CFI-A Lesson 3

A change - hopefully for the better - has swept through my training program. Today, I met my new instructor. My former instructor is now focused on getting a new instructor with lots of Cessna G1000 time up to speed with FlightSafety standards.

My new instructor is a former FSI student and instructor who was recently furloughed from Express Jet (Continental Express). After one lesson, I feel he has a lot to offer and will be a good fit moving forward. I'm most excited about his commitment to meeting my three-lessons-a-week frame of mind. Now I feel like I'm back on track and that I will reach the end of the program.

Today's ground brief covered slow flight. The discussion was very similar to the last discussion - the four fundamentals - with the main difference being the lower airspeed and the resulting turning tendencies. The briefing went fine. My instructor pointed out that I needed to be more motivational by telling the student how slow flight will lead to better approaches, smoother landings, and the applause of your passengers (he was an airline guy, after all). He also pointed out some areas where I spoke accurately, but could have made the point more clearly by simply adding a few details to my white board drawing.

The flight was more than I had expected. I misplaced my sylabus last week (I found it during today's lesson). I was unaware that in addition to teaching slow flight in the airplane, I'd also be introducing soft field take-offs and landings, power on and power off stalls, and crosswind landings. This caught me off guard, but I covered them the best I could and did OK. Near the end, my instructor was commenting on my choice of words and recommended that I describe the pattern as a series of different slow flight maneuvers. What a 'DUH' moment for me. Of course, that makes perfect sense. The thought never even entered my my mind in the airplane.

That turned out to be my biggest take-away from today's lesson. There are so many things that pilots learn to do at a subconscious level. Flying an approach is mostly subconscious. My conscious mind is focused on airspeed, glideslope, and centerline, while my subconscience deals with making the proper muscle movements to make it all happen. As an instructor, it is my job to point out all the things the student needs to do and then tie it all together with other areas of instruction that the student is already familiar. Training to fly is learning a series of building blocks. If taught effectively, a student can take knowledge from a previous lesson and apply it to the maneuver at hand.