Instructors. We definitely had it better!
 

I am reading "Sagittarius Rising" again. He was describing instruction and reminded me of my first FIs. Nowadays it seems to me that studes aren't allowed to get into scrapes the way we were. My first RAF training sorties were often a mess. The FI had the courage to let me make mistakes see the consequences and show me how to get out of them. I didn't get to make a career in the RAF but this experience was so valuable. I know that back in the olden days, civilians instructors were the same. Nowadays, I think that most instruction assumes a path to commercial that doesn't allow for the "accidental" wing stall. Oh I know that spinning is not possible in many school kites but we leaned so much more back then.

Quite true.
Risk avoidance rather than risk management.
Ex wartime pilots turned gliding instructors.
I did a reval couple of weeks ago, having flown my own aircraft for ten years, taxiing to park behind a row of other aircraft, "I'll take it from here" from the instructor. Why?

Ok, I'll bite...
Letting students bumble about making mistakes and seeing how they coped was acceptable practice in the early days of military aviation. It was a rapid way to weed out those with no aptitude. Early civilian instructors were pretty much all ex-forces too so they'd use similar techniques. Downside was a very high accident rate in training that just isn't acceptable today, morally or financially.
After a hundred plus years of powered flight we are better at teaching it than we were after only a dozen years of powered flight.
Today's training is intended to show studes how not to make mistakes, rather than recover from them. My students do their damnedest to kill me anyways - they don't need any more opportunities!

My instructor once wrote in her notes (and read the words out as she wrote them) "Tried to kill me in the circuit today AGAIN"

Luckily she eventually managed to do what Heston said, namely teaching me to avoid mistakes.

A major factor is that the military are training ab initios who have gone through a tough selection process. Civilian schools have to train anyone who comes through the door and can afford flying lessons.

A similar change has happened in the airline world; at one time airlines trained their pilots from scratch, so were very selective in who they took on. These days studes pay for their own training, so if a candidate is a 'no hoper' and doesn't make the grade, the only loser is the candidate.

Oh I don't mean really endangering the airframe but can't studes be allowed to xperiment a bit? I learnt more from my mistakes than I did from "not like that, like this!"

Er well yes, of course. They do so every lesson ;)

ATC gliding course 1956 RAF Hawkinge, solo by Wednesday, the rest of the week we were given the spare aircraft to play with, load up the right seat with snowballs and "bomb" the launch point. Plus a bit of ridge soaring below the cliff top at Folkestone, with an instructor, land back at the hangar at the last of several loops, pointing into the open door with twenty yards to spare. Etc.
Some poor sod landed a Chipmunk, instructors all wanted a go, one took off pulled straight up into a tight loop and touch and go at the bottom.
By today's standards completely nuts. But I don't think I came away with a desire to do the same.
Today, even mentioning such antics and a few more that I can remember clearly, is viewed with distaste, disbelief, horror, suspicion that I'm lying etc.
And I'm not suggesting that we go back to that.

Tin hat, flak jacket, dig hole.

I suppose I was talking about GA instruction. I do talk to the odd stude and they say they the curriculum is quite tight. I guess that, as they are paying, the schools feel that they should be pushed through in a certain way. The complaît i hear from potential hobby fliers is that they are thought by hours builders as though they are expected to get a CPL.

There is a syllabus for ppl students with defined standards. Instructors do diverge from it from time to time with the student's agreement, so they can cover other stuff. After several lessons bashing circuits it's good to go off and do something else.
Part of the GA instructors job is to keep the student engaged, interested and excited by the process of learning to fly. If they get bored or disillusioned with lack of progress they might throw in the towel and buy a boat instead (or even take up golf!).
On the other hand we don't want to waste their money so we need to keep pushing on. Don't want you to think it's a sausage machine. Instructors who treat GA students like that are not doing a good job - you're right about that.

Cecil Lewis
 

Off topic but the OP's comment reminded me of my late father. Cecil Lewis was his instructor at EFTS. My Dad said his claim to fame was that he'd been taught to fly by someone who tangled with the Red Baron.

Cecil Lewis is so worth a read. I was lucky enough to have people like him in my early life.

It was just the time. Have a look at this http://www.ukserials.com/losses-1956.htm

It seems slaughter might be more appropriate.

I think my point is that we learnt so much quicker because our instructors had the courage to let us cock it up an early stage. At a decent height of course. So many ga pilots of my acquaintance didn't seem to "learn about flying" until they were flying on their own and started pausing the boundaries a bit.

In my experience "we learnt so much quicker" because we were "so much younger" - most GA pilots start relatively late in life and have a much reduced learning capacity / rate as a result.

Sitting in a Boscombe Down seminar earlier this year, a test pilot was enthusing about pilot centric approaches. I was struggling to work out what he meant until it dawned on me that follow the magenta line on the moving map and cross check with the approach plate was a whole new thing for Gazelle pilots - He explained the theory well, but it did make me wonder how far behind things are in the military (as it were).

I' ve no doubt he was a better pilot for not having GPS all these years, it just surprised me as the commercial world has been doing that for years and years...

I did a simple club checkout with our bazillion hour ex-CFS instructor the other month that included the usual clean stalls etc. (suspiciously high which was a big clue) followed by "I have", yoink, boot, full spin then "you have, recover" 😬
Did a PFL that I genuinely though he was going to let me land in the chosen field, he introduced me to the fine art of 'poor man's low level' wanging around the sides of some cumulus, we did a run in and break and then every variation of circuits including low level with an EFATO thrown in for good measure.
Ended up being a harder work out than my Skills Test and I only wanted to take the Firefly touring while the PA28 was in for annual! Mind you, I reckon I learnt more in that hour than in the previous fifty.

Blackadder, I would like to have a word with your instructor that began a significant maneuver with "suspiciously high clean stall" etc. and followed by "I have", youink, boot, bull spring, then "you have, recover".

The student learns little from that sequence. Far better to ask the student to take control, raise the nose, allow the wing drop and the full spin....then having PUT IT IN THE SPIN, AND MADE THE RECOVERY, the student will experience all the interesting physical affects of exactly what it feels like. The recovery is what follows after he has experienced ENTERING THE SPIN. Otherwise he has only had half the lesson.

Don't worry, it was a club check not a spinning lesson. I was a gliding instructor in a past life so it was actually rather fun to get 'put through the wringer' a bit. A bit of 'stretch' in our flying is a great way to learn.

My bad by saying 'in the other fifty hours' - I'm not a student, I just don't learn much very often! :)

If it helps I did one the other way straight afterwards.

Mary, I had great delight googling 'bull spring' in the hope that it would reveal something amusing, but to my dismay there was nothing witty to come from it...

Nevertheless it did elicit some chuckling here, thank you :suspect:

FP.