even then there were people around, (mostly people with military jet experience so far as I could tell), who were beginning to question this and say that power for speed was what ought to be taught.

Personally, I stuck to what I had been taught, but as I gained experience I did occasionally find myself using a bit of power, as well as stick forward, to gain some speed when speed decayed on me unexpectedly during an approach in a draggy aeroplane.

However nowadays, this whole principle seems to have become subject to some kind of unnofficial re-evaluation. About a year ago, for example, the test pilot John Farley advocated 'power for speed' in an article in one of the flying magazines, and I suspect a number of instructors will have taken this idea up from that.

Perhaps what we need is a standard government fight instructor's handbook, which instructors would be unwise to depart from, rather like those of CASA and the FAA.

Heaven knows where these have come from: they're just plain wrong. People may say this is what they were taught, but how can one know whether they were telling the truth?

In 1960 I was required to learn both wing-down and crabbed cross wind approaches and also three point and wheeler landings; (I was trained in an Auster J1). The principle was that wing down was fine in the Auster, but much private flying then was done in the Tiger Moth, which had a narrow undercarriage and where there was much less clearance between the lower mainplane and the runway, so on that and similar aircraft the ability to 'crab' was essential.

When I renewed my licence in 2005, after a long break from flying, a very senior flying instructor, taught me to land a Cessna taildragger crosswind using only wing down and a two-point landing, (something I had never seen before). When I asked to revise wheeler landings, he said "no, do it as I have shown you". The method I was taught on this occasion strikes me as adequate only for light to moderate crosswinds and only in high wing aeroplanes. It also deprives you of rudder authority relatively early in the landing roll in conditions when you really need it. Result: my very first ground-loop. In a strong crosswind, especially in a low wing aeroplane with a tail-dragger undercarriage I feel ability to do a wheeler is VITAL.

Finally, you mention the inability to side-slip. I was taught to side-slip as part of my PPL training and always considered this to be a most useful and safe technique, especially if one was to be confronted with having to do a power-off forced landing. However, this valuable technique is no longer part of the PPL/NPPL syllabus. During an approach to a dead stick landing now, one is supposed to weave from side to side, thus repeatedly losing sight of one's chosen emergency landing ground.

Regards,

Broomstick.