balance of experience

[gadgetguru]

time to mould the clay.....& gaze intently into ones navel

so what makes a well-versed pilot?

what experience & hour timeframes would an employer be really looking for in a 200>500 hour pilot
500>1000 hour pilot
1000>1500 hour pilot
1500>2000 hour pilot
2000 + hour pilot

many job adds are specific in minimums of
commmand time
turbine time
night
winch
sling
multi-time
IFR

etc.

so in your (humble) opinions, what sort of breakdown in experience particularly in the first fatal 500 should a new pilot be striving for, beyond just staying alive & keeping it upright.

would be interested to see the feedback, for those of us not military, the initial flying is in most part tourism focused, usually a bus route turnaround with little variation.

so if you had the opportunity to mentor a new (105>150hr ) pilot, what sort of intermidiate training would you subject them to for their 'advanced CPL(H)' training , an 'up to the 500 hr mark' internship if you will.

so when the clay is finally subject to the firey kiln of initialisation to a real emergency, he transcends into either a true piece of pottery (clay come good), rather than a frizzled turd (sometimes it's hard to tell the s:mad: t from clay).

or is that all just too deep?

[remote hook]

I think the first 500hrs or so should be exactly what you said. Staying alive and keeping the machine in one piece. The reason I say that is because the basics of flight need time to become natural to a pilot: aircraft handling, weather decisions, customer relations, and the ability to assess a situation and react accordingly.

A person only has so much processing power, and a great deal of that is taken up with these basic tasks for the first 500-XXXXhrs. If you can experience other things like slinging, extensive hover or slow flight(some photography, survey work), and some confined area work, you will automaticlly add to your skills as you go.

I know when I started I tried to learn something on every fligh, power check, tour, test flight, ferry etc. I paid very close attention to being as smooth and economical on the controls as I could be, knowing that some day I would be be lifting heavy loads on a long-line. It served me well when I started doing jobs where mabe you can't spend most of your time thinking about how to fly.

To answer the second part of your question, if I had an opportunity to groom a new pilot I would generally watch them as they go about their daily flying to see how confortable they look. Once seeing they can handle a bit more, send them out on longer jobs that maybe require better a/c handling skills etc., some overnight trips etc. Then get them on a long-line to see what it's all about. An hour here and there to get the feel, then once they have the rough idea, send then out on a non-precision job to learn on their own.

Just a thought or two.

RH

[heliduck]

GG,
I worked for a very wise 13000 hr+ pilot once who said he learnt something new every day - never a better statement made.
I don't believe we ever go into the kiln, as every second we expose our senses to flight our brains database on how to control the beast increases.
I understand that your question is asking how big does that database in our brain need to be before we can successfully negotiate a real emergency - I don't believe this can ever be answered, as the capacity of a low hour pilot to handle an emergency may well be better than that of a high hour pilot. Our reactions are determined by what experiences we have had in the past, & how we react not only depends on our flying training or experience but also our life experience in general. I went in to Agricultural flying & mustering early in my career & believe that it is the TYPE of flying which really builds the brains database on how the machine reacts. I'm struggling with quantifying this into exact hours, but after 500 hours mustering I believe most people can turn a helicopter inside out while thinking about the weekend footy. Agricultural flying teaches you to be gentle & smooth as the machine is always at MTOW. I have flown with 500 hr pilots who have only been exposed to ferry flights & tourism & I could see that they were only just ahead of the machine with their thinking.
Experience requirements for jobs is a completely different subject. These are usually based on the amount of risk an insurance company is prepared to accept or based on the customers contract requirements, not whether or not the pilot is capable of handling the machine in an emergency. Where does the customer get his information when deciding on a minimum for contracts? - My uneducated guess is ex military pilots who have gone to the private sector & have no idea what a 1000 hr mustering/Ag pilot is capable of.
To summarise a long winded postulation, I think the minimums required by insurance companies & customers will reduce significantly in the next 5 years as the highly trained & highly experienced pilots from the Vietnam era decide that fishing with the grandkids is what life is actually about, not flying! Supply vs demand.
I believe that the point you become a capable pilot & not reliant on minimum hr requirements to get a job should be based on your PERSONALITY & the TYPE of flying you have been exposed to(quality), not how many hours you have(quantity).
This raises the point of self discipline - a high hour mustering pilot can be a bad pilot as he has developed bad habits & doesn't fly smooth enough to be of any use in a heavy machine where finese & smooth handling are required - but that is another thread.....

[overpitched]

I can think of one operation in Aus that starts about 4 brand new pilots a year and turns them out 4-5 years later with between 1500 and 2000 hours
The first job is 30 minute scenic flights
for the first 2 or 3 weeks the pilots are only allowed to fly 3 trips per day, no back to back trips and they can't fly a full helicopter. The pilots live on site and eat and breath helicopters. For the first 500 or so hours they only do the scenic flights and the occasional ferry. After that they are gradually introduced to new aircraft, charter,sling etc. They typically leave with between 1500 and 2000 hours with fairly broad remote area experience operating in a number of different roles. It is a system that has been developed over a number of years and seems to work quite successfully for both the company and the pilots.

[Brian Abraham]

GG,
Hours dont tell all the story. An old saying had it "does he really have a thousand hours of experience, or one hour repeated a thousand times". There are so many tasks that a helo can be put to its a case of adequate training for the task your employer wants you to perform. After nearly 40 years aviating I've not been involved in, and know nothing about long lining, crop dusting or a whole bunch of other tasks - its all been offshore. If your employer doesn't give you the training required demand it (or move on). Know your limitations as well and learn to say no, always have an exit strategy, and realise that you never stop learning - even if its to relearn something which you long ago forgot. And humility, no matter what your experience, that very junior crew member may just know something you don't. Having said all that, experience in part comes from making mistakes, without letting the mistakes be terminal. We can all look back on our past (if we're honest with ourselves) and shudder at the foolishness of the acts we've committed.
All the best with it and Blue Skies,
Brian

[gadgetguru]

thanks for the input

I agree on both counts;
make sure not overload oneself,
but also that hours alone don't tell all the story.

so what would 500 'quality' hours entail?

& what is the happy medium - balance of experience?

OK so here's a completely hypothetical scenario;
for a junior pilot whom you might feel is worth employing but not quite up to speed (yet),
you have access to 400 hours in a helo for said pilot (ignore cost this is a gimme; you are not reliant on operator or client - happy days, we could all use a rich distant relative like that) :ok:

what would you dictate to the pilot to do with those hours, how would you have him fly them to ensure he is well up to speed & in what areas.

to avoid any overload - think of it as 'more of the same' CPL(H) training.

ie: another
+25 hours circuits
+25 hours steep circuits
+25 hours confined area
+25 hours limited power
+50 cross country nav
+25 point-to-point/ad-hoc nav
+25 hovering
+25 ridge & pinnacle
+25 hours slope operations
+50 hours emergencies
+100 hours low level/ag prep

is there anything obvious that you would add to the additional 400 hours?

cheers

[Gordy]

+25 hours external operations