Thanks,
Lucy
Greetings Lucy,
Yes, I do. Politely ask him to stop being so overly attentive to you. Unfortunately, some men aren't sure how to behave around women. The result is that you, the student, end up feeling awkward.
Have a little chat and tell him what's bothering you. I suggest that you tell him that you appreciate his gentlemanly manner as well as his attention to instructional detail. But in order to become a confident, competent, and independent pilot, you need the freedom to fumble, fall, and make your own mistakes, just like everyone else.
Years ago, an instructor at our airport was also overly helpful to his female students. He went so far as to preflight the airplane for them but not for his male students. He actually did a great disservice to these students. How would they learn to preflight if he didn't give them a chance to learn it on their own?
This behavior came to a screeching halt-and I do mean screeching-when one of the airport's senior instructors heard about it and volunteered to talk to him. That senior instructor, by the way, was named Cindy. She realized how damaging (and even demeaning) this behavior was and put a stop to it pronto.
Scared Of Stalls
Dear Mr. Machado,
Every time my instructor and I do departure stalls, I'm scared to death. The airplane always seems to want to enter a spin after I stall. My instructor has to take over at this point. I find this spinning tendency very uncomfortable. How can I get over these feelings?
Sincerely,
Ted
Greetings Ted,
If you want to overcome these fearful feelings about spins, I recommend that you take spin training from a qualified instructor in an appropriate airplane.
Regarding how to prevent the airplane from spinning, consider this. As you approach the stall, feed in a little right rudder to compensate for the airplane's increasing left-turning tendency. Apply enough rudder to keep the ball centered in the inclinometer. Assuming the airplane's not severely out of rig, stalling with a centered ball should result in both wings stalling at the same time. This means that you'll stall straight ahead (or, along a path perpendicular to the airplane's lateral axis), instead of having one wing stall before the other.
An airplane in coordinated flight almost always stalls in this type of predictable manner. This is what pilots are referring to when they say, "Misusing the rudder in a departure stall could cause a wing to drop off." Of course, they don't mean that an airfoil is ejected into space when the pedal is touched. They mean that the airplane is likely to spin if the rudder is used incorrectly.
No Smoking, Please
Dear Rod,
Is it reasonable for an instructor to smoke in the cockpit during a lesson? My instructor occasionally smokes during our flight lessons. It's very annoying, and she doesn't seem to be cutting back.
Lane
Greetings Lane,
I think it's unreasonable to obtain a pilot's certificate only to lose a lung in the process. Years ago, I remember seeing a student taxi in a smoke-filled cockpit. His instructor was in the right seat smoking a cigar. That poor guy didn't need a hood to simulate IFR flight-he was already IFR.
So go ahead and have a talk with the Marlboro Lady, and ask her not to light up in the cockpit. Besides, smoking isn't good for you. The surgeon general once said that smoking is four times worse than the scientists originally thought-and they originally thought it would kill you. As you can see, this is bad stuff. Time to say, "No fumar."
Excavating Logbooks
Dear Rod,
What do you think about the idea of establishing a national forum with published syllabi so that we poor old flight instructors could compare them and decide on how best to instruct our students?
Robert B. H.
Greetings Robert,
That's an interesting idea. But I've always been more interested in what people actually learn, rather than what we expect them to learn. Therefore, to better teach your students, I recommend engaging in something I call logbook archeology.
By examining the logbooks of pilots who have already obtained their certificates, you can uncover some interesting insights. For instance, when I first began teaching instrument flying, I obtained logbook copies of 14 instrument-rated pilots. In particular, I was interested in the logbook entries dating from the beginning of their instrument training up to and including their checkrides.
I soon discovered something very important. The students requiring the most instrument time were those who spent fewer hours developing their instrument scan. But when students had approximately 10-plus hours of basic scan training, they did much better. There were many more insights I culled from my logbook collection, as well. Of course, my sampling wasn't entirely scientific, but it sure helped me become a better instructor.
Logbook archeology can also provide interesting insights for the other ratings, too. It helped me determine the most efficient training sequence for my primary students. I also learned many interesting things about the duration, order, and repetition of primary flight training lessons. Granted, it's not easy to obtain copies of logbook entries, but the results are worth it. Perhaps a national forum with published logbook entries (all anonymous, of course) from a large number of pilots would be just as valuable.
Please e-mail your flight training questions to "Since You Asked" at flighttraining@aopa.org. Only questions selected for publication will be answered.
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