Flight Training - March 2019 - 43

ADVANCED PILOT INSTRUCTOR REPORT

BY PHIL WILKES

THE LEARNING FORMULA
SKILLS, TECHNIQUES, AND STRATEGIES TO MAXIMIZE
YOUR FLYING PERFORMANCE

STUART BRIERS

WHEN LEARNING, there is always a goal. How do we, as instruc-

tors, facilitate our students' ability to meet their goals, and how
can we speed up the rate of learning?
To achieve our goal, it is helpful if it is as specific or
detailed as practicable. As instructors, this is usually easy as
all our major flight training goals will be detailed as objectives in the syllabus or curriculum we are teaching to:
* The student maintains the aircraft on the runway centerline during takeoff.
* The student can maintain airspeed plus or minus 20 knots
during climbs and climbing turns.
* The student maintains altitude plus or minus 200 feet,
airspeed plus or minus 10 knots, heading plus or minus 10
degrees while flying straight and level.
For the student to achieve the objectives outlined in the
syllabus, he or she must first have some sort of idea what that
would look like-a mental image. By mental image, we aren't
just talking about a visualization. We are talking the full sensory experience. What will the maneuver or task look like?
What will your trainees hear? What will they feel?
"How do I fly a maneuver or sequence I have never flown
before?" That's a question for which every student pilot
would love the "secret" answer. For experienced pilots, our
database of visual images and the resulting sensory information from the hundreds, thousands, or millions of maneuvers
we've flown gives us clues about what to expect in a new
maneuver or sequence. But what about a new student? As
instructors, how do we close this database gap?

Obviously, we could wait until we got airborne and
demonstrate a maneuver to fill in the mental image for our
students, but how do we help them prepare in advance to
speed up the learning process? How do we shortcut the
assimilation of this new mental image?
First, we can provide the answers to the questions posed
earlier:
What will the maneuver or task look like? This gap can be
filled in with images or videos of the sequence with emphasis on
the attitudes required or flight mode annunciations, for example.
What will your students hear? Warning horns, air noise:
These are just a few of the gaps the instructor can close.
What will they feel? When does the G force come on? Is there
buffet? If so, how much? Where do students need to hold the
stick? What will that feel like? Are the controls light or heavy?
Second, can we link the new learning to something the
student has seen before? Imagine flying a traffic pattern for the
first time. By the time he or she flies a traffic pattern for the
first time, your student will already have a database for each of
the component parts: takeoffs, climbs, descents, and turns. As
an instructor, we can point out or emphasize these links.
By filling in gaps and providing links to known elements,
we can give our students a really solid mental image to take
away and assimilate during their preparation using mental
imagery sessions (i.e., good old armchair flying).
Assuming now that our student has a good idea of the
goal and has a solid mental image (both from preflight
preparation and having seen the new maneuver airborne), we
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Flight Training - March 2019

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