AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2017 - 12

LETTERS

FROM OUR FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE

Making memories
Are aviation mnemonics out of control? When Barry Schiff poked fun at the FAA's
penchant for less-than-useful memory aids, readers got in on the fun.
I just received my February
AOPA Pilot and, as always, I
read Barry Schiff 's column
("Proficient Pilot: Too Much
of a Good Thing") first. In my
opinion, this piece about useful
and less-than-useful mnemonics is GREAT: Good, Relevant,
Enlightening, Applicable,
and True! (Yes, I know that is
not a mnemonic, as it is not a
list of things to remember-
I just wanted to play with the
words a bit.) Said another way,
I certainly do agree with histhoughts about both the helpful
use and the over-use of this
memory tool.
Jerry Tobias
AOPA 1039255
Omaha, Nebraska

In my younger days as an A-7
pilot in the Ohio Air National
Guard, I was often overwhelmed by the acronyms and
mnemonics I was expected to
use. Having never excelled at
spelling, I spent more mental effort on figuring out what
all those letters stood for than
actually completing the task.
After a very successful
checkride in the simulator, my
instructor complimented my
procedures and he asked which
mnemonic I used. I quickly
answered, "LACASWNTO."
He went to the chalkboard and
spelled it out and admitted that
he had not heard of that one
before. He then asked what
it stood for and I answered,
"Look Around the Cockpit And
See What Needs Turned On."
I then explained that before
12 | AOPA PILOT April 2017

Shopping for a ride
PROFICIENT PILOT

Too much of a good thing

BY BARRY SCHIFF

Teaching with alphabet soup

BARRY SCHIFF

has been an active
flight instructor
(with seven ratings)
since he was 18
and has a teaching
credential in aerospace issued by the
California Department of Education.

A MNEMONIC IS A MEMORY DEVICE that helps us to
recall larger amounts of information, especially lists of
things. The earliest mnemonic I can remember learning
was "whiplash." By eliminating the h's, you are left with
WIPLAS, letters intended to remind those in my high
school physics class that the six simple machines are
the Wedge, the Inclined plane, the Pulley, the Lever, the
Axle and wheel, and the Screw. This mnemonic made
such an indelible impression that I remember it easily
60 years later. Perhaps that is because this was the first
such memory device I was taught.
I learned two more mnemonic devices during my
early flight lessons-CIGAR (Controls, Instruments,
Gasoline, Alignment, and Run-up) and GUMP
(Gasoline, Undercarriage, Mixture, and Propeller)-
mental checklists used before takeoff and landing in
the simple airplanes of the early 1950s. Ground school
then taught that "true virgins make dull company," a
mnemonic used to sort out the arithmetic manipulation
of true heading, variation, magnetic heading, deviation,
and compass heading. "Can ducks make vertical turns?"
applies to making the same calculations in reverse. It
seems that we needed only a few more memory aids
such as "east is least and west is best" for dealing with
magnetic variation, and that was about it. Each phrase
made sense, was useful, and came easily to mind.
In recent years, however, the FAA began using
mnemonics in a big way, and introduced more such
devices than might be needed or make sense. The
first of these "modern" mnemonics may be I'M SAFE,
which is not bad. It represents a pilot's personal preflight checklist: "Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol,
Fatigue, and Emotion," although many argue that a
pilot should know intuitively and without this checklist whether he is fit to fly.
A hot topic, risk management, was introduced
more recently. Although a worthy area of study, the
way it is sometimes taught seems to obfuscate the subject. If you have not yet been introduced to the "3-P
Risk Management Process," you are going to really love
this [he says facetiously]:
You first need to know the three Ps of risk management: "Perceive hazards, Process this to evaluate the
level of risk, and Perform risk management."
With respect to perceiving a hazard (the first P),
you are supposed to use the PAVE checklist: "Pilot,
Aircraft, enVironment, and External pressures,"

categories to which most risks can be assigned.
You then should Process (the second P) any potential hazard using the CARE checklist: "What are the
Consequences? What are the available Alternatives?
What is the Reality of the situation? What kind of
External pressures are affecting my thinking?" After
a hazard or risk has been identified, the pilot must
then Perform (the third P) by using the ME checklist:
"Mitigate or Eliminate the risk." ME can be expanded
to TEAM: "Transfer the risk; Eliminate the risk; Accept
the risk; Mitigate the risk." The choice of ME or TEAM
presumably is up to you.
It seems to me that if a potential threat develops in
flight, the time it takes to extricate these checklists from
our memory and then apply them in the proper manner
might take more time than would be needed to simply
resolve the problem in the first place. I would like to
suggest a much better method of coping with a developing risk. Use the WUADSAI (pronounced woo-AD-sigh)
checklist: "Wake Up And Do Something About It."
Student pilots are really being taught this psychobabble. Presumably, we're supposed to know it as well.
But hang on. There is more. Aeronautical decision
making (ADM) instructs us to use DECIDE, an appropriate-sounding word intended to help us remember
the steps needed to make a decision: "Detect that
something has happened; Estimate the need to react;
Choose a desirable outcome; Identify the actions to
be taken; Do take those actions; Evaluate the effects
of the action."
If DECIDE doesn't suit your needs, you might prefer OODA, an abbreviated method of decision-making:
"Observe available information; Orient (analyze) this
information and use it to update your reality; Decide
on a course of action; Act on your decision."
I cannot decide whether DECIDE or OODA results
in the best decisions, which might be a fault in my own
decision-making ability. I do apologize for what might
seem to be a disparaging attitude toward this subject,
but I do not believe that this is an effective way to teach
common sense and good judgment-especially without
boring the student to death in the process.
Mnemonics are wonderful memory aids, but reliance
on those that are not particularly memorable or useful
in the first place is probably self-defeating.
AOPA
WEB

www.barryschiff.com

18 | AOPA PILOT February 2017

I agree with Barry
Schiff regarding the
proliferation of
mnemonics. I'm sure
birds don't keep any
mnemonics in their
tiny brains, and they
fly perfectly.

Ronald Fong
AOPA 1616370
Castro Valley, California

each change in flight phase,
I thought my way around the
cockpit picturing each system from left to right and then
making adjustments whenever
needed, only looking at the
actual system when necessary.
This technique served me well,
and I still use it in light aircraft.
Greg Hitchens
AOPA 859876
Newark, Ohio

My recommendation for an
aircraft ("Ownership: An
Airplane for Every Mission")
would be the Piper Dakota:
235 horsepower, six cylinder,
non-retract. Piper's answer
to Cessna's 182. Can haul
anything, 1,000-fpm climb,
72-gallon capacity, 67 usable.
Relatively fast. Great airplane
that was not mentioned in
your article like the 182. The
Dakota always seems to be forgotten. They were built from
1979 through 1994. The 1979
was the only year there was
an option for either the O-540
Lycoming or the turbocharged
Continental.
Rory Elston
AOPA 4706142
Angels Camp, California

Unofficially fantastic

Thanks for the article "Pilot
Products: On the Receiving
End." Despite Ian J. Twombly
noting, "Open Flight FlightBox
is not officially supported in
ForeFlight," it works great!
Almost anyone can assemble
it in half an hour with its great
manual and video instructions.
I suggest the remote antennas

and a Bad Elf Pro GPS for
ForeFlight. Use a high-quality
USB power supply to power it
from the cigarette lighter such
as the one Marv Golden sells;
the cheap ones will not maintain contact due to vibrations.
I've been using it since
June with ForeFlight and it
sure shows where the heavy
rains from thunderstorms are.
While I've been flying with
a Strikefinder for around 27
years, I now find the FlightBox
weather necessary for summer
flying in the South.
Its traffic depiction is helpful too, especially since I just
got Stratus ADS-B Out.
Bob Toxen
AOPA 889274
Duluth, Georgia

ADS-B rebates

Twice I've had my Garmin
GTX 345 pass in the air and
fail on the ground-because I
am taxiing normally ("ADS-B:
Passing the Test"). My install
shop said they are dealing with
this continuously and Garmin
says the remedy is to taxi ridiculously slowly. The FAA passed
me when I did so at a Class C
field but then failed me when

How often do you participate in an FAA
Wings pilot proficiency program for
continuing education?
Once a month

14%

Once a quarter

15%

Whenever I have time

36%

Not often

28%

I was not aware of the program

Aviation eBrief poll

14%

28%

15%
36%

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2017