Ethel,
Love the handle, wish I could have been around the night that you came up with Ethel the ardvark. Love it.
LOP can be done very successful in an operational environment. Training is all important. I agree new pilots can be a bit of a trial. But really I don't think a lot of management or in company check and training fully understand enough of basic parameters that is needed to have sweet running engine. This results in line pilots perpetuating bad operational habits. Have seen bean counters insist a company go LOP, flight management put it into practise without knowing even if the engines online could run LOP. Pilots thought it was simple missed some important indicators through not understanding and no EMS installed and were not lean enough. Company returned to ROP because bean counters could not see a benefit but from talking to a pilot who came to work for us from them their engines ran so rough they couldn't get to peak let alone LOP. So I can understand why not many of us run LOP.
When a newbie comes to us looking for a job, with ink still wet on their new licence have just been bombarded by so many new things in training that they are a bit in the learning overload mode and really just want to fly, feeling they now know it all. We realise that it is up to us to guide them slowly to LOP through show and tell.
What seems to work for us is we run our own engine management induction separate to flight and operational induction and try to simply explain what's happening when they touch the red knob, not get to bogged down in science to much. This includes time with the HAMC and on the floor with our LAME. EMS is very important to this as generally, gen Y is very good at digital but crap at analogue. We start them ICUS with learning to read and lean via EMS. Then when they can show us what happens to CHT and EGT when they lean in flight we then get them to do the big slow mixture pull. And then check where they are with EGT and CHT Compared to leaning via EMS another light switch moment. Then we get them to run 40 degrees ROP as they were taught and compare CHT and EGT to 40 degrees LOP and ask them to explain why they think the difference. Man do you see the light switches come on. Demo is the best teacher with the use of an EDM.
We encourage questions and we like them to sit with us after their first few solo flights and go through the their own flight data from startup to shutdown and explain what they have done and how they operated the aircraft. If they can see they have done the right thing it gives them confidence. From my experience newbies really want to do the right thing. They bend over backwards to try and get it right. They just need better training when it comes to engine management as the current pilot training syllabus has some major gaps. Don't blame the student, blame the educator.
Sometimes I do feel experts can be to close to their passion they have studied for so long that they forget that most of us are just trying to catch up with the basics of engine management and feel ashamed to ask basic stupid questions that they must have heard thousands of times. For this I really feel that we as an industry really need to focus the attitude to correcting the training establishment, the syllabus, and the authors of the text books.
As we all know change moves slow in this industry, however it is changing, least we are now getting newbies that have used an EMS and have heard if LOP. I am just surprised, as ever that engine management is such a low priority in training but can be such an important part of keeping you up there both safely and economically.