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Old 02-27-2009, 12:04 PM
  #23  
RVSM Certified
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Joined APC: Feb 2009
Posts: 52
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Originally Posted by Cubdriver View Post
Let me jump right to the useful part of your last query so you can get started working on chair flying.
That was an outstanding post! Thank you. The basic 100,000 ft view where I can fill in the details later, once I get my hands on a POH. Not sure yet whether I will want to train in a low-wing or high-wing trainer and from the looks of things on this board, I really need to go get an introductory flight in something like a Citab or Decath maybe, as several here tend to think that doing your initial flight training in a tail-wheel, is optimal for the SOTP experience. However, I will get over to the Palo Alto airport and get a POH once, I know what I'm training with.

One of the things I remember when someone took me up in my very first low-perf aircraft ride in the Tiger Grumman, was the associated fear. Now, don't get me wrong, that day will live forever in my mind as being one of the best days of my life - ever - but - there was still fear. That was more than 25 years ago and while I still remember all the fun I had that day flying the aircraft, I still remember the fear. So, what was the fear all about? Simply not knowing whether or not the aircraft was going to fall out of the sky, because of something I might have done - regardless of the fact that a CFI was sitting in the left seat.

He let me handle the aircraft's yoke, telling me what to do at every step. Yet, there was this gripping fear that I would stall the aircraft, or worse, put the aircraft into an unrecoverable spin. The other fear was not knowing how he would get the aircraft back on the ground safely. Now, he's the CFI and I'm sitting there worrying about getting back on the ground "safely." That was a completely irrational fear but took over my thinking at one point. Still, the other half of my brain was having a blast - loving every minute of it.

This is why I ask these questions today. Not because I "fear" the aircraft falling out of the sky anymore, but because I know that learning bad habits early in your training [with anything in life] will result in blowing-up margins of error and THAT is what I fear the most - needlessly increasing margins of error to the point where mistakes are bound to happen.

So, I'm trying to squeeze the margins down to minute levels early in my training phase, by removing probable causes of "bad piloting habits" that could creep into my training because my thinking is cluttered with the "fear" of what the aircraft might do, when and if I do "X" or "Y" or "Z" during the course of a routine flight. And, the only way to squeeze those margins down and remove the "fear" of probable cause of failure, is to know what to expect from my aircraft whenever I give it control inputs during a dual lesson, so that I can focus more on connecting the dots of the bigger picture that my Instructor is trying to show me that day.

If I go up to have a lesson and fail to connect the strategic dots because my brain is still struggling with the "why", then it does not matter that I faked my way through the physical "how" simply because I knew the instructor was there to save my butt by bailing me out of my inability to execute what I knew to be the right thing to do.

I remember my one and only Tiger Grumman training day. And, I also remember how much I struggled with the "why," never really understanding the "how" and the connection that had to the 'fear' of not knowing what to expect the aircraft to do "next." All because I never had a conceptual foundation properly framed in the brain for what those control inputs should cause the aircraft to look like "next."

In my brain, the "next" question is all I care about, because it is what happens "next" that determines your fate. And, what happens next is determined by what you do "now." Now, is determine by your behavior/actions [control inputs] and behavior is determined by what you know. And, to know is to understand the "why."

This is how my brain works. To try and learn to fly outside of that framework, is just asking for trouble down the road. It is like intentionally running head first into a brick wall. That's why I need lots of front-loaded framework, so that my behavior can actual have a substantial cognitive point of reference.

And, we wonder why we don't remember any of our high school or college chemistry, history, mathematics, etc. It is because we've created for ourselves institutions of learning that don't tackle the problem of properly instantiating substantive points of cognitive reference at any level of depth inside the brain. No relevant context drilled into a framework of purpose based on "why."

Nobody asks why anymore in our society - nobody seems to care anymore about why. Thus, we often times run off half-cocked, flirting with the dangers we don't even know exist - all because we don't really understand what we are doing or "why" we are doing it.

I can give plenty of examples in society by starting with the average Driving Behavior on the roads of America, but I think you get my point by now.

Great post - thanks!
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