CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 1 | Issue 3 - 7

Chief's corner

Switching hats

BY JJ GREENWAY
take to get the pilot safe and comfortable in the airplane under IFR conditions. My effectiveness as an instructor benefited from first acquiring an estimate of the amount and type of instruction required. When evaluating a pilot, it’s important to remember the difference between procedure and technique. Nobody flies exactly like I do. And it is unfair to negatively evaluate another pilot because they don’t fly like I do. Instead, I ask myself, “Are the required tasks being performed to recognized standards?” I can overlook variances in technique—as long as the tasks are being performed to standards spelled out in the PTS. This in no way negates the importance of instructors passing on technique to students. The very act of piloting an aircraft is a combination of procedure and technique. It’s important, however, to keep in mind when wearing the evaluator hat, while there may be one procedure, there may be several different acceptable techniques. Getting back to the subject of “natural” pilots; I believe that some pilots come with a more innate sense of “stick and rudder” than others. I’ve always had to work at my skills and never felt that any of them ever came to me naturally. However, among the several thousand pilots I’ve flown with, I’ve seen a handful treating the stick, throttle, and rudder pedals as natural extensions of their hands and feet. I don’t claim to have an explanation, but like the single digit percentage of our population who have photographic memories or the ability of instant recall, some pilots are more at home in the cockpit than others. That is not to say that they make the best overall pilots. One of my best “stick and rudder” students found himself the recipient of a disapproval notice following a practical test because of his inability to grasp the finer points of cross-country navigation. Looking back at my evaluation of his overall abilities, I speculate that my favorable impression of his stick and rudder skills might have caused me to overlook other weak areas in his knowledge. Keep your guard up! Know when to evaluate. Know when to teach.

OFTEN, IN OUR ROLE AS A CFI, we are required to put on a dif-

ferent hat and be an evaluator rather than an instructor. This may be the administration of a phase check to another instructor’s student or simply those last few trips around the pattern prior to a student’s first solo. Although we may slide between the roles of instructor and evaluator quite easily, they are decidedly different tasks. In three and a half decades of flying, I’ve shared the cockpit with thousands of aviators. These included captains, copilots, flight engineers, relief pilots, flight instructors, pilot examiners, and student pilots. (I don’t think I missed anybody!) For the most part, the airmanship displayed was decidedly above average. I wouldn’t have considered too many to be “natural” pilots, but only a few displayed substandard aviating skills. Some were evaluating me and others were being evaluated by me. I was under the instruction of some and I was giving instruction to others. Many were fellow crewmembers in a cockpit certified for two or three pilots. In all situations, we as pilots, students, and instructors evaluated our fellow cockpit occupants, whether we knew it or not. As instructors, our ability to evaluate other pilots is a finely honed skill that, quite frankly, we were probably weak at when we were newly minted CFIs. How many times have you flown with a student who could perform the tasks required for the level of license held but you might have had just a nagging bit of reservation about their overall ability? This is your “evaluator sense” kicking in. I recently flew with a rather rusty pilot who wanted to get current and develop a better level of proficiency on newer avionics. Within two or three minutes of engine start, I had a pretty good sense of just how rusty this pilot was. Operating the engine at over 2,000 rpm after start-up was just the first clue. Riding the brakes, rough ground handling, inability to operate the audio panel, and poor radio technique all combined to give me a very quick sense of just how much refinement this pilot needed in order to reach a safe operating level. I didn’t sit down in the right seat at the beginning of that flight as an instructor. I began the lesson as an evaluator. After a few minutes in the air, I had a very good idea of the exact dose of medicine needed to cure his ills. A quick change of hats had me back in my CFI role, and we began what amounted to be pretty close to the seven hours I’d estimated that it would

JJ Greenway, a CFI since 1980, has given dual instruction in aircraft ranging from the Luscombe 8A to the Boeing 767-300ER.

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CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 1 | Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 1 | Issue 3