C152 Landing

[wet wet wet]

I wonder ...

The original post is far from clear, but to me it sounds like the question might be to do with the use of rudder in the flare rather than the use of nose wheel steering on landing. After all one assumes that tne student has done Ex 5 and is able to steer the C152 on the ground.

Difficult to comment further without more information, but my suspicion is that this student is still some way off going solo.

[mad_jock]

I think lazy sod would be more approprate. I just found that the student developes faster, learns quickly and developes the PIC skills earlier with the added advantage that I am sitting next to them and not when they cock it up when they are solo.

Intercepted I can sort of agree with your point. But the new instructor standard mainly due to the number that have done the rating because they can't go straight to a shiny jet. Is shocking. It doesn't help that a large majority of them have never been taught to fly a SEP properly, its all been persudo airline bollocks ops.

When I started instructing and a student came up with a strange one in a test the majority of time it came back that they had had a brain fart or had made it up. Now I would say its more common that the route cause is that they haven't been taught properly. There is virually no instructor standardisation in schools. Instructors rock up get checked out 3 circuits and then rock off on their tod with very little supervision while restricted. The restriction removal is a tick box test, and most of them will have given up by the time they have to renew by test.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Here's a parallel, when not playing with aeroplanes, I teach Jiu Jitsu on Monday evenings.

I am currently recovering from a sprained knee after a student, trying his best, incorrectly performed O Soto Gari on me a fortnight before Christmas.

He is a 4th kyu purple belt who has been training for 2 years.
I'm a 3rd Dan black belt who has been training for about 20 years, and teaching for about half of that.

Whose fault is my injury? Clearly mine, for a failure to properly teach and control the exercise we were performing. I've told him what he did wrong and what I want next time! But it's still my fault - I screwed up, I accept that.



Now take a pre-solo student who DOES NOT PROPERLY UNDERSTAND how to perform a landing. Assuming somebody is getting something wrong, let's see, we have a choice of:

- Instructor, somewhere between 300-15,000hrs, Commercial Licence with instructor rating, flying as Captain, in control of what is flown, and briefings and debriefings.

- Student, somewhere under 20 hours, no licence, not making the decisions about the brief/lesson/debrief structure, almost certainly no prior aviation knowledge to draw upon.


Incorrectly flown manoeuvres, and correction of those, are just part of the learning process, but a student who is doing a lot of circuits and has allowed to believe that they are close to solo, and has not been given adequate understanding of how they are supposed to control the aeroplane has a serious problem - and I struggle to see why it's either his fault, or just a normal part of the learning process.

I'm not an experienced instructor (although I am an instructor), but in such a case I'd have spent significant time with a whiteboard going through all this with my student BEFORE he started doing a lot of circuits, and I'd be reviewing these points as we go along. I know of nothing in instructional best practice that should be doing otherwise.

Any thoughts on that Mad Jock?, since you probably have about 100 times my instructional hours.

G

[The500man]

Since I'm completely fed up reading the immediate knee-jerk reaction "get a new instructor" thread after thread, I'm firmly in the "Why is it always the Instructor at fault?" camp

Most lilkely because it is always fed-up students asking these silly questions on pprune, and this has alot to do with all the pilots that like to count how many hours it took them to solo. Now students start getting worried they're no good if it seems to be taking them longer than the magic 15 hours or just frustrated becasue there seems to be no end in sight to them flying circuits under instruction.

It's very unlikely that a student about to solo hasn't already been taught how to taxi to the runway! Someone perhaps isn't being very truthful.

[S-Works]

Genghis, the difference being that as a CRI you have only been taught how to teach small elements from the PPL sylabus unlike an FI who is taught to teach it from end to end.

There are some quite hard judgement calls to make when teaching ab-initio as opposed to working with experienced students as a CRI.

I am not exonerating the Instructor in this case, merely pointing out to the lynch mob that both sides of the story should be heard before judging. I have flown with ab-initio students whose own opinion of there ability differed greatly from reality.......

[Genghis the Engineer]

Ghengis, the difference being that as a CRI you have only been taught how to teach small elements from the PPL sylabus unlike and FI who is taught to teach it from end to end.

I accept that, but tailwheel (where rudder use and how to land is really quite fundamental) is part and parcel of CRI flying and a lot of what I have done to date. Plus I'm really talking about teaching principles here, not the specifics of use of the pedals.

I am not criticising the instructor apparently flying the rudder (as you say, we don't know the whole picture), or at-least following through - I am criticising the level of understanding that the student has been allowed to achieve - where he thinks he's close to solo, but does not apparently know what he should be doing with the rudder pedals and how the nosewheel is mechanised.

I will criticise roundly any instructor who has allowed a student to get as far as circuits without having read and understood the POH for the aeroplane, and think I'm on pretty sound grounds in doing so. I know the C152 POH - as I'm sure do most of us here, it's pretty clear and well written on how the controls mechanise.

G

[mad_jock]

Genghis I have always though and said you would make an excellent PPL instructor and you are of course completely correct.

Personally I brought my instructional experence from scuba diving, in fact it had more to do with my style than the FIC.

The fact is that you can't teach someone to be an instructor, you can teach the some tools to help them be an instructor. But if the core isn't there to begin with it doesn't matter what you do they will never be an effective one.

You do have guys out there that have more "instructor" in them after 100 hours than an instructor with 1000 hours under thier belt.

You also have golden bollocks pilots who fly as if they are on rails but couldn't teach a bear how to **** in the woods. With these the students learn in spite of the instructor not because of them.

There are also the instructors that have the flying ability of a penguin but can quite easily produce better pilots than they are.

[S-Works]

I will criticise roundly any instructor who has allowed a student to get this far without having read and understood the POH for the aeroplane, and think I'm on pretty sound grounds in doing so.

Except you don't actually know how far this student has gotten..... As I said there is often a gulf between there own view on ability and fact. We only have his opinion that he is ready for solo as we do not know the instructors side.

I have encountered students who are adamant that they are ready for solo and who I would not let taxi let alone fly solo as long as there ass points down.

I agree that if the Instructor is not doing there job then it needs to be rectified but not on the basis of a one side story.

I accept that, but tailwheel (where rudder use and how to land is really quite fundamental) is part and parcel of CRI flying and a lot of what I have done to date.

And teaching a qualified pilot to fly anything, tailwheel or otherwise is absolutely nothing like teaching an ab-initio who know nothing...... Without being rude, you have to do it before you are quailfied to comment. Believe me, I have had my fingers burnt on that front......

[Genghis the Engineer]

Two very fair points there Bose, no I've not taught ab-initio and accept that I'm in the correcting and amending, not introducing game. So far.

Also I agree that we don't know how far the instructor believes the OP has got in his flying. What we do know however is how far the OP has been allowed to believe he's got in his flying - he thinks he's close to solo. I think it's fair to be concerned about the circumstances leading somebody who *thinks* that but has big gaps in his knowledge about some real fundamentals.

Again, your points about student perception are fair - I had a tailwheel conversion who was, err, struggling. He was convinced he was close to sign-off for about 15 hours with both myself and a much more experienced instructor, and I'm quite sure that neither of us were being less than honest with him.

Original Poster - are you still here? Quick question or three - how many hours have you done?, what sort of continuity?, have you read the POH? What sort of briefings / debriefs have you been getting?

G

[S-Works]

I think it's fair to be concerned about the circumstances leading somebody who *thinks* that but has big gaps in his knowledge about some real fundamentals.

I know I keep labouring this point. But we only have his view that he is ready for solo. I would want to hear the Instructors viewpoint before I was so quick to judge.

Like I keep saying there is often a very large gulf between self opinion and fact.....

[mad_jock]

Get your finger out and get the ticket Genghis.

It really is a hoot and you wouldn't believe the amount of job statisfaction you get out of it.

[M-ONGO]

You have to be very wary of Internet advice on anything...

From another thread on the QXC

Statistically solo students are very very safe - instructors are paranoid about the standards they expect before sending a student up on their own, the tasks demanded of them are deliberately fairly undemanding, and the students are usually terrified of screwing up so are the most careful they'll be in their entire flying careers (except possibly when they become instructors and start sending students solo themselves!).

Just relax and learn to enjoy the flying! And do it all exactly as you've taught. And if you get lost, either turn a VOR/DME on, or call for a practice pan.

G

Such as the highlited part. This is where a CRI should stick to their field and leave advice to ab initio's to FI's...

[mad_jock]

I don't know, there will be alot of FI's out there that will give exactly the same advice.

And there is nothing in the FIC that will correct anyone if they think that its correct.

Personally I think there is an argument for CRI's to be able to teach the NAV section of the PPL. And also they could do the Trial flights as well but with a restriction that they have to do the TO and landing below 500ft.

It would make a rather nice input into instructing which would allow folk to see if they were suited for it. And also allow them to have more of clue about what they are meant to be learning in the FIC.

The FI system needs taken apart which is the fundemental problem. Although some fud will proberly say that zero to heros should get the whole lot at 170 hours like we have just now. When in fact its this sort of instructor thats pulling the whole lot down.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

Get your finger out and get the ticket Genghis.

It really is a hoot and you wouldn't believe the amount of job statisfaction you get out of it.

Sooner or later I will, and I believe you on the satisfaction. It's just the minor requirement to keep doing my day-job, and to be honest for the few days a month I can spare to do instruction, there's enough work CRIing.


On the "practice pan" point - my view, right or wrong, is that a student is less likely to feel nervous of making that call, which they've made before (hopefully - the first time I ever made one was on my instructor course!), and I'd rather the student did something they feel comfortable with early, than leave it until they are starting to feel panicked. And they'll get the same result at the end of the day. Headology - or my view of it anyhow.

Personally I think there is an argument for CRI's to be able to teach the NAV section of the PPL

I have, quite legally - for an old school microlight pilot converting to NPPL(SSEA). Ditto instrument awareness and, as it happens, the rest of what's needed to pass the NPPL skill test.

But to be honest, I have no issue with real ab-inition being done exclusively by FIs and if I want to do that sort of flying - which I'll probably decide I want to sooner or later, I'll do that course.

Trial flights *could* be done by any CPL under a cheap A-A AOC, with the student/pax handing the controls as a "special category passenger" - just they can't log it.

G

[S-Works]

I don't know, there will be alot of FI's out there that will give exactly the same advice.

Thats getting into massive thread drift though. An FI is only as good as the initial training they recieve which is pretty uniform followed by the initial standardisation and subsequent supervision.

Once they have been standarised it is then down to personal motiviation which governs how they develop. This is where it varies greatly unfortunatly. There are as many Instructors dedicated to teaching as there are those who only dream of an airliner but to judge all Instructors the same is a little unfair.

I came from the CRI SE then ME along with IRI and through FI and eventually a Flight Examiner. I found the transition from CRI to FI quite difficult as the mindset of both Instructor and Student is very different when you are dealing with ab-initio and experienced students. It is much easier to teach experienced pilots who already grasp the concepts (even if you do wonder how some of them ever got a PPL!) than it is to convey concepts to someone who knows nothing. This is where the good Instructor has to be in tune with the student needs and understand the problems. A lot of Instructors sadly don't.

I rarely have contact with ab-initio anymore but I do remember clearly the trepidation of 1st solo's. It is easier to send someone of in the turbines than a PPL solo!!

So while I do agree with many of MJ's and others comments about Instruction standards, I also think that there is a lot of one sided judgement going on here that should be avoided.

[mad_jock]

On the "practice pan" point - my view, right or wrong, is that a student is less likely to feel nervous of making that call, which they've made before (hopefully - the first time I ever made one was on my instructor course!), and I'd rather the student did something they feel comfortable with early, than leave it until they are starting to feel panicked. And they'll get the same result at the end of the day. Headology - or my view of it anyhow.

Now personally I wouldn't teach it. But...

Its the fact that you have thought about the "Headology" which counts more in my book than anything else.

Although I suspect now that its been brought up you will for ever more teach them to do a Pan instead. And when teaching Nav you will get them to do a practise pan at some point.

I must admit up north we are very lucky with Scottish info. fishbangwallop and his collegues really do make the effort and are extremely good at putting students at their ease on the RT. The aera controller arn't to shabby either I might add and the approach/radar units need a note in dispatches for thier patience.

D&D have always encouraged practise calls. So I would hope that getting on the RT if unsure wouldn't be an issue for most.

[mad_jock]

An FI is only as good as the initial training they recieve which is pretty uniform followed by the initial standardisation and subsequent supervision.

Its not tho uniform these days. It can be old school or CFS or it can be persudo airline ops. Or a mish mash of both and some even make stuff up that they think is a good idea.

standardisation and subsequent supervision

Also a huge gulf between schools. Most have nothing at all, others play lip service to it and others do it properly (the only ones in my experence are the ones with CFS contracts) And this is at PPL not the CPL/IR FTO's which do seem to be better.

[M-ONGO]

On the "practice pan" point - my view, right or wrong, is that a student is less likely to feel nervous of making that call, which they've made before (hopefully - the first time I ever made one was on my instructor course!), and I'd rather the student did something they feel comfortable with early, than leave it until they are starting to feel panicked. And they'll get the same result at the end of the day. Headology - or my view of it anyhow.

I wouldn't advocate bull****ting them. Just tell the truth... Student pilot unsure of position. No "practice" in there. If you were an instructor where I worked as CFI and FIC instructor, I'd have to have a word in your shell about this advice G! Agreed, however that, as BT used to say, "it's good to talk".

[Luddite aviator]

Bose-x

I would suggest that a student who by that stage of training is unsure of how the nose wheel steering works has not been told by the instructor.

It would follow that a this is likely to be due to poor teaching & checking.

[S-Works]

I would suggest that a student who by that stage of training is unsure of how the nose wheel steering works has not been told by the instructor.

Read the original post.

and up until now in my circuits, my instructor has controls the nose wheel when we land, so I am not getting the right feel of what happens

I would suggest that it is nothing to do with not knowing how the nose wheel works but an accusation that the Instructor is riding the controls. Now is the Instructor riding them or is he giving correct input to ensure the safety of the aircraft? We don't know as we have only heard one side of the story......