Originally Posted by
dss3000
As an instructor you were supposed to be TEACHING!! yes you should have learned a few things over time as you watched your students perform their maneuvres, all the while building valuable PIC time. Now I wonder what you could learn from being on the ramp loading an aircraft and watching it takeoff?
ps: there is no column in your log book for ramp time!!
Cheers,
Exactly, you're too busy teaching to be learning. As a 250hr instructor, you're not proficient at starting the bloody plane, let alone teaching.
What do you learn while working on the ramp?
How about real world weight and balance calculations. Every flight is going out at gross weight, every flight is going out on min fuel to maximize payload.
While instructing you debate whether to take full tanks this time, or do one more flight to drain them down to half tanks before the fill up. Instructing you debate if you're gonna have the 4000' ceiling you need to air work.
There's no comparision.
What else do you learn on the ramp? You ride along with high time pilots and learn from them. I used to be the crewman on a 705 turboprop. You can't fathom how much you have to learn at 250hrs until you sit inbetween a combined 30,000hrs of experience.
You are right in the fact that you say you can't log ramp time. However once you DO get flying, you fly much more.
If you and I were to both start today with a fresh CPL. By the time a year was passed instructing you would have logged what 500hrs if it was a busy year, maybe 600 if you worked at a super busy school? After year one you'd certianly be ahead. Year two I'd start flying. If i flew 1000hrs in that second year I'd almost have caught you. In the third year I'd become a light twin captain, or a SE turbine captain. In that third year you'd be begging for the job that I had. You would not be hiried for it because you wouldn't know the first thing about flying a plane outside of an instructing environment.
How many instructors fly actual IFR? How many instructors deal with icing conditions? How many instructors go flying when weather is 200 and 1/2sm?
UB6IB9:
I would suggest North American Charters, Wasaya, Perimeter, Courtesy Air, Commercial Aviation, transwest (only if they get the cameco contract back), north wright.
There are many others, those are a few off the top of my head.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
I think the real decision is what type of person you are. Many can't handle the thought of leaving what they know to experience something new and exciting. While Thompson or Pickle Lake won't have the nightlife that Toronto or Calgary has, it truly is what you make of it. I had more fun when I was up north than I do now down south.