How to avoid the Game Boy approach
I am a private pilot working on my instrument rating. There are a limited number of instructors allowed to teach in our club aircraft. Only one instructor who was taking on new instrument students had a schedule that worked out with mine.
While I am under the hood, the instructor is (in my opinion) not doing an adequate job of looking for traffic. He spends way too much time and attention on his handheld GPS. This proves to be a tremendous distraction for me. I can see out of the corner of my eye that he is looking down in the cockpit, and I suddenly feel very vulnerable. It is such a distraction that I can no longer concentrate on what I am supposed to be doing.
How do I broach this subject with him without destroying the student-instructor relationship? I'm afraid that by telling him what to do, I might offend him. My options for instructors are limited. If I can make it work with this one, I would like to.
Kind regards,
Tommy
Greetings Tommy:
Explain to your instructor that you're one of those students with an extra concern about bumping into other airplanes. As a result, you'd appreciate it if he would accommodate your specific and personal concern by spending a little extra time looking out the window to check for traffic. Of course, it doesn't sound like Game Boy is looking out the window much as it is. If your request results in his looking out the window more often, then you've accomplished your objective and helped a lot of other people as well. You might also ask him if he'd mind further helping you with your traffic concerns by allowing you to query him about traffic from time to time. In other words, explain that you'd like to ask, "How's the traffic to right?" or "Are we clear to the right or left?"
You might also do your training in a four-place airplane and invite one or two folks along to watch for traffic. This is an excellent way to add more eyeballs to the cockpit. It's also an excellent way for the traffic observers to learn about instrument training. I've never understood why instrument students don't offer to help watch for traffic in exchange for the ride-along opportunity during a training session. It's a real win-win for everyone involved.
Yank that endorsement?
Dear Rod,
I am a newly minted CFI and feel I may have screwed up by endorsing a student. I recently landed one of the few flight instructor positions available at my local airport. On my first day, the owner of the flight school asked me to go up with a student and renew his 90-day solo endorsement. (His previous instructor had left for a flying job at another FBO.)
I went up with the student, who is pretty far along in his training. He has almost 70 hours, many of which are solo in the local practice area. He flew very well, and at the time I felt he did a great job. We did all of the basics, and I wasn't worried about his skills. But a few days later I heard from another instructor that this student took off late in the afternoon after telling the owner of the school that he was going to stay in the pattern. The student disappeared from the pattern when a pop-up thunderstorm blew in. He returned after the thunderstorm dissipated.
I asked this student where he went and why he didn't obtain a weather briefing before vanishing. He said he went south for a while until the cell was gone and came back, but I heard from an unconfirmed source that he went to another airport (for which he had no endorsement) and landed to wait it out. He denied this. I also heard (unconfirmed) that his former instructor was overflying the area and told him on the unicom that the weather was going to get bad and he shouldn't go far, which he elected to do anyway.
My situation is an unusual one, but I am wondering, can I get into trouble if this guy goes to another airport and gets ramp-checked, or worse, crashes on approach to an airport at which he is not endorsed to land? Obviously, my ticket is on the line if he messes up doing what he is endorsed to do, but what if he goes "rogue" on me and does whatever he darn well pleases?
Should I cancel his endorsement, and if so how should I go about doing so? Can I just write VOID over it like a check, or is there an FAA-approved way to do it? The owner of the flight school will be upset with me if I cancel this person's endorsement, because this guy rents a lot and generates revenue. On the other hand, I have worked dang hard to obtain my ratings, and it would be heartbreaking for one or all of them to be taken away or suspended. I am very worried!
Thank you,
Carl J.
Greetings Carl:
Here's the situation as I see it. First, I'd never sign off another CFI's student as you did unless that student satisfied all the ground and flight knowledge requirements listed in my presolo training syllabus. Yes, this requires that someone else's student spend more time with me before receiving another 90-day solo endorsement. You've worked way too hard to risk losing your flight instructor certificate based on an unfamiliar instructor's performance. So don't do it.
Regarding your signoff of this student, you did nothing wrong according to the federal aviation regulations (although the student shouldn't have flown solo with an expired 90-day endorsement). Unfortunately, the student now seems to be behaving in a way that may not be responsible. So here's what I suggest you do.
First, there's no convenient way for you to rescind a solo endorsement other than tearing it out of his logbook. Sure, you could call the FAA and report him, but there is no solid evidence suggesting that he really did anything wrong. The only reasonable thing to do is what you should have done when you first accepted responsibility for this student, and that's supervise him.
Yes, you need to more closely supervise the activities of this student. Students do not have a right to hop in an airplane unsupervised until they obtain their private pilot certificate. That's why I suggest all instructors supervise student pilots just like a mother hen. I do this by placing a list of solo requirements in the logbook of each student I solo. Some of these requirements require the student to notify me at least 24 hours before every solo flight to obtain my permission for that flight, obtain a weather briefing before the flight, establish wind requirements, honor minimum visibility and cloud restrictions, wind restrictions, and so on.
I suggest that you create your own list of solo flight restrictions, print them on a label, and stick them in the student's logbook. Have the student sign the bottom of the list saying that he understands them and will comply with them. Any infraction of these requirements will lead to his or her being immediately grounded.
One of the biggest mistakes new flight instructors make is in failing to properly supervise their students. Don't let this happen to you-again.
Slip but don't skid
Dear Rod,
I've found that slips are fairly easy to do, fun, and can allow adjustment in glideslope after the flaps have been fully extended. I learned slip technique as the first part of my training for landing. At that time, in addition to forward slips, my instructor also taught me turning slips. However, he cautioned that the tail must always be kept to the inside of the turn (opposite rudder) so as not to skid. He took me up to altitude and demonstrated the ramifications of a tail outside (skid) condition versus a tail inside during a turn. The result with the tail outside (skid) was dramatic. When we stalled with tail inside, the results were no worse than any other stall, but with the tail outside (skid), a roll and spin ensued.
Lately, I've been hearing that we should never, ever cross-control during turns. Is my recollection about this incorrect? If I'm wrong, I will stop doing these immediately.
Roger
Greetings Roger:
You are absolutely correct that the tail should always be inside the turn when performing a turning slip. Otherwise you wouldn't be slipping, you'd be skidding. Slips generate more benign stall characteristics than skids. In fact, a stall while slipping often tends to level the wings of the airplane, instead of having the outside wing go over the top, as in a spin.
Since slipping requires that the controls be crossed, there's nothing wrong with doing this as long as the cross-control results in a slip and not a skid. The important thing to be aware of in a slipping turn is that the turn radius is often a lot larger for a given angle of bank. In other words, if you were making a turning slip from base to final, it's possible to overshoot final if you're not careful. Be sure to follow the recommendations in your pilot's operating handbook. Some manufacturers place a time restriction on slips to prevent unporting a fuel tank. Extended slipping is most likely to happen when making slipping turns in the pattern.
Rod Machado is a flight instructor, author, educator, and speaker. A pilot for 32 years and a CFI for 28, he has flown more than 8,000 hours and owns a Beech A36 Bonanza. Visit his Web site.
