Lookout

[fireflybob]

The recent midair collision at Shoreham has prompted me to think about, yet again, how we teach lookout especially wrt circuit joining. How much time is devoted to teaching students how to lookout?

Here are a couple I will start with:-

1. Make sure preflight you have a clean windscreen - a screen full of bugs won't help you to see a/c.

2. You have to move your head to check behind "blind spots" such as canopy stays etc.

Please can we avoid the perrenial debates on the merits or otherwise of over head joins as opposed to direct joins or even usa joins!

[maxred]

I think the issue may be that too much time is spent head down looking at Garmin 430/530/I pad nonsense, and not enough time spent looking out the bloody window. I learnt to fly on my Chipmunk, no gizmos, map in hand constantly looking out,for landmarks, and other aircraft. I note some instructors now giving time on 430. There also may be a correlation of this on CZ busts, and incursions.

[Big Pistons Forever]

It's not the Garmin 430 students are looking at it is the AI/DI/ASI/Altimeter and VSI. Everything you need to know to fly an aircraft you can tell by looking out the window, but unfortunately too many instructors let students chase the instruments instead of setting the desired attitude by reference to the natural horizon. If you control the aircraft by what you see out of the windshield it is easy to also keep a good lookout.

Students who have been using Microsoft flight sim are particularly egregious examples of this tendency.

When I teach Attitudes and Movements I do not even mention the instruments and I carry a bad of post it notes and cover up the instrument if the student persist in looking inside instead of outside.

The other problem is students head down reading the typical stupidly long flight school checklist

[Cows getting bigger]

As above plus:

A structured routine. (segments)
Look from outside of turn towards inside before turning. On rolling-out the opposite.
Dipping wings/nose/weaving - religiously
Anything inside is a distraction. All charts, kneeboards pens etc to be stowed before arriving in the cct.
High stay high, low stay low (position of wing)
Don't fully tighten shoulder harness until on final - inertia reels are far better.

[Whopity]

Fundamental VFR Scan
Lookout
Attitude
Instruments
The time taken to look at the instruments is about the same as it takes to read the time on a watch.

[memories of px]

if a student attempts to turn without looking, then grab the control column and stop the turn happening, if too much head in-- a comment of "did you see him?" can help, even if there wasnt anybody there!
and dont teach use of DI to turn onto a track in the circuit, pick a distant point off the wing tip, and roll out on that, its close enough.
read and do the checklist when on the ground, airborne checks should be memorized.

[DA42 Pilot]

DA40 Crash

I think that the aircraft involved had a G1000 which gives even more fun inside just like a video game which it is not!

[EGKA]

If it had a G1000, then will provide the AAIB with height, speed and location.

Will either clear them or condem them!

On the plus side having flown many hours in the DA's they were well prepared for an emergency, never a week goes by without another DA40 Maintenance issue.

[Whopity]

Lookout has nothing to do with what might or might not be fitted in the cockpit. A Visual circuit is flown looking out of the window with the occasional glance at the relevant instruments. FFB hit the nail on the head

How much time is devoted to teaching students how to lookout?

Having flown with numerous students, taught by a variety of instructors, many have been taught good lookout technique whilst others appear to have been taught nothing. In the main, the longer in the tooth FIs seem to do a better job of teaching lookout. Have FI Courses with their increased ground-school, teaching and learning modules, TEM etc become so concerned with micro detail that some of the fundamentals are being lost.

[blagger]

I do think some (at PPL and commercial level) become so focussed on flying accuracy that they diminish lookout. Not saying flying accuracy and tolerances are not important of course, but some instructors seem to be so drawn to scanning the instruments all the time they almost forget lookout, or the lookout is certainly only in a small arc to the front.

Perhaps it is a by-product of the changes over past years so that a lot of new instructor entrants have been fairly new CPL/IR graduates?

[Whopity]

A valid point, as the trend over the last 10 years has been for student FIs to have spent much of their time training for an IR prior to obtaining a FI rating, rather than after it, if at all!

[BillieBob]

I do think some (at PPL and commercial level) become so focussed on flying accuracy that they diminish lookout.

The two are not mutually exclusive. In the vast majority of cases, my students would fly a far more accurate steep turn when I obscured all of the flight instruments with a map. In visual flying the flight instruments should be used only sparingly to confirm that the correct attitude is being held and the correct power is set. There is, arguably, no need ever to refer to the artificial horizon when the natural horizon is visible.