Flying Grading

[ATCAdam]

At the AEF we have been joined by a Navy Pilot who has 10 hours in a Tutor and did his grading on it, without ever actually going solo

It got me thinking what is actually entailed in grading? It struck me as odd considering they do grading before EFT, how can they be graded for something they haven't been taught? or is it simply a baseline to test natural ability from?

Do the AAC and FAA still use the Firefly for EFT and grading?

Thanks,

-Adam

[Two's in]

Someone who does it for a living will know the technical terms, but it used to be an assessment vehicle for;

1. Acquisition of new skills - Brief the exercise, see if the student picks it up first time.
2. Airmanship - Can you think in 3D? Spatial awareness and visualisation of other traffic and circuit patterns.
3. Airsickness - Some people never stop puking enough to perform the exercises.
4. Physical Coordination - Putting the moving dot skills to the test with a real stick and throttle.
5. Division of Attention - Can you fly, talk and map read at the same time without dribbling?
6. Stable Extrovert - Syllabus used to include loops and barrel rolls, as it combined many of the other skills while the student demonstated they had the confidence required to safely perform aeros.

Grading has been proved to save many washouts on the later training courses, but above all else, it used to be great fun.

[wg13_dummy]

AAC have now moved on to Tutors too. Run by Babcock.

[proudfishead]

Yes RN Flying Grading uses the same aircraft (Tutor) as your AEF and the RAF's University Air Squadrons. 727 Naval Air Squadron, based at RNAS Yeovilton, are responsible for conducting grading.

As has been stated above, it is a process of reducing risk of failure in flying training. The course is designed to ensure that students can learn at the required rate in order to stand a good chance of passing EFT. Although the students do not fly solo, it is a fairly intense course for those who have no previous flying experience. A standard Final Handling Test would be startup, taxi, takeoff, climb to height in the local area, straight and level flight, climbing and descending, medium turns, steep turns, stalling package (clean, finals turn), three/four aerobatic elements, rejoin for a variety of circuits, taxi back, shutdown. Given that they will have had about 9 x 1 hour trips at this point, it is quite an achievement to do it well.

The CO of 727 NAS flies with all of the students on their FHT, having not taught any of the syllabus trips he is well positioned to make an impartial decision. CO's tend to have taught at EFT / Linton or both.

Hope that helps.

[ATCAdam]

Thanks for the replies, it's interesting how the RAF take ab-intio pilots straight to EFT, where as the other two services grade them first, do the OASC aptitude score requirements reflect that, in all three different services? With the FAA and AAC I imagine relying more on grading scores rather than OASC as a future performance indicator?

[Dan Winterland]

The RAF training still has an element of grading about it. They used to grade in the Chipmunk on a 14 hour course, but that stopped in about 1985. They then gave the students a 65 hour course on the Chippy and the success rate improved. It was considered that grading wasn't as effective as thought and there were too many people with potential being binned unnecessarily. Experience showed that to be correct.

The Army grade as a large number of their pilots are recruited from within the service. Whereas, the RAF grading students were recruited as pilots and had done a 18 week Initial Officer Training course prior to grading. Those who didn't pass were oftern offered Navigator in the hope they would take it, but many didn't leading to expensive wastage.

I suspect the Navy do it because as until recently, the only fixed wing option was the Harrier which as far as their student pilots are concerned is a duanting prospect. I suspect the Navy wanted to be sure of their selection of candidates for fixed wing flying.

[anotherthing]

Dan,

Proudfishhead has it right - it's about reducing risk and assessing who is likely to have a good chance at passing flying training, nothing to do with SHAR.

I think the process is still the same but in my day grading in the RN happened for pilots and Observers. Nothing to do whatsoever with the aircraft type you might end up on...

Not sure at what stage it happens now, but it used to take place in the second term of Dartmouth. If you failed grading you were either re-streamed for another specialisation (ATC/Seaman Officer etc), or even had your RN Career terminated.

ATCAdam,

[QUOTE]...how can they be graded for something they haven't been taught.../QUOTE] not quite correct - the grading week includes an element of teaching, your progress against that teaching is what is checked.

[cats_five]

5. Division of Attention - Can you fly, talk and map read at the same time without dribbling?


If I can fly, talk and map read all at the same time does it matter if I dribble while I do it? :)

[Bismark]

RN Grading scores combined with JEFTS scores are proven to be extremely accurate in predicting future success and thus very efficient (thus cheaper) at filtering those who will not succeed at a much earlier stage than the equivalent system in the RAF. For FW it was much more successful at predicting success through the FJ pipeline.

[proudfishead]

The RN grades both Observers and Pilots, for the same reason. I am not sure about average figures, but when I did Pilot grading only 6 of us out of 10 got through. There are of course the occasional horror stories of grading courses with no students making the grade, certainly in the Observer world.

[Dan Winterland]

In the RAF, the statistics on grading were fairly inconclusive which is the main reason it was binned.

[Tlam999]

RN Pilots and Obs are graded during their 1st term at Dartmouth.

In my time grading was done towards the end of IOT (some 8-9 months after joining), which came after the bulk of the leadership training and the Initial Sea Training. I think the thinking there was twofold; Firstly, they are Officers first and WAFUS second; and secondly, surely if they get chopped after 9 months they'll branch transfer to Seaman/ATC etc.

My recollection is that most of those failing grading did re-branch. Obs grading for my entry was 14 attempting, 8 passed, 5 (of us) got to wings.

[Agaricus bisporus]

If I can fly, talk and map read all at the same time does it matter if I dribble while I do it?

Evidently the Army and Navy think it does...

[Bismark]

Dan,

In the RAF, the statistics on grading were fairly inconclusive which is the main reason it was binned.

I think the truth is the RAF had no statistics but wanted the UAS scheme to stay and called it EFT. The RN had years of stats to prove the linkage between grading and EFT hence, the much higher efficiency (and thus cheaper) of their training pipeline. I think it is no coincidence that the RAF remained seperate from the Army and FAA despite the trianing system being called JEFTS!

Of course in FW terms the FAA were only after single seat fast jet pilots and therefore early identification of success was more important that with the RAF.

[AllTrimDoubt]

RN Pilots are Graded at the end of their BRNC time. The system changed in 2010.

[airborne_artist]

RN Pilots are Graded at the end of their BRNC time. The system changed in 2010.We were graded at the end of term two (our final term) in 1979. (no IST for SL aircrew then, just ten days in the college mineswiper).

[Dan Winterland]

Quote Bismark ''I think the truth is the RAF had no statistics but wanted the UAS scheme to stay and called it EFT''.

Elaborating on my earlier comment about the RAF statistics being inconclusive, I should have really said that the statistics indicated that the benefits of grading were inconclusive. The RAF were monitoring them closely. The UAS system was far removed form the grading/EFT system in those days with it's own separate command and mandate. The real truth is that grading was an experiment which ran for about seven years in the form of FSS at Swinderby, and was found lacking. The statistics showed there was little, if any improvement at the BFT (Jet Provost) stage for those who had been graded previously. And worse, the total failure rate was actually higher as there was now another stage to fail. The cost of the failures was evaluated and the conclusion was that grading was not giving value for money.

The result was that the grading school was turned into the EFTS, the pass rate increased by about 20% at that stage and that of those students at the later stage stayed roughly the same. The EFTS students, who now did 65 hours over 16 weeks had a lot of success at BFT and beyond. About the same statistics as the UAS students who did 130 hours over 3 years. And both of these did the short JP course which gave a saving of 30 hours on the more expensive aircraft.

Although the formal grading had disappeared from the EFTS course, any training environment has a continuous grading element and there was no exception at the EFTS. The RAF changed the way it trained in the late eighties to early nineties by improving the training environment in an attempt to increase results - and it worked. The binning of the formal grading system was a step in the right direction as far as the RAF were concerned, and I agree. I can speak with some authority on the matter, as I was involved in the process of change.

[advocatusDIABOLI]

Dan,

You are totally correct. I did EFTS at Swinderby on the Chippy, and then went to JP3s. I'd had no flying at all (vice ATC Glider Solo), and it worked. Going straight to the JP would have been hard.

The several guys I saw chopped (at EFTS), all left the RAF, and all have nicer houses than me! The guys I saw chopped at BFTS mostly went Nav, the others, all have houses nicer than mine. At AFT they all went civi or slo-jet (canberra at the time), the civi guys all have house nicer than mine, and better cars too. I stopped checking at OCU, I couldn't take it any more !!!!

Advo

[cats_five]

Evidently the Army and Navy think it does...

Maybe they are worried about how the uniform will look after a bit of dribbling...

[Exnomad]

I went through grading in the early 1950s. Six weeks at Digby including 12 hours dual on Tiger moths, the rest ground school. aerodynamics etc.
From there on to Chipmunk BFTS. Not many failures there, but a fair number including me at AFTS. I have no idea whether grading as against aptitude test was best for weeding out potential failures.

[andyy]

Doesn't the RN do Cranwell Aptitude/ Selection Tests, Grading & then EFTS? Whats the % of RN Pilots that start EFTS that get through compared to the RAF?

[Bismark]

I have no idea whether grading as against aptitude test was best for weeding out potential failures.

My understanding is that there is no correlation between the aptitude test and success but that there is very strong correlation between RN Grading, EFT results and future success, but we need a current expert to comment.

[Two's in]

Purely anecdotal, (hey, it's a rumour network) but when the Army had a shortage of pilot candidates towards the end of the eighties, they re-assessed some of the students who had only just failed grading by a few points. They were contacted again (much to their surprise) and told they had now been qualified to attend pilot training. The result was that a few of those who had originally been flunked made it to the end of the pilot's course, but not many.

It's hardly empirical evidence of the value of flying grading, but does show that certainly in the Army environment, grading was working in identifying weak candidates. I flew with one of those "re-graded" guys who was chopped 2 weeks before the end of his course for weak navigational skills; so naturally, being the Army, they passed him out as a crewman/observer where for his flying duties he only needed to have - good navigational skills!