My remarks were directed at no-one in particular .. rather they were just standard observations.
M.85, in his last post, is talking more about the fine tuning thing, ie being near to the target in any case.
Not having any experience on NG I can only comment on the Classic, which is very easy to fly accurately using the pitch/thrust/adjust approach to life for a pilot in current practice. I used to spend a lot of time polishing I/F for my own satisfaction and, eg, one of our sim diversions was to do single pilot figure eight ILS circuits, hand flown, raw data, in 50ft/100m minima just to keep the brain cells working ... a bit of knowledge, combined with a lot of practice, will produce a very smooth I/F pilot.
The unreliable airspeed tables, while intended to provide guidance for failures such as a damaged radome are the first thing the new 737 pilot should put his head into ... makes the endorsement program just so much easier. If you don't know the numbers, you are starting so incredibly far behind the pace .. and sim session progress is ever so much slower as the student spends too much time worrying about the flying bit rather than all the other things the program is trying to cover. We are not talking about setting pitch attitude to the nearest tenth of a degree.... rather we want to see the pitch set to the half or whole degree which puts the aircraft in the ball park attitude. As proficiency increases with practice, the pitch setting accuracy becomes more reliable, repeatable, and automatic for the student and the cognitive bits of the brain can concentrate on the important things .. like SA, systems, procedures, etc., etc.
I am a bit one-eyed on this subject having been influenced in my younger days by another regular poster on this site who is even more one-eyed about the benefits of hand flying and raw data practice.
In days past when I was involved with endorsement training, one of the optional exercises I threw in towards the end of the program (meaning we were going to do it anyway but there was no pressure on the students regarding any sort of required achievement levels .. ie it was a playtime exercise) involved a TOTAL pitot static etc failure on rotation.
Anything I couldn't fail via the panel I covered up with a bit of paper. The aim was not to simulate any presumed real world failure(s) .. merely to provide the confidence boost which comes from being able to fly the bird in the sim in super critical conditions.
Incidental outcomes were that the student gained a very strong impression about the value of knowing the numbers and also learnt a lot about thinking laterally when it came to keeping away from the rocky bits.
Starting just after V1 in a minimum vis takeoff, the student ended up (very rapidly - depending on how fast I could play the piano) with no airspeed, no VSI, no altimeters, no RadAlt, no A/P, no F/D, no standby gauges, etc .. ie by the time he was at around 150-200ft all he had was pitch and thrust gauges - and he couldn't cheat by glancing across ship as both sides had everything failed.
The (unassisted by the instructor) crew task requirement was
(a) complete the takeoff and climb out in min vis conditions
(b) find their way back to the holding pattern at a safe height (they had no idea of the actual height, of course)
(c) confirm that they had found the correct glideslope
(d) shoot the ILS in Cat 1 or 2 conditions to a landing.
This was all hand flown, with (very) limited raw data available.
I can't recall any students who tried this exercise not being able to produce a safe outcome with due attention to risk management considering terrain implications.
Of course, the work we had used for short break exercises practising precision I/F flying (including hand flown, raw data, ILS to either very low or zero-zero minima landing) played a part in developing confidence and skills ... the point remains, however, that pitch/thrust/adjust makes routine flying ever so much easier and will help get you out of trouble when it all turns to custard.
My students certainly ended a session tired and sweaty and, although I got the occasional grumble about workload, I don't recall too many complaints about skill improvements ..
Maybe I was a bit of a mongrel task master ... but I slept well knowing that the new guy (or girl .. and some of the girls were a good sight better than many of the guys) had a very high chance of getting the bird home once he/she was out on the line ...
Last edited by john_tullamarine; 24th January 2004 at 04:15.