RCU Forums - View Single Post - training help (from instructor standpoint)
Old 11-28-2009 | 10:27 AM
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RCKen
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From: Lawton, OK
Default RE: training help (from instructor standpoint)

I'd love to be able to say that teaching a person to fly involves a step by step procedure as you've laid out above. And while you should have a plan like you have, you also have to remain extremely flexible because each student is different and has to be trained differently. Some students may require more attention to certain aspects of flying while others will pick up everything extremely quickly. Both need to have your plan adjusted accordingly.

Here are a few things that I'd like to add that have helped me in the past:

Flight simulator. Everybody here has heard me caution against using a simulator improperly for training. But when used correctly it's an invaluable tool for training students. I have a couple extra copies of RealFlight that I loan to my students during the time I'm training them. What I like to do is give them "homework" after every flight session. I will tell them what I want them to go home and practice on the simulator. When used for things like this it can greatly reduce the time that it takes a student to solo as they can spend time on the simulator working out problems they may be having. For instance, I once had a student that couldn't make a right hand turns to save his life. No matter what we did with the plane in the he would lose altitude in a right hand turn and usually wound up rolling the plane over and I would have to recover for him. But I sent him home with the simulator and explained what I wanted him to do, and how to do it. He went home for the week and the next Saturday he came out and was making almost perfect flat turns to the right. The simulator let him work out his issues without wasting tons of fuel and lots of frustration in the air.

Landings. I like to "sneak up" on a student and have them land. As I work with students I do about a thousand landing approaches to teach the student to line up, but never land. While doing this I will talk the student through the entire process. " Ok, left turn, level off, add a little throttle, right rudder, ok hold it there, and now power up and go around." Then when I think the student is ready instead of saying "go around" I will talk them down close to the ground and then I will simply say, "ok, now let it settle on down to the ground and land it". I have found that if you tell the student before the flight that they are going to try to land many times they will be so nervous about it they will screw up the landing. But if you surprise them like this they don't have time to get nervous. And then once they have landed successfully they realize they are perfectly capable of landing on their own and they don't worry about it anymore. Oh, and the smiles and adrenaline from landing like this is great to watch as they usually are so pumped after their first landing.

And lastly, no matter what your training routine make sure you let the student have fun. I usually teach the student a loop and a roll fairly early in their training. I do this because first these two maneuvers are the basis for a majority of other maneuvers, and second because it's something fun for the student to know how to do some "stunts". Then regardless of what we are going to be doing that day, on the first flight I will give the student a few minutes and I tell them just fly around and have some fun. Do whatever they want. This keeps the training sessions from becoming  routine and boring, but more importantly it lets them loosen up their fingers and get ready for the training.

Ok, those are a few of the things that I do for my training that might help you.

Ken