A few days ago I was trying to convert a new PPL from the C172 he learned on over to an AA5. He came to the flight equipped with a commercially produced checklist - the particular offending article was published by Pooleys.
He went to the trouble of obtaining a checklist, while you as the pilot in command and instructor didn't seem to have one.
6 pages of exterior checks, actively encouraging my student to go around reading the checklist carefully and barely glancing at the aeroplane.
You are the pilot in command and the instructor. If you are converting a student to a new type its you that should be going over the external checks with the student, not sending him around with someone else's checklist, a checklist that you clearly think is inappropriate!
- Take off and airfield approach checks that jumped all over the cockpit, and seemed deliberately designed to prevent memorisation. Okay, I don't actually mind somebody doing read-do on pre-t/o checks, but I really want airfield approach / downwind checks memorised thank you very much, so let's make it easy to do so.
Again you are the instructor, why didnt you point all of that out in the pre flight briefing (if there was one and it sounds doubtful) and please, they are pre landing checks, not downwind checks, downwind checks went out with Tiger Moths
- I asked my student to stall the aeroplane. He said he couldn't remember the HASELL checks - so I calmly said "right, get your checklist out and remind yourself quickly". It turned out that they weren't in there - no variation on HASELL, just missing altogether. Okay, he should have memorised that as well, but where the heck is he supposed to learn it from if not the checklist he has from the aeroplane?
I am beginning to wonder at this stage if you are an instructor! Have you ever heard of , "never do anything in the air you haven't briefed on the ground"?
If the detail had been briefed you would have discovered the student couldnt remember the pre stalling safety checks, which is hardly an unusual or unexpected surprise if you are an experienced instructor.
As pilot in command you should have been fully conversant with the checklist being used before departure, the mistake was yours, not the students.
Where was he supposed to learn them from?
Students learn from briefings(if given) and from directed learning(if given). Did you expect him to learn the stall recovery from the checklist too?
Alternately, I occasionally back-end in a 4 engine jet and am trained as "pilot's assistant" for challenge-response using the main checklist if required: that's two sides of A4 card ! We can all cope with that!
And thats why its so easy to produce a checklist similar to the one we use,two sheets of A4 in a plastic wallet. (we start students with an A4 photo logical flow scan which once they are comfortable with they complete as a memory procedure but then back it up with the A4 checklist.
So who out there is writing and perpetuating these badly constructed, illogical checklists which alternately miss out important information (like HASELL checks) and encourage massive over-reliance on the printed checks (like the walkaround) ?
Self appointed experts, mainly ex flying instructors
And what can we do about them?
Spend less time on forums perhaps and more time on briefings and preparing checklists.