The new way to fly an ab initio trainer
I've been tossing and turning all night over this one, couldn't sleep and thought maybe some PPRUNE therapy would help!.
Young fella next door was telling me all about his flying training and how they learn to fly "ILS" style approaches from the ab initio stage of training. The aerodrome in question does not have an ILS or any other sort of visual guidance system and the basic GA trainer doesn't even have a receiver in it anyway. Having learnt myself at the aerodrome, a 3 degree approach would be scraping the tree tops and houses on final!. These kids are just taught to fly long, flat, high drag approaches using full flap with high power settings.
In my day I did my checks through using a small checklist that would fit in my pocket until I could get used to a system of flows or mnemonic as my craggy old instructor wouldn't let me rely on a written checklist, "what if you lose it?". The poor fella next door has an A5 booklet that must be referred to.
Fair enough if the student is a cadet who will never fly GA and their right hand seat is being warmed up for them as we speak but to put it politely, I just don't see the benefit of this sort of training for someone who has to go through normal GA. Anyway, this is just my opinion, feel free to give me some stick if you don't agree.
Part of me just wants to pull the boy aside and have a word with him and let him know what it's like in the real world, but another, albeit much smaller part doesn't want to be seen as meddling. Over to you guys.