Student Pilots... How Can We Reduce The Risks During Solo Flights?????

[welli]

Thanks for the welcome back Bones.

[Russell]

Bones...........have been doing your suggested style for yrs now, first solo, just circuit about do low level runs up the strip...........then land after about 4...5 runs. Works a treat.Yes Llewella, too many guys want to solo too quick, and they try to pressure instructor in different ways to get soloed etc. Even blaming "instructor" for "their perceived slowness" in gaining the skills needed.Hey Russ, me mate soloed in ??? hrs, Christ i can do better than that........i better do better.Hey mate, says Russ........I"ll send YOU solo when I reckon you are up to it.......nothing to do with hrs buddy, so if that"s a problem........see

[Mark Horan]

Russle,you are right, "its a competition thing" . The competition should be how competent are you when you go solo, not how few hrs to get in the seat by yourself.I must admit, I was one of the goons who snuck off by myself and did a few laps before being signed off and was lucky enough to get away with it. Although there were some moments when I wished there was someone competent sitting beside me to take control during situational overload!Good training was the only thing that saved my life during a few nasty situations in the hours after gaining my solo. If people are in a hurry to go solo to save a few bucks or to increase blood flow to the front of their pants, they may want to think about the experience they are missing out on.Even when I didnt fly for a long time, I went and had a fly with my old instructor. I probably didnt need to but flying is one of those things you need to keep doing and I thought it better to have the margin of safety with my instructor beside me to remind me in case I forgot something.Bandaids are cheaper than instructors, but not as much funMark.

[NiqueNaque]

Hmmm,You know I never had a problem with how many hops I had to do, still didn"t stop me from having my heart hopping around in my chest when I was going to do my first circuit.

[Russell]

kangaroos and wabbits hop.........not so for aero"s.get off the deck, get some height, circuit around, settle down, do some low leval fly by"s, tickle the pedals..........then........put her on the deck. Easy as........you just gone solo. ;D

[asra]

Spot on, Nick. The time to worry about whether or not you can land the bloody thing, is not when you absolutely have to. Get that out of the road first. Hopping is the best (most efficient) way to do that (in my view & experience). If you are hopping when there"s no wind, you can hop both ways, and if the strip is long enuff, you can do 2 or 3 both ways. The landing/take off/groundhandling bit just becomes default. Llewella has jogged some memories. One thing to be carefull of with block training is brain burn-out. In the early hours, I found that 2 x half hour sessions in one day was plenty. I once tried 3, and wasted the last one. Brain dead (some"ll say I had a head start, but if your brain isn"t fried after a couple of half hour sessions at (say) the 6 hour mark, then you ain"t concentrating hard enough). Might be different if you have other flying experience, but for the ab initio, there"s nothing you"ve done on the ground that can prepare you for flying along with your quoit 4 - 500 feet off the grass.I disagree with the time thing. You can"t categorically say that some-one is proficient after a certain number of hours. The licence/certificate should be skills based, and not time based. We all know some people who are far more proficient at 10 hours than some others are at 100 hrs. It"s not the rule, but it is possible. The certificate should guarantee a minimum level of proficiency, not a certain amount of hours. I think that is what Ross is looking for. I don"t know of any research that says that more hours makes you more proficient. It should, but it doesn"t gurantee it. It doesn"t quantify it, either. We all know the old addage of 100 hors being a danger point for pilots. If more hours definitely means more proficient, then why do we have BFR"s? Perhaps Ross might be helped by some statisical analysis. There are a whole range of factors that can have an influence, so the "time" thing shouldn"t be considered in isolation. Something we are not considereing here is what happens with GA/ultralight pilots. I haven"t heard of those type of pilots "short-circuiting" the system and soloing themselves. It certainly doesn"t appear to be common in the more populous areas, anyway. And what would happen to them if they did? In the case of gyros, I would argure that (currently), some-one flying illegally (particularly a non-current or non-member or non trained) should not have accident stats credited to us. That sort of thing is not acceptable to any sections of our society where the actions of a few acting illegally can bring onerous conditions onto those acting legally (with the obvious exception of gun owners). Nick"ll love this. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;DSeriously, Instructors who aren"t strong enough to control the student, and determine when he is proficient and ready for solo, perhaps shouldn"t be instructing. And students that give indications of not intending to follow the training regime, shouldn"t be trained. It doesn"t matter how onerous or dificult we make the instructional process, if some-one isn"t going to follow it (and presumably solo themselves, with all of the risks that entails), then we are only punishing those that "toe the line". Ross, why don"t you tell us what you are thinking and see if we can build on your framework, rather than us just flogging this all over the place?Cheers

[welli]

I agree that there could be brain overload with block training - my training so far has consisted of an early morning flying session and debriefing and then studying during the day - with a bit of a snooze thrown in - and flying in the evening again. The balance is excellent. With the instructor on hand at any time during the day for questions. Also with other student around, you can watch and learn from what they are doing as well, which is an added bonus. You can also discuss what you are going through with the other students, and you all learn from each other"s experiences.There seems to be some misunderstanding with my belief that the hours should be increased.

[Des Garvin]

Well said by student pilot Welli

[asra]

Still can"t figure out the "hour" thing. We are focusing on "hours" as the trigger for a licence/certificate (whatever we want to call it). The ops manual doesn"t use the hours flown as the trigger. It is merely part of the aeronautical experience required before issue. Tghe trigger is:"have successfully passed theory and in-flight examinations in accordance with the requirements of the operations manual and the relevant CAO"s, thus demonstrating to an ASRA instructor that he has reached the level of competency required for the issue of the ASRA Pilot Certificate"It doesn"t matter if you make it a mandatory 100 hours, the bloke can"t get a licence until he can do the above. If students are hammering the instructor for a licence using the hours as a trigger, then the instructor is selling them the wrong message. There are no hour requirements (except for the minimum). The requirements are to pass the theory and in flight tests.I agree, Des. I went an extra 6 hours over the requirement. The cheapest and best insurance available. Most invaluable.Cheers

[Brian]

In the light of a few posts of latter days, I thought that this might be relevant again and good reading to some.

[bones]

I agree with you there Brian, i was sitting here reading the post you must be refuring to in horror, Now i have started to instruct i find it very easy to just explain to them that if they can do 5 good safe t/o and landings in a row, not perfect just safe, then and only then are they ready to take the machine out on the strip by themseves to do some ballancing on the mains, just so they realise the next step of actually flying it, is VERY different with only one person in the machine, i only get them to do about 5-10 runs of the strip balancing (not the same day)then, we go solo, with myself flying in my machine along side talking to them on the radio.I have heard said that i am more nervious than they are, that to me means they are ready, and maybe i am not

[NiqueNaque]

Reminds me of how Wal Flaks was when I went for my first circuit at Denman... He was very nervous when I didn"t come straight back in, but that was only because the two seater was setting up for take off when I first lined up for final... ah, the swooshing of the rotors, still remember it like a technicolour movie. simply went around until the two seater came out and then landed, no problems.Cheers,Nic

[Tim]

A bit of misunderstanding of the Op"s manual here. "In excess of 20 hours flying experience" means exactly that. How much "in excess" depends on the Instructor. When the minimum requirement was originally set up we were at a meeting with 3 relevant CASA personel. Their comments were basically along the lines of "If your instructor is not capable of determining whether a student is ready for solo or not, then he is not ready to be an instructor".That comes back to ASRA"s qualifying of Instructors and they are currently addressing that situation.

[Disco]

Hops worked for me.

[Brian]

Good to see people getting some "meat" out of this topic. I enjoyed reading your post Bones, as a new instructor, I guess you see flying in a new perspective.