 Thank you to the fast team National Resource Center to the FA production studios for another exciting really exciting sun and fun. Just a couple of housekeeping items before we get started. In case we need to evacuate the building today for any reason you'll hear someone shout or yell easy Victor. That means basically get out of your chairs go back out through the door you just came in and kind of mass out there so at least we can kind of get a head count make sure everybody got out of the building. Again that was easy Victor. Number two in case you got these little items with you make sure they're shut off because the first one that goes off during the presentation will have you stand up here and give us a ten minute lecture on aerodynamics of helicopters. And without any further ado I'd like to introduce our first guest. Now what I did before we started here as I asked him something is I asked him the question I said if there's anything you would like to do that you haven't done yet what would it be and he said I'd like to take one or two trips in orbit around the world that way I'd have a chance to look at the earth from a higher perspective and look at everything that he could see and the reason I asked him that will be very plain in just a moment. Our next presenter was the US Aviation Safety Counselor for 2004 the Orlando FISDO CFI for 2005. He worked with the FAA for 27 years and was assigned to Fairbanks and Tampa FISDOs regional office in Atlanta and headquarters in Washington DC. He was a senior instructor with the FAA pilot examiner standardizations team. He lived in fluent Alaska for four years an active member of the Civil Air Patrol for 54 past wing commander a member of the AOPA a master CFI a former FBO chief flight instructor designated a poly examiner in land and sea planes. He holds an ATP certificate with over 14,000 hours of flying time and everything from hot air balloons to multi-engine jets. Currently he is a training manager for airline transport professionals based in Jacksonville Florida. What a resume. We should all hope someday to aspire to that level to be a mentor to those around us. His topic today is when to solo a student and without any more delay let's call Walt Shamill out here. Thank you very much Fred. Wow what an introduction. As I was listening to that I just realized I'm one of those guys that can't hold a job very long. Well let's talk about soloing a student. We always remember that flight as long as we live we'll remember that solo flight but how did our instructor get us to that point? And it's changed a lot. When I was a student pilot it was more like fly around the traffic pattern until you can hit the runway successfully three times in a row and you've soloed. Now look at all the requirements the FAA has for training before you can solo and let's talk about that. We've got a couple of cases here that came out of the NTSB webpage and here's one while performing a full stop landing the solo student pilot's improper flare resulted in a bounced landing and we've had those during the recovery the airplane began to porpoise. Well I would assume that it was the improper recovery collapsing the airplane's nose landing gear and damaging the firewall and when that firewall's damage is now an accident. Well I'm sure it was exciting for the student pilot at the time but here's another one a student pilot was performing touch and goes on a 5,000 foot long runway 100 feet wide asphalt can't hardly miss that the winds were stronger than forecast yet the pilot elected to perform approaches at the airport anyway. What about instructor supervision on the second touch and go the student pilot stated he encountered a gust of wind and lost control of the airplane. The airplane exited the right side of the runway and impacted the terrain in a dirt field resulting in damage to the airplane's firewall again. According to the airfield's automated weather report winds at the time of the accident were 330 degrees 14 knots gusting to 22. A review of the student pilot's logbook revealed that he was endorsed for solo flight with a maximum crosswind of 7 knots and it was far in excess of that. He wasn't complying with his instructor's limitations. In part 61 the FAA tells the instructor that the student must be safe and proficient in this laundry list of maneuvers that we'll talk about in a minute. Safe and proficient I find that's kind of interesting because for a private pilot or a commercial pilot or an ATP pilot they only have to meet the standards of the PTS but a student pilot has to be safe and proficient. I kind of look as proficient being above the standards not below it and as a student really proficient before they solo and there's very little guidelines other than the abstract safe and proficient. Let's take a look at for a single-engine airplane because most of the pilots out there are flying that for initial solo that the first thing that the FAA requires that we teach them to make sure that all the paperwork is there and they've got the POH and they know how to do a weight in balance and the airplane's airworthy. Now we always laugh a little bit about that. What are the airworthiness requirements? It's not just well the tires aren't flat. The student pilot has to know that the airplane they go out to get is airworthy. Do we teach the procedure of going through all of the books and requirements? And they've got to get the weather information. It isn't satisfactory that this student simply learns from the instructor whether it's OK, let's go. Now they've got to get a weather briefing and determine what it's within as we just read that second example within their limitations to go. And can they operate in the national airspace? Are they going to stay in the traffic pattern? Is it G airspace? Is it E airspace? Is it D airspace? What are the VFR minimums? I fly with flight instructors. And on takeoff we'll be going through 4,000 feet climbing out into the training area. And I'll say, what's your VFR minimums? And a flight instructor looks at me and he says, what airspace are we in? Don't you know? If you don't know what airspace we're in, you probably shouldn't be here. We need to brief the entire flight with our student until they learn the procedure. And then the student needs to brief the flight to us. So we get to see that the gears up here are working. Performance and limitations of the airplane. Does our student know how to go into the charts and determine that the airplane's capability is within the weight and balance? It's within the density altitude requirements? That they know how the airplane is going to perform under these exact conditions? And did you solo in a two-place airplane? Did the instructor, when they got out, explain the differences in performance of the airplane? Or did they just get out and say, go make three? Because if you flew one of those Cessna 150s, or an erotic a champ, but any of the small airplanes without a lot of power and you throw 200 pounds out of that airplane, it flies sideways. It floats a lot longer. It takes off a lot quicker, climbs faster. Does a student expect that, or did they expect the way it slowly climbed out with that instructor on board? Operation of systems. We've had students run out of fuel on solo. And they didn't know how to switch tanks. They didn't know to check. And there was one, it's always funny to talk about it after, never during the situation. But this happened back in the 60s. An instructor soloed a student out of the Van Nuys, California airport, Sunday morning, right after sunup, no winds, perfect time to solo. The instructor went out and did three landings with the student. Great, got out of the airplane and said, go make three. On takeoff, at about 400 feet, the engine quit. The pilot did what he was supposed to do. He set up a glide. He's too low to go through the emergency restart procedures. He puts it down on a residential street, totals the airplane, damages a couple of cars, walks away from it, unscratched, out of fuel. An instructor would take an airplane with very little fuel in it, not check the gauges, not check the tanks, not confirm anything, and then go out and fly. It's a good thing he didn't do one more, isn't it? Because if he didn't do one more, there'd have been two people in that airplane. How about aeromedical factors? Yes? Before we can solo our student, we have to go through all of those aeromedical factors that are listed in the POH correction in the PTS, and we have to go through all those that are listed in the pilot's handbook of aeronautical knowledge. Does our student know that they have to be medically acceptable before they get in the airplane? Now, we all carry medical certificates with us, and it's just a piece of paper. If you're a glider pilot or a balloon pilot, you don't need a medical certificate. But before every flight, you have to analyze yourself and say, I am medically safe to fly. Well, now, wait a minute, we all do that. If we're sick, even though we've got a medical certificate in our pocket, we don't meet the medical standards. Get over whatever the problem is and then go fly. And we spend a lot of time teaching our students the aeromedical factors to see that they're a safe pilot. And we never talk about the passengers. Those passengers have to meet the same aeromedical standards we do. Otherwise, they could be injured in that flight. And I know nobody's ever taken a passenger up with a severe head cold and their heads all stopped up. And in flight, they start to complain about the problems because they didn't tell us they were sick. And the pre-flight inspection. Outside, we're going to have a pre-flight contest. Who wins it? Every year, the private pilot that got their certificate yesterday, they know how to pre-flight an airplane. I hate to say this, folks, but who is the worst pre-flighter of an airplane? You're looking at one of them, a flight instructor. They always do poorly on the pre-flight contest. And yet, we're the ones that teach it to others. It's more to it than just seeing that we got three tires that aren't flat and a propeller up in front. And hopefully, that everything else holds together. I did have some fun. And this was a commercial pilot. He's going out to fly a 172. Now, he's been in multi-engine airplanes for about three months. And he has very little single engine time. And he's getting ready to go. I said, which one are you taking? And he told me the N number. And I said, don't forget to check the Jesus nut before you go. He goes out to the airplane. I can see him in the window. He gets in the airplane. He starts looking at the book. And gee, this guy's really doing a good pre-flight. When he finally comes back in 30 minutes later, he tells me, I can't find the Jesus nut. And I looked at him and I said, well, I don't know where it is either. But when it comes off the pilot, usually yells Jesus. And he just looked at me, OK, we'll just go on. But did he really know how to pre-flight an airplane? Was he that proficient with the airplane, even though he's a commercial pilot, multi-engine first going for a single-engine add-on? Should the instructor have been with him to do that? Does that same instructor just tell a student to go out? Or do we kind of monitor the student's activities? We don't have to stand over their shoulder. But we go back to, when you do a pre-flight inspection, is the student safe and proficient? That's what we have to determine as instructors. Cockpit management. Oh, that's a lot of fun, isn't it? You start to do the cross-country. And as soon as you get away from the airport, out comes the chart. And then we start unfolding it. And pretty soon, we must be IFR, because nobody can see out the front end of the airplane, the charts in the way. Did we fold that chart appropriate to get started? Make it simple. Did we organize our materials in the airplane? Because that's what the FAA says. Everything that we don't need as a tool for this flight needs to be secured in the back. We only carry what we need for the flight. When we get into cockpit management, did we secure everything? Or is it just thrown on the back seat? And I see a lot of people do that. Did the student pilot put everything under a net in that Cessna? Well, there's no net. Well, how are you going to secure all this stuff? Put it in a bag, put it on the back seat, run the seat belt through the handles on your bag so it stays there. I remember a instructor back in the late 60s when they went to the OmniVision. They put a window in the back of that 172. Now, this instructor was known to carry a briefcase. And all this time, the habit was to slide the briefcase into the baggage compartment, close the door, and go fly with the student. Well, the student performing stalls got a little excited. And when the airplane stalled, shoved the nose down and caught the instructor off guard. By the time the instructor reached up and pulled the controls back, you could hear this whoosh in the airplane. The instructor turned around and looked at the back window. And there was a hole about that big. And ever since then, I have secured my briefcase. And that window cost me $62.50, because it was my airplane to replace that window, try to replace it for that price today. And how about engine starting? Do you pump the throttle twice and hit the starter? Or do you know all of the things that we need to consider before we start? Does our student know what to do if we get an induction fire? Does the student know what to do if we get an after fire? Now, I used the proper terminology. After fire means it's coming out the tailpipe. A backfire means it's coming out the front end of the engine. It's coming back through the induction system. And twice last year, we've had students start the airplane, get an induction fire, and bail out. And the airplane was on fire. And all they had to do was keep cranking the engine and suck that fire right back in. But they got all excited when they heard this noise and they knew it was a fire. What kind? Do they know starter limits? A lot of the airplanes today, you just don't get in there and turn the key and start the engine. Now, you've got so many seconds, and then you've got to stop. And you've got to let the starter cool down. And then you get so many seconds. And after the second or third try, 30 minute wait. What does the POH say for your airplane? And how about taxi and run up? The student, when they taxi out, are they using the flight controls for wind situations? Did the instructor ingrain that habit with them? And if there's no wind, to give them a wind, so they start using the flight controls while they're taxiing? I see a lot of Cessna 172s. Well, I see a lot of high wing airplanes. Taxi out, it's windy, 25 knots. And the ailerons are centered. The elevator's centered. And when the wind hits it and they tip up on a wing tip and ding the prop, they don't understand what happened. When you get up in the run up area, I see this a lot at the Jacksonville Airport up at Craig. The wind is out of the southwest. The runway points to the southwest. So they line up with the nose of the airplane into the wind because their instructor said, you always run up with the nose into the wind because of two reasons. One is you line up into the wind for engine cooling. And the other one is ground stability because these high wing airplanes don't like to be turned sideways to the wind. Great. But now, where's the tail? The tail is blowing all of that air across the taxiway. And now I can't taxi behind this guy because he's doing a run up and he's throwing sand and rocks and everything else across the taxiway. I tell my student, put your tail into the grass and do your run up. If you can't put your tail into the grass in this situation, you can't tell ground control. You need to run up someplace else where you can put the nose into the wind but not all that prop blast across the taxiway. Because how long is the student going to be doing this? And of course, we've got jets up there and they're going to taxi right past this airplane. And you don't want sand going in those engines either. Does the student know what they're doing when they do a run up or are they blindly following the checklist? One of the questions I like to ask at all certificate levels is when they get down through to the vacuum gauge and I said, what's the requirements? And they give me the requirements for the vacuum gauge in each one of the airplanes. Normal operation. And I said, OK, what if it's outside that range? What does it mean? And that's good for a 10 minute dissertation on how the vacuum system works and the regulators and the filters and the pumps. Wonderful. You're a mechanic. I want the answer as a pilot. What does it mean to you as a pilot? And this is all it means. We can either go IFR if it's normal operation and if it's not in normal operation, we can't go IFR. We're limited to VFR and we can go VFR day or night. That's all it means if that vacuum gauge is out of limits. Now, if you want to take it back and get it fixed, that's fine too. But you can't fly instruments if it's out of range and that's the answer I want. It says in there to solo normal and crosswind takeoff and landings. Now, that seems pretty explicit to me. And what's the standard again? Safe and proficient. All right. So we know what a normal landing is, right? It's not a short field and it's not a soft field. So it must be a normal. Crosswind. We only fly in the morning. There's never any wind. I want to solo you in the morning so there's no crosswind at all. Can I do that as an instructor? Absolutely not. They have to demonstrate their proficient in crosswinds. I was flying with a private pilot in a 172. Four-knot crosswind, steady. Landed the 172. The wind was from the left side. Landed the 172 and then it got interesting. Never quite figured out how they managed to get into this situation. But the pilot rolled it up on the left main gear. And normally they arc into the wind, but not this time. They arc downwind. We're at 65 knots. We've got full flaps down. And as the airplane is coming up to the edge of the runway, that's as far as I'm going to let you go. Full power, grab the controls, put the nose up, and we're leaped into the air. Turned parallel to the runway, got the flaps up, got the climb established. And I said, what are you doing over there? And the answer I got, I can't land on a crosswind. I never could. And this is a private pilot, practical test. How did you solo if you couldn't demonstrate crosswind proficiency? And then guess what? When you do the solo cross country, the initial cross country training, it says crosswinds again. How did you get into your cross countries if you couldn't land crosswind? And it just happens it was an accident that we had the crosswind on the runway. Because I usually use the other airport in the runway. The wind was about 10 degrees off the nose, probably would have passed at that point for the landing and the takeoff. Stabilized descents, there's those FAA buzzwords. What do we mean by a stabilized descent? Well, the FAA defines that as being established in the configuration, air speed, power settings, and everything that we can descend to the runway with minimum control input. It doesn't say none, it says minimum. But if you're having to push and pull and all the controls and the power's going up and down and up and down, it's not stabilized. Go around. And the sooner we teach the decision to go around, the safer our students are going to be. The FAA also throws one more thing in there that says if the descent rate is over 1,000 feet per minute and it's not being done deliberately by the pilot, it's unstable. Go around. Straighten level turns, straighten level flight. Are we teaching instruments today, or are we teaching flying by pitch attitude? I fly with a lot of people that come off of 130 hours of instrument flight. And when I say turn left to this heading, they don't look. When I say maintain this heading and this altitude and this air speed, they're flying by instruments. They don't look out. So now we've got to go back and break some bad habits that we've developed and go back to looking outside. Does the student make a level turn? And which one do we teach first as instructors? A medium bank turn. So all the forces are balanced out. So when we put it in that 30 degree bank turn and in a 172, it's easy. When the wing struts parallel to the ground, you're in a 30 degree bank and it stays there. Flight number one, we demonstrate to the student how safe that airplane is. That's supposed to be climbs, not limbs. So we've got climbs and climbing turns. Is the student safe and proficient? Can they fly the airplane by pitch attitude and adjust the attitude as necessary? Are they all over the countryside trying to figure out how to maintain a constant air speed climb? And I find even experienced pilots, they come off of instruments and the nose is going like this all the time. Hold it steady. How about airport traffic patterns? Does the student know the traffic pattern for the airport? I find a lot of people that just enter a left hand traffic pattern. Did you look because this airport has a right hand traffic pattern? Look in that airport facilities directory. See what about that airport? Isn't that some of the things that we're supposed to do? You know, if we go back to 91-103, it says we got to do all this pre-flight action for a cross country or not in the vicinity of an airport. Great. Of course, we know what not in the vicinity of an airport means, don't we? Yeah, it's when you leave the traffic pattern. So if the student leaves the traffic pattern to go out to the practice area and comes back to the airport, they have to meet 91-103 for pre-flight action. Did they do that? Did they check the weather? Radio communications. Once again, I work with a lot of CFIs. And the first time, I guess the instructor's been flying with them a lot or they've got somebody else doing radio procedures because I really hear some strange things. And at Craig, you are going to get a lot of service from the tower. You know, that's help with a capital H. Student calls the ground control and says seminal, so and so and so, ready to taxi. And the tower says, okay, that's all you're gonna get. Next thing I get is this kind of funny look from the student and says, what does he mean by okay? And I said, well, you know, we're supposed to teach who we are, where we are and what we want to do and throw in at us. Did you do that? No, well, then you better do it or you're gonna sit here all day and this thing is costing you a lot of money to sit here and idle while you communicate with the tower. Well, usually two or three communications and now we finally got taxi instructions to the active runway. Would make it a lot simpler if we did it right the first time. Teach it right. And of course, ATC light signals. Now, all of us remember those light signals. 91, 125 or do we? Let's see. I remember we got a flashing white light which means something to go back on the ramp and we got an alternating red and green light which means watch out, there's something going around you that's maybe dangerous. And the rest of them I'm not sure about. AOPA back in the early 70s had a little story. And I've, I use that every class. And I want to modify the story a little bit that the individual is going from Knoxville, Tennessee to Miami. Now the pilot intended to leave early in the morning but because of job and so forth, they didn't leave until six o'clock at night. They're in a session of 1.50 and are not making a lot of ground speed. As they go past Lakeland, it's two o'clock in the morning. They call the tower and says I'm too tired to go on, I'm gonna land at Lakeland. So the tower guy says, okay, we're using runway nine and her left base for runway nine, you're cleared to land. And then he starts talking to the pilot. What's he doing? Keeping him awake. The pilot lands and then the tower says, I'll give you vectors to the ramp. You know, that's progressive taxi, right? So he gets over to the ramp area and he says, all right, that's a transient parking. Find a set of ropes, tie it down. You see the light on the fence? Yeah, there's a gate there. Go through the gate and there's a telephone on the wall. A lot of small airports have those and inside the telephone box lid, you'll find the taxi cab number and I'd recommend the hotel, best Western down the street about two miles. Well, gee, thanks a lot. Pulls into the slot, shuts down, gets his suitcases out, gets the windshield covers out, fixes all the seat belts like we're taught to do, automatic by rote, puts the control locks in, locks the door, ties the airplane down, headed for the gate. At this hour of the morning, there's almost more drag than thrust and suddenly he's surrounded by a steady red light. And we know that means stop. And he stopped and he turned to the tower and he got a flashing white light which we know means return to the starting point. So he walks back to his airplane and there's his two suitcases. He picks up his two suitcases and he gets a green light from the tower and that's when I stop and say, what kind of green light did he get from the tower? And you know what I get most of the time? Steady green. No, no, no. That's for takeoff. A flashing green means cleared to taxi. Does our student know the light signals in case that radio quits? Collision avoidance. That's what it says. Wind shear avoidance. Wake turbulence avoidance. Not what to do when you get in it but to have enough knowledge to stay out of it so we don't have to use our superior skill once we're in it. Descent and turns in various configurations. What are we talking about there? We're talking about going from no flaps to full flaps and being able to control the airplane, pitch attitude, holding that airspeed. Speed control. And the rig says from cruise to slow flight. Now there's one we have a lot of fun with because what is slow flight? If you read the book, the FAA says slow flight is anything less than cruise. But then for the PTS requirements, we define slow flight is just above the buffet. Minus zero plus five knots right above the buffet. That's for a commercial pilot. Speed control. Can they control the pitch and control the speed that we want? And if it's within the capability of the airplane, can they climb and descend and turn? And then we get into stalls. Oh, that's a lot of fun. Don't you wish you had a dollar for every stall you've practiced in your flying life? Power on stalls. Private pilot takes it to a full stall. That means the wheels all the way back against the locks before we recover and a commercial pilot takes it to the buffet. And I find that with power on stalls, a lot of time people don't know how to properly perform the stall. And I get all kinds of responses from pilots that have just gone through an intensive training program. And they'll set up a stall and I kind of wonder what this is. What's the bank requirement for power on stall? Not to exceed 20 degrees. Well, what are you doing over at 30? Well, that's what my instructor taught me to do. Are the instructors teaching out of the PTS, are we really as proficient in the changes? And then as soon as we know the PTS, what happens? Yeah, they change it. And we just changed the flight instructor PTS, change number one and two is in there. And I'm going back, I think they recently changed the instrument PTS. So where's the only way we can find out if it's current, the book that we have? Well, you have to go to AFS 630 in your search engine and it'll go right to regulatory support division and click on practical test standards and there they are. It's free. You never have to buy another one, but this is the voice of experience. Don't do what I did because I wanted a copy so I punched print. Do you know how many pages is that PTS? Yeah, go through and just print out the pages you need. And right in the beginning of the PTS it tells you what changes were made. In some cases like the flight instructor multi-engine PTS, change one and change two, change one was one word. Change two was one word. I just make a pen and ink change in the book and right up in the front change one and change two included and proceed on. And I brought my PTS up to date. You don't have to buy another one. Power off stalls. Wow, I get all kinds of responses from that. And when we do the stall, I end up with the nose pitched way up like this, which is totally, totally abnormal. A nice smooth deceleration into the stall, let the airplane do the work, not the pilot. How about emergency procedures and equipment malfunctions in the airplane? And we're not talking about the fact that the pump on the coffee pot doesn't work anymore. But we're talking about all of the systems of the airplane. I fly airplanes with GPS. And the minute I say, let's go back to the airport, here's the finger, punching buttons. And I said, stop, GPS just failed. Now let's go to the airport. How do I do that? Well, tune in the VOR. There's a VOR on the airport, go straight to it. What's the VOR frequency? And again, these are flight instructor applicants that I'm working with. Have we gotten to the point where we don't know how to go back and use some of the basic tools? Now I know the FAA administrator put a letter out that said in 2010 we're gonna shut down all land-based navigation systems. Don't get excited, the FAA has never done anything on time. Here it is 2009, they're not shutting them down. But look at how many NDBs are out there today. And we are going to 100% GPS. Because you pay for it once, you shoot it up into orbit and that's it. The FAA doesn't have to rent land, they don't have to build the facilities anymore and they don't have to have somebody maintain them because it's all done up there. And how long do those satellites last? 10, 15, 20 years? No maintenance. So we can reduce operating costs within the FAA by going to GPS. Now you know what GPS stands for, right? Goof-proof system. And then some goof comes along and proves that we're wrong, that they can actually make the whole thing fail very quickly. I do live by Murphy's rules of combat. That when the flight is going according to flight plan, it's an ATC ambush. Stand by for a change. And if you can't make that change in the GPS, we're gonna have another problem. So are we really making sure that our student is proficient in the equipment? Do they need to know everything about the GPS every page before they solo? No, but they certainly should know the basics and how to go direct back to the airport if they need to and how to enter the airport symbol. How about ground reference maneuvers? That's what the reg says. Safe and proficient in ground reference maneuvers, plural. Which ones? Those three. Turns around a point, S turns and rectangular course. Which one of these are you going to teach first? The simplest, the building block process. We're gonna teach turns around a point first. Then we're gonna go to the next complex maneuver, which is S turns. And then we're going to go to the most complex, which is turns a rectangular course. But isn't it interesting in the PTS, it's rectangular course S turns and turns around a point. And that's exactly the way it's written in the airplane flying handbook. Yet you're going to teach turns around a point first. Rectangular course is not a traffic pattern. I get that from a lot of instructors coming through. They said, well, that's a traffic pattern. No, it's not. It leads into it, and that's what the FA book says, but it's not a traffic pattern. The traffic pattern then becomes more complex than a rectangular course. Approaches with an engine failure. So we're gonna teach our student safety, proficiency in the airplane for various situations. Partial power loss to total power loss. Does our student know to fly that 172, which engine you got in it? If it's a 150-horse engine, you're gonna need at least 2,050 RPM to maintain altitude. And if you've got less than that, you can't maintain altitude, so you're gonna have a slow descent. Find a place to land. If you can make it to an airport, great, but don't stretch it. It's far better to enter a traffic pattern to a field and successfully land in it. So we wanna go all the way to a simulated engine failure and see that our student knows what to do at altitude, the emergency procedures and so forth. And one of the, usually the first thing I get is, set up a glide, find a place to land, declare an emergency. And I usually come back with, who are you gonna call? I don't know. Well, that's interesting. So you're gonna call Unicom, or you're gonna call Approach Control, or you're gonna call Center, you're gonna call the Tower. And then what help are they going to give you? I'm not anti-ATC at all. But fly the airplane first. I've investigated accidents. Or I've found the pilot in the cockpit with a microphone in his hand. He forgot that the airplane flew on Bernoulli's principle and not Marconi's. And he's so busy talking back and forth, he lost control of the airplane. Uh-oh. Do we really teach slips anymore? Yeah. The regulation says that we have to teach slips both right and left. Doesn't say that in the reg. It says slips. And remember our student has to be safe and proficient. What if the flaps don't work? What if the flaps are jammed at 10 degrees and you're gonna overshoot the landing area and you wanna get down? And we used to teach slips beginning. Didn't have flaps. When you were in an Aronica Champ or a Piper Cub, you had to slip that airplane down. Have we lost some of our ability to fly the airplane? And the last item in there, and I think maybe personally it ought to be further up the list, is go-arounds. And the biggest safety thing about go-around is if you think you got a problem on that landing, go around now because it's too late. Go around. Don't delay it. Don't keep sitting there. I think I can make it. I think I make it. I hope I do this right because now you're beyond that point where you should have made that go-around for maximum safety. So what standards again? Safe and proficient. The standards that you as the instructor set. And I guess here's a statement that we can make to ourselves. I certify, this sounds like a legal requirement, that my student can safely and proficiently perform all the required maneuvers in that list as stated in the regulations without my assistance. No coaching on my side. I gotta start them out. I gotta coach them. And then I have to, if you will, wean the student from the instructor. When they solo, they are pilot in command and they have to exercise that judgment. If my assistance is required, just speaking, then my student is not ready to solo because they didn't see an error that they made. And they need to see that. And no place will you find this statement. That when I send my student out to solo, they have to be able to perform the maneuver safely and proficiently. They have to recognize the mistakes they make and know how to correct it. Because if they don't know how to correct it, then they're just gonna be making the same mistake over and over and over again until they lock it in solid. They have to make that go-no-go decision without any assistance. And that includes an engine failure on takeoff, doesn't it? They have to be able to correlate the information they hear over the radio and visually to the aircraft in the traffic pattern and where they fit. We have a time and a distance requirement. Can they do that? Can they position themselves so when the other airplane takes off, now they can land? Stabilized approach, we talked about that. To a point, back in the early 70s, we stopped teaching the first third is for landing, the second third is to stop, and the third third is for safety. We stopped that because we had a whole bunch of airplanes running off the end of the runway because they figured that they landed with asphalt, they could stop it. Well, three feet from the departure end of the runway is not enough room to stop. So we started approach to a point. And yet, I see in the FAA publications today, first third of the runway to land in. In AOPA's landings that you can take on the internet, and it's a good program. They say the same thing, the first third, the second third, the third third. Teach it right on land on this point. And we keep working at it. And of course, the first time the student says, we're gonna make an approach to that point, they're within two miles of the point. And when they flare, they're within a half a mile of the airport. Okay, that's normal. But until they can land on a point within reason, they don't solo. I remember my instructor, he picked the third centerline stripe on the runway, and he said, if you can't touch down on that third centerline stripe three times in a row, proper pitch attitude and airspeed, you weren't soloing. Gee, I think I had a dent in the runway, kept hitting that point until he was happy. Does the student, can the student determine the wind direction? Do they know where the windsocks are? Do they, what if there's no windsocks? What if it's ripped off? How about a tetrahedron? I get people to read a tetrahedron backwards. Can you execute the landing and stop on the centerline? No place will you find this. But this is what the FAA teaches pilot examiners. If the centerline gets outside, the main gear, the landing and the takeoff is unsap for the test. You gotta stay on the centerline. We don't want them landing off to one side because they get nervous as they get over to the edge of the runway, and then they run out in the grass. Oh, I always like managing energy. You know, when I was a student, they said, keep your airspeed up, control your airspeed. But what is a landing? It's when you run out of airspeed and altitude and ideas all at the same time, and you hope you're over that piece of asphalt. Do we land nose low? We're not supposed to. Anything at Jogo? Do we take it to a full stop, or can we do a touch and go? Half the instructor say full stop. The other half say touch and goes okay. I don't care what you do. I think it's an instructor decision with the student. If they can make a full stop, successfully, under 100% control, then why not do touch and goes? But I leave that up to the individual instructor. There is no single way to do anything as an instructor. We don't want a porpoise up and down the runway. We read one. What's the procedure that if you bounce it, pitch up full power and go around? Don't try to save the landing because what happens? Our student gets 180 degrees out and the nose is coming up and they're pushing down. The nose starts coming down at the same time because it's already correcting itself and you got the wheel forward. Then when you see the nose coming down, you pull the nose up but it's too late. The nose gear hits the ground and now it rebounds into the air and now we start the whole thing over again. I fly sea planes. Yeah, you porpoise a sea plane and if it's a one of those Grumman sea planes, third porpoise, it breaks in half. We don't porpoise airplanes. Land planes, sea planes. Doesn't make any difference. What happens with a student? They bounce it down the runway. They push the wheel forward because they want to stay on the runway and then we know what happens. Can my student maintain positive control throughout the landing without me being nervous, without me saying anything? The number one accident cause always has been and always will be loss of directional control on takeoff or landing. Are we emphasizing that enough with our students? And it's not sufficient to say our student can stay on the pavement but over the center line. Can they maintain that important directional control that we talked about? And do they keep that center line stable? If they look in front, they're all over the runway. They need to look down that center line at a point way out in the distance and head for it. What's a landing but a high speed taxi? Are you landing sideways on the runway because of a crosswind? Are you keeping the longitudinal axis lined up and moving left and right with bank? And yet I've talked to some ATP certificated pilots that tell me you rudder the airplane over to the center line and straighten it out to land it. Holy cow, when did we ever start teaching that? We never did. A student has to have the airplane under positive control all the time. If we have an abnormality, if we have an emergency, can they handle the airplane? Can they take that into stride or do they come apart because they have an emergency? And again, I'm going to simulate emergencies and I want to make sure that they can do it without any assistance from me at all. My student ought to be able to use the radio. It's important that we make our position reports so that other people can hear us. Do you hear people on the radio saying anybody in the traffic pattern check in? Holy cow, I don't know where that came from. But the FAA put a letter out that says stop that. That is total improper radio procedure. Let's see, anybody in the traffic pattern check in. Nobody says a word. Nobody said a word in my airplane because I said don't answer them. Two other airplanes don't have radios. One's got a student in the airplane and they turned the volume down because they didn't want to be bothered. So how many airplanes are still in the traffic pattern and don't make straight ends? Always enter the proper traffic pattern and land. Why? Maximizing safety. Use the proper radio phraseology and make the position reports. One for yourself to get used to that because you're gonna have to do this on a check ride. And the other thing is it helps the other pilots know you're in the traffic pattern. And here I am in the traffic pattern. We report downwind, base leg final, and another airplane calls in and says anybody in the traffic pattern? Well, didn't you listen to all these communications before you call in or did you just change the frequency and start talking? Have I determined that my student's training is complete and documented in the logbook. This is the FAA. You gotta have the paperwork. Do they meet that? Safe and proficient standards to solo. I know there's instructors out there, shame on them. You gotta do the paperwork before you solo your student. And I know the instructors get all involved and they said, will do the paperwork when you come back, go make three solo takeoffs. If the student does that, they're in violation of the regulations, the instructors in violation of the regulations. And the other problem is I don't get so excited about the regulation. I get excited about the insurance company. No insurance on the airplane if you do that. Wow. And of course, there's always that chance that the student could ding the airplane. We hope not. I've never had a student do that yet. Did you brief your student on the different flight characteristics? And we talked about that earlier. Did we do the pre solo test for that, make and model airplane? Or did the student change airplanes? That's a gotcha. Is all the training documented as required in 6187? Do we have all the log books properly filled out? And we know that the FAA gave us an advisory circular, 61-65 echoes the current one, that has examples, not mandatory examples. Did we sign the student pilot certificate? And is it current? You know, it's only good for two years. But the medical's good for five years. And I've had people sign off the student pilot certificate because the medical was on the other side and then suddenly realize, holy cow, we got a problem. And I will supervise every solo flight. That doesn't mean I have to be at the airport, but I have to know that my students flying on this day at this time and I need to check the weather. But I'm not there all the time. Okay, I call the airport and I said, my students coming out with Fred, will you check on it? Make sure everything's okay before they go. Get somebody else to help, but make sure that the student has that direct supervision. Let's talk about another case. The student pilot was practicing touch and goes in calm wind conditions and inadvertently landed to the left side of the runway. During the landing roll, it did not correct back onto the center line and sometimes they do one of these swerves and end up in the ditch on the other side. By the time the pilot was able to bring the airplane to a stop, it had traveled over 900 feet over uneven terrain, nose gear collapsed, substantial damage to the firewall. Seems like every time Cessna particularly gets firewalls. Here's one, a Cessna 150. Piloted by a student pilot impacted trees and terrain during the initial climb from a private strip. Did the pilot know the performance of the airplane? The manufacturer built in only so much performance, you're not gonna get any more out of it no matter what you try. The student pilot was seriously injured and the passenger was fatally injured. Here's a student pilot carrying a passenger on a solo flight. The student pilot and his passenger flew from this airport to a private strip owned by people he knew. According to the student pilot, the passenger performed the accident takeoff while in the right seat because the passenger's another student pilot. The southeasterly grass runway, approximately 2,400 feet long and 100 feet wide was very bumpy. After rotation, the airplane was unable to climb and clear 50 to 60 foot trees at the end of the departure runway. The airplane impacted several trees before it descended, nose first into a residential backyard. The engine compartment fire consumed the airplane and it was extinguished by the first responders that got there. Student pilot carrying passengers, it's happened to me and I thought I was supervising my students real well. What did they do? They went to another airport, picked their friends up, took them for a ride. That's where I caught them because I took a student into that airport and wondered why is everybody standing around here on the ramp and here comes the airplane with a student. Student pilot on a solo cross country flight and landed at his planned destination. During the landing flare, he added a little bit of power to arrest the descent rate, good. But after making a smooth, successful touchdown, he forgot to pull the throttle back to idle. The pilot lost directional control in his attempt to stop the airplane. The airplane veered off the runway and impacted a wall of boulders that had been erected as a barrier. Yeah, we don't do that anymore. What do we do today? We put up a chain-link fence around the airport. That'll catch those airplanes. Following a 4.2 hour cross country, wow. 11 touch and goes and assess now 152. Now you know that's only got four hours of fuel in it, max. On final approach to land, about 400 feet above the ground, the engine quit out of fuel. The pilot was unable to reach the runway and the airplane impacted the trees. When the FAA got there and they checked, there was no fuel in any of the lines, but they did find a little fuel in the tanks. We call that unusable fuel. And here's one, student pilot was going on his first solo cross country as the airplane reached rotation speed that suddenly veered left. Does that sound maybe like P-factor? Proficient, safe. The student pulled the mixture and the carburetor heat and applied brakes. The airplane continued off the left side of the runway, crossed the taxiway and struck a helicopter and came to rest in cement pilings next to the hangar. A fire erupted. The student was able to get out of the airplane, but he stopped to grab the fire extinguisher out of the back and when he turned around, he realized his socks were on fire. That's what he used the fire extinguisher for. You say it's always funny afterwards. And you can go through hundreds of these in the ntsb.gov webpage. And I go through there to pull out some, they're making models specific because I think they're funny. But how did we let our student get into this situation? And we could come up with a lot of stories, but I'm out of time. Say again. Okay, are there any questions at this point? Yes, we have one in the back. He's holding his hand up with the mic. He wants to talk. There's no questions. It's just like my class. After eight hours of lecture, I say, are there any questions? No, we want to go home. And about.