A whack in the head

One way to find a good instructor is to ask other students. Another is to ask a designated pilot examiner. A DPE can rate instructors based on how well their students are trained. A significant difference between good and not-so-good instructors is that an ineffective instructor is a commander who issues orders. He demonstrates a maneuver and then has the student repeat it over and over until the student gets it right. The best instructors, though, analyze the needs of their students and modify their teaching methods accordingly.

Consider, for example, a student having difficulty judging height above the runway when landing. Some instructors simply have the student perform circuits and bumps until the student finally gets it right. Such learning by rote, though, can be frustrating and take excess time.

An innovative instructor, however, understands that a student experiences only a few seconds of flaring during each landing attempt. Recognizing that a student might need more exposure to flaring than this, the instructor can create an exercise to give him more practice. This is done by having the student fly the aircraft in slow flight along the length of the runway with the tires only inches above the surface. With the instructor controlling power, the student has substantially more time to develop a sense of flare height. And rather than being regarded as mistakes, each inadvertent touchdown improves the student’s perception of aircraft height above the runway.

Some instructors teach stalls in the time honored tradition of raising the nose until it points toward the sun at high noon. Such a nose-high attitude, however, can cause a student to develop an understandable fear of stalls. The instructor needs to consider that it is more important to teach stall recovery than entry. Recognizing that steep entries can be frightening to new pilots, the enterprising instructor should have his student retard the throttle and reduce airspeed while maintaining altitude. The aircraft eventually stalls in a more realistic and docile manner.

Some instructors seem more interested in having the airplane flown perfectly than allowing the student to learn by making and then profiting from mistakes, which for many of us is the best way to learn. A student should consider that it is his role to learn and his instructor’s job to teach. If the student becomes frustrated by a lack of progress, he should speak up and ask the CFI to adopt a new approach to the problem. If the instructor does not, it might be time to change instructors.

As an 18 year old CFI in 1956, I tried to be innovative, but my creative efforts sometimes backfired. Although unaware of it, Tom Paris was my first student. Because of his innate ability, Tom made remarkable progress and was ready to solo after only seven hours of dual in a taildragger. His landings were squeakers. The problem was that Tom never demonstrated that he could recover from a bounce—because he never bounced.

Before I could allow him to solo, I had to determine that Tom could recover from a botched landing. So, I told him that I would bounce the Aeronca Champ during the next few landings and have him execute the recoveries. As I expected, he recovered easily from each bounce. I then advised the tower controller that I was releasing a student for first solo and climbed out of the airplane. This apparently got the controller’s attention. He later told me that he had never seen such horrendous landings by someone about to solo. This is why he alerted the local FAA inspector after Tom had been cleared for takeoff.

The familiar gray Ford with federal markings pulled up just as Tom made his first landing. It was a greaser. So was the second. And the third.

I also learned to fly in a taildragger where the instructor sat behind the student. My first instructor, Mike Walters, had his own method of teaching. He would express displeasure with my performance by whacking me on the back of the head with a rolled up sectional. At the end of each painful lesson, he would replace the limp chart with a new one in preparation for his next student. Mike’s students measured their progress not by his praise—there never was any—but by how long his chart would last.

BarrySchiff.com