Irish Steve,
Interesting post.
As a low instructional hours helicopter FI and PPL(A), some of what you say makes sense....but not all of it.
He has trained a new instructor, Instructor 2. With the best will in the world, Instructor 2 will only learn a percentage of the things that Instructor No 1 knows.
As a point of information, all instructors are trained by extremely senior people on FI courses, so this shouldn't apply. Of course, a newly qualified FI has a lot to learn, but that's more about relating to people than teaching flying techniques. It shouldn't make that much difference to a lot of what's being discussed here.....but read on.
You have a lot of relatively inexperienced instructors who are scared to let their students do certain things close to the ground because they are not comfortable in their ability to recover the situation if the student does get it wrong, because they've not had enough flying experience themselves to develop the skills they need.
Yes, true. In the rotary world, we are the ones who don't teach auto-rotations to the ground; we teach them to the hover. We teach hovering a ittle higher than the Instructor No 1s of the rotary world. And I tell students this! What on earth is wrong with that? I tell them they may occasionally fly with the CFI so that he can check all is well, and he tells them they're better off flying with me as I'm new and enthusiastic and been recently trained, and he's lost that initial enthusiasm etc etc. It seems to work. There would be a problem if I insisted that things were done "my way", but I don't.
I had over 300 Hrs ME experience and a UK ME IMC, and I suceeded in scaring the first instructor I went with s**tless on our first flight, as he had the grand total of 20 Hrs total ME time, yet he was instructing, but wasn't in the least bit comfortable or confident in the aircraft
That is obviously crazy, and had I been your instructor, I would have told the CFI that myself. But I don't think it's typical of the kind of things that we have been discussiong so far...not that this makes it any less relevant of course!
OK, if it's not safe, then by all means correct it, either by correcting the incorrect technique, or by teaching a more appropriate one, but only for the reason that it's necessary. If it's because the instructor is not comfortable with his (or her) ability to recover, then the instructor is the one that needs more training.
Absolutely. But that doesn't apply to circuit procedures, to where to pull or not pull carb heat, not even to landing techniques in a f/w aircraft...come on, even I can manage either wing down or crab approaches, and I'm a pretty average PPL(A).
The real problem, with what you're discussiong and practically everything that's been said so far in this thread, is LACK OF PEOPLE SKILLS AMONG INSTRUCTORS. Egotism, trying to prove they're right, being scared to admit to inexperience, inability to relate to different types of people - these are the reasons for most of these problems. There are good and bad instructors, whether they have zillions of instructional hours or are straight out of their FI course. But what a number of them haven't learnt is that they are teaching people to fly, not teaching flying.