whats, in your opinion, the best way to teach someone who has no idea how to fly into a soloed pilot?
here is what i have been doing, seeing as i was never taught by an instructor, i am makeng up my own forumla.
step 1
give them a 10 min talk about prop saftey, field rules, basic controls and flying techiniques. (how to turn with aileron/elevator type stuff)
then i take them up on my spad trainer and talk them through flying, giving them one command at a time exaple left, right, pull back, push forward (so they dont get confuesd with down and up). this way the student can understand what the controls do to the plane.
im teaching them on the right side of the tx at first, rarly throttle input and no rudder input
step 2
after they get the feel for the plane and follow my commands, i stop giving them stick movements and start telling them where to go. i also give them throttle commands to show them the stall speed, when to raise/lower throttle
step 3
once they can roughly keep the plane in a level turn , fly in a oval shape both directions, and keep the plane in the air without me touching the controls for a few minuets i have them fly figure eights, start flying parallel to the runway, and start useing rudder.
step 4
when i feel that they have good enough control of the plane i have them do takeoff's, fly at lower throttle settings and have fun with the plane (basics aerobatics).
step 5
landing approch's.....and eventually landings
step 6
prepare for solo, student does everything, im just their for comfort. once their ready then i pull the plug and let them go.

at the moment im training six people.
one person is at step 4, another is at step 3.
two people, who needed a refresher course, are on step 6 but for the most part im just their for comfort.
i have two noobs comming out tomorrow (hopefully), one of them has a super chipmunk that he got used. both are rc car guys so im guessing that they will have little problem.

im looking for input or other training techiniques. more as food for thought than anything. also anything i should change?
today the two guys that needed a refresher, were landing and takeing off without a problem. that got me thinking about the guy on step four, how on earth do i teach someone how to land?
heres what i have been thinking. at first im going to use my spad to train people how to land. mainly so that if someone crashes it (which would be my fault) they dont destroy a balsa plane, and the spad can take a beating.
i think i will have them practice setting up for approches then i will land it based on how they set it up. explaining what i had to to to correct for wind/ their bad approch, ect. then i will talk them through landing and let them get on the ground even if its ugly.
after i teach one of them how to land i will most likely go to the "you need your own plane before you can land" method, otherwise im bound to start paying to much for props/ect. i just dont want to smash someone's plane because i have never guided someone in for a landing before.
the only problem with the spad is its a pain in the a** to land, of all the planes i have flown it is by far the hardest to land. it requires a perfect approch followed by a perfect flair otherwise the plane will bounce all over the place

thanks for the advice. i just started flying a year ago . currently the most advanced manuver i can do is a rolling circle. so i have no doubt in my flying abilities, but i dont trust the noob's just yet

I always like to have a student fly figure 8's so that they learn left and right input. As for landing, have them fly approaches keeping the wing level and lining up on the center line of the runway. They will also need to manage speed so using the throttle becomes important. With my students I will talk them through a number of approaches with each one getter lower than the previous. I have discovered that the student is not really aware of what is happening and before they figure it out they have landed. This will also teach the art of using power to go around and abort a bad approach. Kids will always learn quicker than adults so keep that in mind as well. Good Luck, Dave

On landing.. have them fly level down the runway20 ft up as they hit the approach end of the runway. See if they can slowly drop to 10 ft up via throttle .... . then give throttle and go around again... and again.. again.. each time .. getting lower to the ground while starting at a lowre altitude each time..... worth a shot.

JJames,

Check these sites for ideas:

http://www.palosrc.com/instructors/teachrc.htm

http://www.pmac.jydata.com/images/Fl...nstruction.pdf

Figure 8s, lots and lot's of figure 8s. Taking off is the last thing I teach, after they can land I teach the take off. I have them thinking the take off is perhaps the hardest part of flying. I never want my students taking off and flying if I am a few minutes late. Everyone gets a big kick out of the take off lesson, yes I can keep a straight face when I tell them how hard it is!!

Spending some extra time taxiing the plane was really helpful for me - learning rudder, and to really stay in control throughout the entire takeoff and climb out, or approach and landing.

Jimmy,
You are an absolutely awesome person!
The hobby thanks you for taking so many students on.
Where are the other members of your club?
We don't want you to get burned out on teaching.

I agree with the figure eights. I also had to learn to fly boxes.
Anything to learn control and level turns.

One thing that annoyed me as a student was the instructor taking control and not telling me.
Consequently, when I teach I talk about what I am doing.

Keep up the good work!

Good Luck,
KW_Counter

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

Hey Guys I'm really liking this topic. I a semi Newbie and still get nervous when flying. I do have a teacher and a simulater. However when i'm on my own just not super comfortable. So thats why i like reading the forums and getting other users insite. Thanks and keep posting. Jeff

One thing I always do is keep in mind the stress level for new pilots. After about two minutes of them flying I take control to give them a break and reset themselves.

graybeard...
the takeoff thing makes sense, to prevent them from trying it on their own. on the other hand i want them to learn something new every day so they can say "i learnt learnt xxxxx manuver today", it also makes them use rudder...which i like.

Ken
i think i will use that approch for landings, it makes a lot of sense.
im very flexable with the noobs, that is just my basic chart to explain the stages that i go through (or skip in some instinces).
i also talk to the students quite often and let them know when i have control/what i am doing

i got the guy on step 3 flying, along with a noob that races rc cars....he is good (shakeing alot like usual)... i skipped step 2 with him and let him figure it out mostly by himself, he could easily keep the plane level and flying in circles with in 20 seconds of instruction. so i started intregrating rudder and had him mess with the throttle.
after the first flight i switched the prop from a 11x5 to a 10x8 to make it a little more challanging. he did well, i explained to him that the engine wouldnt pull him through tight turns and would stall easier. he figured it out after the first few min.
im guessing that, in a few hours of flight, he will be ready to solo.
one thing i think im going to do after i teach them how to land, is crash advoidence. like what to do if xxxxxx happens. give them situations that require a little thinking before hand, like what to do if you deadstick over the runway, or far out, or right after takeoff. and stuff like how to recover from a stall spin and such. how to loose airspeed ect

im thinking about teaching them basic aerobatics in the mix, not just rolls and loops, but stall turns, flat spins, snaps, inverted flight, rudder cordination in rolls, ect.


the great thing is we have had two people join the club and four others will prob join soon (all rc car guys)

today i think was a club record for attendence on a non advertised (funfly,meeting,ect) event. we had 13 (almost forgot to count me ) people show up six of them were new faces wihch is great. (5 of them were their because i helped them.......great feeling)
most of the time only two people show up me and my flying buddy.

as for worrying about me not flying......i fly plenty, and i enjoy watching/teaching/being around planes. i also have no problem telling someone that i want to fly....or i dont call them up and go the the field with no intent on training. if someone bosses me around or takes advantage of me i will tell them to get lost.

All of this thread is good advice, so I'll add to it.
Overcontrol, as you've probably seen, is the most common problem with new pilots. You need to be thinking about the mistakes they can make before they get a chance to make them.

I've found it helpful, especially for really new pilots, to have them watch a maneuver, then watch my fingers as I do it again. That way they see how much (how little!) stick movement it takes to really move the airplane in the air. Many people learn better visually than verbally, so that helps those as well.

A little trick to gauge nervousness is to ask how long they think they have been flying. If they overestimate, they are nervous so don't push them more. If they are accurate or underestimate they you have some freedom to challenge them more.

Another thing that you didn't mention is teaching them how to do pre-flight inspections and flight trimming. You haven't produced a competent pilot until they know how to take care of their equipment.

And I would suggest against the spad if it doesn't fly well or land well. Balsa planes are pretty durable unless you nose them in or cartwheel them. You'll produce better pilots and have fewer problems to recover from with a better flying plane. Take them in their training to the point where they are doing good figure 8's and approaches, and then tell them it's time to get their plane in the air if you're worried about damage from bad landings.

I forgot to add, kudos to you for taking your hobby time to help new guys. I've been in it a little over 2 years and enjoy teaching immensely.

nervous comment....good idea.
i usually mix in flight trimming/inspecting a model as i mess with it on the ground, how to tune a engine, ect.
the plane flies well, im useing a spad for a few reasons, its cheap, i dont have to worry about it to much, and if it does crash it usually survives. i have crashed it (my fault) before when training someone, had them to low and they wernt following my commands. they rolled it then pulled it right into the ground before i had a chance to do anything. a balsa plane would have been toast. it survived and was flying in 20 min
as for landing it will work well enough to train the first guy and let me get used to training a noob, then i will feel comfortable teaching someone else on a balsa plane.

Personally I wouldn't use a Spad for training new pilots. Using the reasoning that "it survives crashes" just justifies the chance that it's going to crash. I've been training people for 11 years and I've never had a student crash is plane while we were on the buddy box, so that's not an issue IMHO. While Spads do fly well and are an inexpensive alternative it's been my experience that they still don't fly as well as a traditional trainer built from balsa. Get them a standard trainer and don't worry about crashing it, that's what you're there for!!  To save them!!!

I realize that the student may have gotten into a situation that was difficult to recover from, but as the instructor you shouldn't have let him get to that point until you were absolutely certain that he was capable of flying at lower altitudes. I do understand that some students want to do what they want and may fly low, but as the instructor with the buddy box you are in control of everything that happens with that plane. If the student gets lower than you feel they are capable of flying at then you simply take control of the plane and gain altitude before giving it back them. Simply explain that you don't think they're ready to fly that low yet. Remember, you are the instructor. I had a student like that once. He thought that he was too good to simply fly a figure 8 pattern. He wanted to do aerobatics, loops, rolls, and such. I would take it from him, level it out, and than tell him he needed to fly the figure 8 pattern until I felt he was able to properly control the plane. I would give it back and he would fly maybe one figure 8 and then start stunting again. This went on 3 or 4 times before I finally took control of his plane, landed it, taxied into the pits, unhooked my buddy box, and walked off. I told him that if he wanted me to instruct him to fly he needed to follow my instructions, and that if he wasn't going to do that then he could go find another instructor or do it on his own. But I was done because I was wasting my time until he decided to follow my instructions. He apologized and we went back up where he did follow my instructions. 2 weeks later he soloed and is now flying on his own.

Hope this helps

Ken

A couple of things. I like to have my students to return the plane to straight and level and take their hands off the sticks after each turn. It shows them if the plane is properly trimmed it flies on its own and helps them relax for the next imputs. I also like to have them do a half a dozen loops their first flight. I started doing this after a buddy of mine and I let 50 or so kids fly our planes at a summer camp my daughter was in charge of. Most of the kids just hauled back on the stick, but some quickly recognized that they could fly the plane around the loop by varying stick imputs. If your student does the same you know he/she understands what the plane is doing and you can skip some of the whys in the lessons.
Also I always tell my students what my instructor told me almost 40 (cripes) years ago. "No matter how well you fly, it is your landing that everyone remembers".

Great post, RCKen. A little tough love goes a long way in dealing with a hard-headed student. Guys like that are worth investing in too because once they get on the right track they get good and can be real leaders in the club too.

I like to use the HZ Super Cub for the same reason you like the SPAD. Tough, cheap, and easy to repair. Before I started using a buddy box, I've had students crash them nose first with fuse and wing both broke completely in half and I glued and taped it back together and flying again in 15 minutes.

Now that I also use buddy boxes and nitro planes, there's another trick that seems to work on a lot of people. I give them their first flight on the buddy box with the Avistar, then we go back and start over with the Super Cub. For some reason, after they struggle a few minutes keeping up with a faster plane, they do much better when they get on the much slower Super Cub. I also usually solo a student with the Super Cub first, then the Avistar. ! Kudos to you for giving unselfishly of your time, keep up the good work!