CFI-A Lesson 16

I just completed my gound brief/flight lesson for today. The ground brief was on Soft Field Takeoffs and the flight covered nearly everything on the list of commercial maneuvers.

Once again, I got the opportunity (is that the right word?) to fly with another instructor. My normal instructor had something come up, but he was nice enough to find a substitute rather than cancel my lesson. My instructor du jour asked lots of challenging questions during my brief; specifically about ground effect and why it does what it does. That's a very theoretical subject area and is hard to describe in a sentence or two.

Once in the plane, the confusion began. As expected, this instructor had different ideas of how the lesson should proceed. During my past lessons, I've done all the taxiing and 95% of the flying. This instructor thinks I should be about 50/50 at this point in the training. When I think about what he said, I tend to agree. By the time I reach the end and become a flight instructor, my flight time should be entirely reversed - flying about 5-10% of the time. Even on an introductory lesson, the instructor should fly the takeoff and landing, then let the prospective student take the controls for the remainder of the flight.

With my plan of action and his 50/50 idea, I alternated demonstrating and teaching the first six or so maneuvers. When it came time for Steep Turns, Chandelles, and Lazy Eights, I took the controls because I need to practice these maneuvers every chance I get. To avoid entering clouds, I climbed to 7,500 feet to practice Lazy Eights above the thin scattered cloud layer. This turned out to be a great idea. The air was completely smooth up there and made it much easier to focus on the maneuver.

We did a Steep Spiral to lose altitude, then a simulated engine failure, followed by Eights on Pylons. Finally it was back to the airport for a straight in landing, followed by a Power-Off 180.

Back on the ground, we reviewed the lesson and talked about my instruction. I told my instructor that he flew too good. I only found a few items to comment on while he was flying. A normal student would likely make more errors; especially in early training.

Next up is Spin Avoidance and Spin Recovery training in an Extra 300. It should be a total blast.