HC you wrote
My piano teacher used to tell me that "practising" was only accomplished when the piece was played correctly. If it was incorrectly played it didn't count. And thus it is with flying - flying a training exercise incorrectly just reinforces the mistake and drains confidence, whereas flying it correctly builds confidence and "burns the right neural pathways". So it is better to be fairly sure the excercise will be flown correctly and this is best done by briefing thoroughly on the ground beforehand.
so you have the first statement from your piano teacher which is correct if it is a piece/skill that has been correctly taught and mastered - thereafter correct repetition of the exercise builds muscle memory/neural pathways.
Your second statement about flying training is selective since the student must learn the technique/manoeuvre first which will inevitably involve making mistakes - that is the way it works, as you seem to agree.
Only being 'fairly sure' by asking questions on the ground is far from the guarantee that the student will perform perfectly and therefore reinforce his training - you will only know that when he has performed. It is not representative of the real world to expect answering questions on the ground to correlate to performance in the air, one is a test of memory, the other is a physically and mentally complex task.
I said that when practising a manoeuvre one should try to maximise the number of times it was carried out correctly.
read your paragraph above - that is not what you said.
Presenting the student with an exercise you don't know if he can do and which in fact he doesn't know how to do, is unhelpful for any purpose other than crushing him.
You are assuming that H500 didn't have any knowledge of the student's history - also he must have covered the stuck pedals because it is in the syllabus. It doesn't 'crush' the student to make a mistake - as I said before you take any positives from it and build his confidence with extra training.
5/ Yes unannounced checking of ability to perform an excercise is part of preparation for testing, but only in a controlled environment where you are familiar with the student's status. Randomly carrying it out on a PPL who is struggling is not helpful.
As discussed, he was known to H500 and he was a CPL trained (albeit failed) so struggling PPL is just an emotive description you have invented to make your point.
DB
THE QUESTION FOR YOU setting aside the good intentions of the Instructor. DO you believe if Student-02 had the brief that Student-01 received, he would have gained more or less for the money he spent on his flying?
No, because the sortie was for VOR training and GH/emergencies - the brief required to cover all available scenarios would have taken days. If the student had asked for a dedicated TR malfunctions sortie then I am sure that is exactly what H500 would have given him - but that wasn't what he asked and paid for. Frankly a bit of a pointless question.
Part of that requirement involves, by Q and A session establishing if the candidate understands the exercises to be performed. The Examiner MUST give him the exercise list. This is not a training brief and could lead to the Test/Check not even being performed if the candidate demonstrates he is not ready/adequately prepared for the Test.
Yes that covers the exercises and is eminently sensible since the examiner must be sure tyhe student has completed the required training. However that doesn't answer the question about practice emergencies - certainly the brief in the event of real emergencies must be included plus how the examiner will announce a practice emergency but, other than a fire which ISTR is mandatory and therefore expected, will the examiner tell the student what practice emergencies he will initiate?
Finally, if you truly believe that every experienced pilot should be capable of managing a TR malfunction without briefing and practice beforehand, can you please explain why the Authority specify this briefing and training in the OPC cycle.
Duh - the mandated briefing and training is to make sure that experienced pilots can manage a TR malfunction - that is the whole point. H500 was essentially checking that the student knew the drill - he had after all attempted CPL before so must have completed the training more than once - the fact that he didn't know the drill just pointed the way forward for the next sortie - revision of TR malfs and maybe more VOR after that.
Once flying, clear guidelines are in place to allow the Examiner latitude to retest an item in flight. Essentially, if the candidates does not demonstrate competency on the first attempt, providing he can self diagnose his mistakes, he gets a second attempt. However the Examiner is permitted further latitude for certain emergencies like autos, to offer some guidance to improve attempt number 2. Now does this sound familiar to you? Of course it does because this appears, from your own posts, how you train and instruct.
I didn't say I instruct this way on all sorties - that is your skewed perspective on the different types of flight I described in earlier posts, from basic student to front-line pilot and I thought it was crystal clear that they would be conducted differently.
I am not a civilian authorised anything but I have been a senior examiner for many years as well as an IRE conducting procedural IRTs (mil IR) and a flight and squadron training officer and a CFS agent. Most of that won't mean much to you but it is the mil equivalent of your FE, TRE and SFE.
This really is getting very tedious as you both seem to want to deny any instructional skills on my part personally or the military generally.
You go and do it your way and I will carry on doing it mine - we will just have to agree to differ but I won't slag off someone like H500 just because he posts something that isn't 100% the way I think it should be done, especially if I don't know him or the context in which he is doing his job - something you both seem happy to do.