Can we learn anything new here?
 

It is getting near my bedtime here on Vancouver Island and I thought I would ask all you people out there if you ever learn anything new here that may sway the way you fly your airplanes?

Just over a week ago I started a thread asking why so many people fly the final approach correcting for drift by side slipping.

The response was quite active with almost 7500 views and 230 posts so far.

For an internet forum that thread has been so polite and so on topic it is almost frightening. :O

Most of you will be back on Pprune long before I get out of bed tomorrow so I will be very interested in finding out if these discussions have any real value.

we need new people to get involved, there are far to many who never post for what ever reason...

....And the private pilot group are by far the most important group here because they fly for the joy of it and this is a free learning environment where you can sift between the valuable opinions and the B.S. opinions.

As we see in the side slip discussion each question and idea is being carefully dissected and a pattern is emerging.

Talk to you all tomorrow.

Chuck E.

As a relatively low-hours (about 100) PPL in the UK who has just returned in the last few months to the wonderful world of the sky after a 23 year lapse... I find most of the discussions interesting, thought-provoking and informative (in one way or another).... I don't comment much because my experience is low.

The crab/side-slip discussion was extremely interesting and I am pleased that I was taught both methods and tend to use a combination of the two (crab down and cross-control as I de-crab if needed).

Thanks.. and keep 'em coming.

Sid

It is not overstatement to say I have basically learned to fly from pprunes private flying page,

I passed my private 20 years ago, then started flying 4 years ago after a 8 years of little or no flying, my skills were rusty in some areas to non existent in others and doubt I would have been able to pass my ppl had I been obligated to re-sit it.

I could not possibly list all the things I have learned or re-learned but here's a stab at just a few:

Runway sighting and flare judgement technique
Proper carb heat use
Engine (lycoming 360) best practiced and efficiencies at altitude
Navigation and mental math estimation and guesstimating
ATC operations and interaction
Flight instruments explained
Aerodynamics
W&B CG etc.

And many many more,

Not to blow smoke up the contributors arses but BPF,FBW,MJ,GTE and the Canadian guy with the 152 and Teal who,s name escapes me right now along with several others have been unbelievabley helpful in not only explaining things but making me go find resources to dig deeper into subjects that I did not know about or was having trouble grasping,

So to answer your question, I can say without a doubt this forum makes people better and safer pilots, it certainly has for me.

due to family, home payments and stuff I ran out of money for flying at about 85 hours.
18 1/2 years later and the hormonal surges that bring about the midlife crisis were undeniable. so I decided to but the urge to use and get back flying.

I spent a year reading pprune before trying any flying.
I also re read all the theory (trevor thom series).

oh in australia at the time the bull!!!! of having to totally requalify if you hadnt flown for 3 years had been abolished and pilot's licences had become perpetual.
two months later I found an instructor.

I would do a training flight, then spend the rest of the day and the next day analysing the problems and researching the solutions.
we continued like that for 4 flights.

after shutdown at the end of the 4th flight I was feeling pretty good. nothing had overwhelmed me during the flight and I'd even contended with a near miss in the circuit.

the instructor turned to me in the cockpit. he said dont let this stroke your ego but you are pretty :mad: incredible. you next flight will be with the CFI for final sign off. I have students that havent flown for a year and 10 hours later they are still hopeless. you are back up to speed in 4 hours after 18 years away from it. :mad: incredible.

at 4:45 back into it the CFI signed me off with a pat on the back.

I have now flown 400 or so hours in a W8 Tailwind and am restoring 2 austers.

I must say that pprune was the key to it all. the diversity of subjects discussed pushed my memory back into all the corners and blew away all the cobwebs.:ok:

pprune isnt all frustrated vitriolic pilots, there are some gems here.

I don't know about learning anything new.....

I have learned plenty of old stuff that seemed to be missing all the way through my PPL,CPL and IR.

And that old stuff works a treat I might add.

One of the pieces of advice often given to PPL students is to hang around at the flying school or club and to get involved in the conversations there - not just to turn up for their lesson and go home straight after - because they'll learn lots from the discussion. Same goes for folk later in their flying careers - the reason for the barroom discussion is that we know we need to keep on learning and that the views of others and their experiences are a great way to learn.


This place is the internet version of the flying club bar. So yes there's lots to learn here.


But just like any clubroom you have to work out over time who is worth listening to, who is going to exaggerate, who makes it up as they go along, etc etc

I learn lots from here, even though I've got a fair bit of experience now, others on here and elsewhere have far more.

Much of it is about there being more than one way to skin a cat, the cross wind approach being a particularly good case study.

I also learn about flying I don't do, such as mountains and tailwheel and aerobatics, which is just interesting.

All shared knowledge and experience enhances your flying enjoyment and hopefully your skill and judgement too.

Didn't know there were any! Why would you waste a lot of money on an expensive hobby if it makes you miserable? Just send your money to me instead and have a happier life on the ground. Hey I claim copywrite to that idea as well.

I second the 'hanging around in the crewroom' idea as well. This is like a virtual crewroom at times, I've learned some interesting stuff on here. I don't think I would apply any of it in real life without running it by a real life experienced pilot first, as you just don't know whether the guy with a claimed 20,000 hrs on everything from microlights to the SR-71 is really a 12 year old using Google.

There used to be a guy on here who had flown everything in every theatre you can think of who I suspected slightly. If you added up all of his experiences he would have been about 300 years old.

I mentioned to Chuck the other day that the problem with t'internet is that 80% of all human communication is visual; which of course doesn't happen on a forum. There's also a tendency (on any forum I might add) for feet to dig in occasionally and the 'my way is right' viewpoint is bandied around. There can be too much technicallity, IMO obviously. I remember one thread about circuits that went into detailed theories about the correct angles to turn at various points, which got very silly. I made the comment that I fly my circuits so that they look about right which kind of killed it dead. Maybe one or two wannabees around on that one I think.

Other than that there are some good, helpful posters on here, long may it continue. I may one day be able to post from a position of knowledge myself!

Piper boy......sorry a bit late with this question but was it yourself that called Scottish a couple of weeks ago for a radio check?.....if so it was myself but could not remember your pprune name to ask if it was you :cool:

Chuck,
Absolutely. I've learned new stuff, relearned old stuff and been exposed to different points of view about things that I felt were pretty much cast in stone.

It's a great forum and as an ex-Calgarian, I'm delighted to see the very valuable contributions made by you, BPF and Pilot DAR (NB PB84), plus other assorted Canucks. :ok:

PS I gave up on the Avcanada (?) forum a couple of years ago. Useless.

Yes I also have quit Avcanada because it became impossible to communicate without being put down by multiple posters on an ongoing basis.

Pilotdar may come back to Pprune...I hope he does.

I didn't know he had left!

Yes Chuck, one does learn here. And I hope contribute, also. I saw something by pilot DAR not all that long ago, though he has been quiet lately.
I just got back from a weekend training course, where I learned among other things much more than I wanted to know about t phi grams. I will refrain from sharing in order to npt make your heads ache, too.
Good night all.

Neither did I. He sent me a very encouraging PM once, I shan't forget it.

I think that DAR was one of the people who left when I got booted off for a while for refusing to respect and leave alone some dodgy stuff going on on the forums.

Whilst I've received an apology from the board owners and come back (occasionally I do suspect against my better judgment), not everybody else did. DAR I am still in touch with, but I believe that his online presence now is mostly on a couple of other aviation forums - a Canadian one, and a European GA forum. Probably.

G

FWIW, I think a lot of us sit on the sidelines learning. I dont say a lot as I am only a 30hour student pilot, so I don't have a great deal to offer. Sometimes I pipe up saying how I am being taught something just to see if the is a better alternative. I also know there are other students watching too, because I have had several PM's from them helping me out (and hopefully me helping them) with confidence building..

I am sure my life skills may be valuable to a post one day. IF you want to know about sailing, motorcycles, electrical/electronics/computers then I am your man, but when it comes to flying, I will just sit and watch for now.

Very interesting question Chuck. I learned loads on here over a number of years. Later I attempted to pass on some of the little that I knew. Now I read, but rarely post; I'm not sure why, but things change. There's a lot of guff on PPRuNe, but also some incredibly useful stuff. Thanks to everyone who's shared their experience with me over the years. :ok:

Please dont stop posting. Ignore the guff. I am only a noob, but it does not take long before one separates the Google expert from the actual people who know what they are talking about. For a youngen, maybe not so easy, but for us seasoned experts in bull!!!! we quickly figure out who is worth listening to.
I have taken a lot from this forum, most of it from google results, but also a lot from people who have responded to my couple of posts.

Sometimes a fresh PPL with 50 hours may help someone like me with 30 hours, only because the training is fresh in their mind. Likewise I recently provided some suggestions to someone who has only trained with a tower, where I am only CTAF (we were both nervous about the unknown). All knowledge is welcome as far as I am concerned.

Andy P - good post. Oh, and don't apologise for being a newbie!

I'm ten hours into my PPL training, and several of the posts on here have promted me to ask questions of my trainer already.

As Baz Luhrman said:

"Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it."