Dear Rod:
I’m a chief pilot at a flight school and we’re considering using a scenario-based training program in our private pilot curriculum. I’m not familiar with these scenario-based training strategies so I’m wondering if you have any insight on the topic. —Mr. C.C.
Greetings Mr. C.C.:
Scenario-based training teaches you practical skills that you’ll use in real-world flying. That’s why private pilot training is, by its very nature, scenario-based training. If you read the FAA’s material on the subject, you’ll see they recommend constructing scenarios such as flying in circles over a house to simulate taking pictures as a means of learning how to avoid distractions and acquire wind correction skills. But isn’t that precisely what turns around a point teach? Aren’t short- and soft-field takeoffs and landings their own real-world scenarios, along with simulated emergency landings, slow flight, and so on? I can’t think of one thing in the private pilot curriculum that needs to be dressed up in the form of a scenario for it to have real-world utility. Private pilot skills are fundamental skills. Scenario-based training is not intended primarily as a means to teach fundamental skills. It’s intended to apply these fundamental skills to higher-order learning once the basics are learned.
I’ve never heard anyone say that scenario-based flight training shortens time in training or reduces the cost. The FAA’s scenario training brochure actually discourages taking students to the practice area to teach them the fundamental skills of flight. Instead, it encourages you to take your students on simulated cross-country flights prior to solo and teach them the fundamental flight maneuvers along the way. Doesn’t that seem like more of a mega-distraction than an aid to learning?
Scenario-based training was primarily an airline-training concept used in sophisticated flight simulators for sophisticated airplanes. If you’re teaching in non-technically advanced airplanes without the use of sophisticated simulators, I suggest you simply concentrate on teaching the basics of flying an airplane safely and resist anything that detracts from that goal.
Dear Rod,
How can a student pilot quickly get on course for a cross-country flight when flying out of a nontowered and a towered airport? Taking off and flying the runway heading invariably means that you are going to have to make a turn at some point and fly to intercept the course line that you need to be on. The problem is how to best accomplish this, and how do you know that you have in fact intercepted the exact course line that you want to get on (and stay on)? —Ken
Greetings Ken:
When departing a nontowered airport, consider beginning the first leg of your planned route from a definable ground reference located a few miles away from the airport. You can easily navigate to this reference visually, and then begin the plotted first leg of your journey precisely on course. The navigation police won’t cite you for beginning your flight at some point other than the departure airport, either.
You can plan the first leg of your route to begin abeam the landing threshold on the downwind leg. You’ll simply make a climbing downwind departure and, when you’re abeam the landing threshold and at least 500 feet above traffic pattern altitude, you can turn in any direction desired to begin your route. You can depart the airport in any direction, climb to at least 500 feet above pattern altitude, then cross over the center of the runway complex to begin the first leg of your flight.
Regarding departing a tower-controlled airport, the same procedures apply. The only difference is that you must coordinate your desires with air traffic control. If your initial cross-country heading is much different from the runway heading, ask the controller for a downwind departure, followed by permission to fly the required heading needed to begin your trip.
How do you know if you’re directly on the initial course of your cross-country flight? Without electronic navigation aids (you’re using dead reckoning and not GPS for a first cross-country flight, right?), the best way to tell is to temporarily turn to the compass course you plotted for that leg. You’ll know you’re established on the desired course if the tail of your airplane points directly at the departure airport (then turn back to the calculated compass heading when done). It might be difficult to see directly behind you. Since most airplanes don’t have side-mounted rearview mirrors, you might have to turn or yaw the airplane to make your best guess at where the tail actually points.
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