Continuing Development

Continued development is essential for any occupation or hobby. It is easy to fall into bad habits even after a few months. Aviation is an odd hobby, often times your the only person in the cockpit and it is easy to slip. We have checklists to follow but sometimes you just get "sick" of doing the same thing.

In my opinion on of the best ways to stay current/proficient is observing another pilot. Whether your a private pilot or a certified flight instructor this is a good habit to have.

Where I work we are subject to observation flights from our Lead Flight Instructors a couple times a year. They aren't there to punish just to observe you doing your job and offer tips. As an instructor this should be welcomed, not frightful.

But one thing many instructors don't realize/do is that they can observe flights as well. The other day I observed my boss doing a lesson with a student. I wanted to see how he conducted that particular lesson to improve my lesson. Even though I had most of the same information in my lesson plan, it was interesting to see how he "put together" his lesson. It flowed very well and gave me a bunch of ideas on how to make my lesson better.

I would recommend to ALL pilots to observe a flight at least once every 6 months. Maybe you've fallen into bad habits without knowing it. Or maybe you will learn a helpful trick on landings, or radio calls, or managing a flight.

Continued Development is important for all professions, especially aviation. There aren't many careers/hobbies where yours and others lives are at risk. Whether it's observing a flight, using aopa.org's interactive online courses, or doing a lesson with an instructor you are only helping yourself become a better pilot.

Rightseatpilot

Old Habits die hard

First off I want to apologize for the absence. I've been trying to stay busy with work and finishing up school. Secondly, I've decided to go away from my multi part posts and talk about some other things. I've had a lot of good things come up lately that I am more interested in writing about then that. My plan is still to get back to it, maybe re-post all of them at the same time.

So here goes.

Pilots, in general, are very habitual. We tend to do the same things prior, during, and after each and every flight. There are many reasons for this, with the amount of tasks that we have to accomplish each flight if we were to "free ball" every flight something would be bound to go wrong.

One of the most basic ways pilot's demonstrate this is with the use of checklists. Checklists greatly improve the accuracy and performance of pilots. Sure after a while it almost becomes like second nature but you still find yourself using checklists, or verifying with your checklists. I've recently read an article on doctors now beginning to use checklists for surgeries. The study showed that doctors who use the checklists have, in general terms, better surgeries. There are less mistakes, deaths, and infections with doctors using versus doctors not using checklists.

I had a perfect example of "old habit's die hard" just the other week. I was flying with a Stage Check student who just needed to do two landings to complete the stage. The weather wasn't the best, 4 miles visibility and light snow.

Because of the weather we were the only aircraft(other than the King Air) flying at that point, in fact every other aircraft was parked in a hanger. As the student ran through his preflight and before starts he used his checklists as required.

When we got to the engine start, he opened his window, visually cleared left, center, and right then proceeded to yell out the window "CLEAR PROP!" before engaging the starter.

This is when it hit me! There is ABSOLUTELY no one around, no danger to people or property near the aircraft, and possibly no reason for him to yell "clear prop". However, this is something that is shoved into our heads from flight #1. The prop will kill if you walk into it, you have to make sure the prop is clear.

Now if the student hadn't verbally cleared the prop area, there probably wouldn't have been any damage. It would, however, have taken him out of his natural routine and possibly messed up the whole flight.

Moral of the story, don't change things that work. Don't change your routine to save time or because you don't think the situation requires you do a certain thing. Professional, good pilots have put years and years into training and using checklists. Professional, good pilots will use checklists until the day they retire, or heaven forbid kill themselves not using a checklists



Rightseatpilot

Plan Ahead

Now that you've decided why you want to learn to fly airplanes comes the next step. The title is simple enough but there is a lot to think about. You need to know that this is going to take you awhile to accomplish your goal.

Let's talk minimums...40 hours of flying before you can even take the practical, 20 with an instructor. That's it, the minimums. This is a realistic goal, I passed my practical test with 41.5 hours, however I had flown a bunch prior with family.

That's 20 hours of flying paying for an instructor AND an airplane and 20 hours of just the airplane time. It's going to add up quick. You need to know how you are going to fund your training. Try and have as much money ready to go as you can to avoid training delays.

Not only money but time is a big factor as well. Understand that if you only fly once or twice a week you will have to do some review flights. The BEST possible solution is to fly 3 - 4 times per week. I know it seems like a lot but it WILL save you money and worries!

Don't worry, you'll soon enough see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Rightseatpilot