When we get more experienced all that 'do it by rote' stuff is, rightly, ditched and we fly the aeroplane to make it do what we want. Eventually with the right sort of aeroplane and sufficient experience the aeroplane becomes an extension of the pilot, and he doesn't need to consciously think about the mechanics of operating the controls.
I totally agree.
Yes, points to the unprepared King Air pilot. based upon my King Air flying, I would imagine that this pilot was superior in skill to your average new PPL, and luckily had most things going their way for that flight.
There are a lot of operations which are very different to what a PPL is trained for. For example, my recent landing into a mountain pass runway I had never flown into before. The calculated ground roll for landing was 876 feet, and for takeoff 869 feet. The runway length available was 975 feet (of wet grass) to the fence (which they offered to take down for my takeoff). This is within the capability of the aircraft, but not within that of a new PPL, even in a regular 172.
Downwind was flown more or less down the runway, and the downwind to base to final turn was a 2200 foot diameter circle in the mountains. Odd stuff for me, a flat land pilot.
They video'd me, I did okay.
It can be seen on Post 963 of this thread;
http://www.pprune.org/private-flying...videos-49.html
If a new PPL told me that they were capable of this, I would be taking them aside as quietly as I could for a talk with a lot of warnings in it. I don't think many instructors would try this, much less train it to their students. Is landing on a runway 105% of the ground run requirement even trained? I don't think that many instructors, let alone PPLs, are "properly trained" to fly a 182 amphibian at all in the PPL training routine. But, this is the post PPL world of flying for a few well off PPLs. As comfortable as they might feel, they are not ready for one of these, without a whole bunch of type training (so they'd not be "new" anymore). Hint: The power off, 20 flap, approach path is a 12.5 degree descent angle. The forced landing area is nowhere near as far away as you expect, and timing the flare is critical, to prevent wrecking a $150,000 set of floats. The owner, my student (exiting from the right seat on this flight) received training from me, then demonstrated four pretty good full power off landings, with that steep 12.5 degree approach, and good flares,
before I would send him solo at all.
No one will do PPL training on an aircraft of this nature, and even if were contemplated, the insurance would disallow it (premium for
me was $17,500 per year, with a $25,000 deductible - I own a whole airplane cheaper than that!). So the new PPL is going to have to do a lot of training on this type of plane afterword (post PPL). A normal checkout on something like this would be in the 25+ hours range. That's all post PPL learning, and even it is a minimum!
Even a PPL getting into a Bonanza, Lance, Mooney, or Centurion has a whole lot more training to do, just to be minimally competent.
I'm not knocking PPL training, but simply trying to illuminate that it is a very small first step in learning to be a pilot. Step by step, you become a pilot, be prepared for many steps ahead, and take them with humility....