This morning he came out of his office with the September issue and said, "You could have written this article; in fact, it reads like you did write it." He was referring to Wally Miller's "Getting from Point A to Point B." You see, Paul and I are very different people and thereby approach our flying very differently. I am the consummate planner, list maker, and double-checker. He does some planning, checks weather, and uses an online service he subscribes to. And then he loads all the info into his GPS.
I did not approve of the number of checkpoints he chose for the aforementioned 400-mile flight and, after listening to his modern-technology treatise, I did my own planning, including a careful study of every possible alternative airport along the route. (We are members of an Air Force Aero Club, and filing a flight plan is a club requirement for anything other than a local flight.)
So, Wally, thank you for the article. Not because of the "I told you so" factor (he figured that one all by himself), but because it is so true. Most of my 150 hours have been without any "modern" navaids save a VOR, and I feel much more confident and safe with a well-planned flight. The advice on learning the gadgets is even more right on. The only time an air traffic controller has yelled at me was when I was off course (in his Class C airspace) because I was fiddling with the GPS!
Janet Brasfield
Goose Creek, South Carolina
Why we should spin
Yet another article on spin recovery and the pros/cons of teaching same ("CFI to CFI: Studying the stall/spin," September AOPA Flight Training). However, this time something bit me. I realized that the reason we can never satisfactorily answer this question is because we're discussing the wrong question. There's no question teaching spins and spin recovery does little for a pattern accident. There's also no question that if you never stall, you'll never spin, so teaching stall awareness seems the way to go.
However, my question is, how do you adequately teach stall awareness without spinning the aircraft? When I received my primary training we did the usual departure and approach stalls, both straight ahead and turning. However, my instructor was very careful to avoid spinning the airplane, so turns were gentle, departure stalls were muted, and the ball was kept centered.
It wasn't until I took aerobatic/spin training that we got out and did some "real" flying. Only then did I understand what the aircraft felt like cross-controlled and slow, or torque rolling, or what would happen during a really radical departure stall (a "yank"). It wasn't the spin recovery that was important (though I did a lot of that); it was learning the what and why of departure from controlled flight. That's why we should do spins in primary training-not for the sake of the spins, but for the sake of learning how we got there in the first place.
Guy Buchanan
Ramona, California
That must've been some party
I was having a bit of insomnia and took a nice hot bath to relax with the September issue of AOPA Flight Training. So there I was, soaking and imagining myself at the cocktail party with Jack Williams, when the nonpilot comes up to us to ask a multiple-choice question. I dreamily think through the answer along with Jack and stand alongside him as we "confidently tell the guy at the party that the answer is '(a) lower than indicated altitude.'"
Huh? Wait a minute! Even in my state of semi-sleep, I can sense something wrong! I flip back the page to find that we may have given the right answer, but to the wrong question! The question so astutely asked by the party guest was "If you fly from an area of high pressure without changing your altimeter setting, when you arrive, would the altimeter indicate..." to which the correct answer is, of course, "(b) higher than the actual altitude above sea level." The answer we gave was to "If you fly from an area of high pressure without changing your altimeter setting, when you arrive, would your actual altitude above sea level be..."
And then I figured it out! Not more than a few pages earlier appeared the story about how the FAA, in order to minimize rote memorization of knowledge test answers, is switching them around. So that's what happened. You AOPA Flight Training editors switched the questions on Jack right in the middle of the cocktail party. Nasty trick!
Mark Kolber, CFI
Denver, Colorado
Mark and about a dozen other readers caught this mistake. We regret the error, and we promise to forego the next party in favor of some weather ground school.-Ed.
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