Originally Posted by
FlyJSH
Sky said he had no way of blocking the glass to train partial (non glass) panel, I offered two suggestion how he could. He then went on to say he had never been taught how to use and E6B. I gave him a site that could teach him. Finally, he said he never learned stellar navigation. I offered him emergency stellar navigation information. I think those are good additions to the PTS.
My real concern was that he seems to lack the initiative or imagination to teach anything out of the ordinary or beyond what his instructor had taught him.
Funny, but when I got my private I learned crazy things called pilotage and dead reckoning. While not nearly as accurate as a GPS, they can still get on in the ballpark. If this guy were to lose all electrics, he could still use those forms of navigation..... assuming he had charts and positional awareness. Heck, if he carried a hand held radio, he could even get close enough to a class C airport to get a no gyro approach.
And as for the standard rate turn, next time you take him up, why not make note of the bank angle of a standard rate turn (if I remember correctly, it is about 15 degrees at 120 kias). Again, bank angle is not as accurate, but it is pretty close.
I guess I just like to teach there is no unresolvable problem. When things fail, go to your backups. When they fail, try something else. Either that, or just put a plastic Jesus on your dash and hope for the best.
I guess that you and I are just trying to make different points.
Your point: There are things that can be done with only a handful of instruments and no navigational information. Yea, I get it.
My point: Aircraft manufacturers are placing all their faith into the flat screens.
My aim is
not to discuss the details of flight instruction but to explore the direction that aviation is taking.
If you really want to exchange instruction ideas then we could. There is a sticker kit that is specially designed to cover parts of the glass panel to simulate partial failures of your avionics.
Where should an instructor put the focus of training? In a glass plane the big risk comes from getting lost in the automation. Why lean antiquated skills like stellar navigation that are highly unlikely that you will ever use?
If your lighter doesn't work break out the matches. If you are out of matches you can use the cigarette lighter in your car. If that has been removed I suppose you could rub two sticks together and make fire. However, that takes a long time to learn how to do that. It is much easier just to carry an extra lighter.
SKyhigh