From The Right Seat
Top Gun Instructing for CFIs
Sometimes it helps to think about things in a slightly offbeat way. For instance, I think of flight instruction as the act of providing experience. As instructors, we orchestrate the sights, sounds, and sensations necessary for our students to learn.
Yet, philosophy teaches that experience is not what happens to you; it's what you think about what happens to you. In other words, experience has meaning and value only after it's interpreted. And that is what good instructors do best. They help their students to make sense of the events that happen to them.
For instance, suppose your student makes a steep turn and experiences an increase in load factor. That event is likely to generate a few "ohhs!" and "ahhhs!" But it's not likely to have much meaning by itself. Suppose, on the other hand, you point out that anytime your student feels as if he weighs more, then the airplane is more likely to stall. Now that's experience. It means something to your student because you helped him to interpret it properly. The lack of interpretation often explains why a pilot can have 10,000 hours of honest experience while another pilot has one hour of experience 10,000 times.
If you'd like proof that the proper interpretation of experience can radically alter your student's behavior, consider this. During the Vietnam war, the United States was losing airmen at a frightening rate. Something had to be done. Someone noticed that fighter pilots returning from at least five combat missions had a 90-percent chance of returning from all future missions. These pilots somehow achieved the minimum experience necessary to fly combat with a high degree of proficiency. The problem was how to get nonexperienced pilots to return from at least five combat missions. The answer: Give them their first five missions under controlled conditions. We created the Top Gun school of air combat (and fancy flying) to do just that.
Top Gun instructors are extremely effective because they provide both experience and the opportunity to interpret it. If you've ever listened to a Top Gun instructor's pre- and post-flight combat briefings, you know what I mean. Interpretation is everything. As general aviation instructors, we are wise to follow Top Gun's lead.
Think about helping your students to interpret the events that they experience. Explain to them why the sights, sounds, and sensations that they've felt are important. Don't make the mistake of assuming that mere exposure to an event implies learning has occurred.
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