Joe Gutierrez of Kingman, Arizona sends in this advice: The best flight training tool is to commit yourself 100% to learning how to fly without reservation. To say you want to is not enough. You have to commit yourself.
Second, no sim time or DVD — this is artificial and the end result is still the same, didn’t learn nothing.
Third you cannot use the word low cost and quality in the same sentence. They don’t mix. You either have quality or low cost, but not both.
Lastly, to stay current, fly, fly, fly. The best training tool is still fly, fly, fly — and to stay motivated fly, fly, fly. There is absolutely no substitute that takes the place of actual flying.
Do not encourage new people to use flat panels and late model instrumentation, the old steam gauges are still the best for training reasons and the lessons learned on these are never forgotten, plus you spend the appropriate amount of time looking outside the window instead of having your head buried in the cockpit. You cannot see and avoid otherwise. Sorry, all the latest tech comes much later.
I was taught by a Navy jock CFI, and well taught, so lucky.
I agree with the fly, fly, fly philosophy, but a lot people just can’t afford to fly that much. So for those people, they learn all they can and by any means possible.
Amigos, we are talking here of bran new people starting to learn how to fly. Granted sim time is good, but only if you are a pilot already, they benefit the most, not a new person starting to learn. It just dosen’t work, the new sim person has no idea what the heck he is doing and more importantly why. As for cost of quality, if you can rent an old tail dragger with no elec. system you won’t be a qualified person to fly your family across the country safely. On the other hand if you rent an airplane with IFR equipment you will fly with more confidence and safer. What I am saying is you get what you pay for. If you hire your local CFi like a friend of mine did because he was very inexpensive to hire and was a very lazy and layed back CFI that is what your going to get, my friend still dosen’t know how to fly, I don’t know how he did it to get by the examiner to receive his ticket. To date not to many people will fly with him. This is what I mean when I say quality and cost don’t coincide. I started flying in 1955 in an aeronca w/60 h.p. & a wooden prop. Compare that with what is available today is priceless. thanks
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Low cost and quality can be in the same sentence with regard to flight training.
You allude to it your self with the statement,”Do not encourage new people to use flat panels and late model instrumentation, the old steam gauges are still the best for training reasons and the lessons learned on these are never forgotten, plus you spend the appropriate amount of time looking outside the window instead of having your head buried in the cockpit.”
The cost, (purchase or rental),of a C-150 or 172, Piper PA-22 or older -28 will be much less than that of the new glass panel Sky Hawk or Archer or Diamond, if it’s not where you are look elsewhere.
Some of the best quality primary training, as well as most cost efficient,is still done in the low power tail draggers that were made for the purpose of training some 70+ years ago. A Cub or Champ will teach you quickly at low cost to keep the airplane straight and if the student really wants glass panels they are on both sides and in front. They are basic airplanes that will teach one to fly with no distraction from the amazing things “glass” avionics suites can do but that are not needed in primary training.
If I were a screamer, instead of a Private and ex-USAF flyer, thIs article contains the thoughts I’d want to scream. I began my lifelong Flight Lessons in “steam-gauge” Cessnas in 1972, and continued through Boeings, simulators, and glass panels. But from passing my initial FAA Private ground/flying check-outs 100%/100% to the present, I credit my chosen Class-A training and my devotion to the art and craft of flying for happily living to be an old Pilot. Learn all you can from wherever you can–know that every flight is a Test Flight, of both your available equipment and of YOU. The vastest knowledge is best…but half-vast won’t cut it.
I agree whole heartedly with your first paragraph, you must be committed to learning to fly, and the overall message of fly, fly, fly I can also agree with. But I couldn’t disagree more with the second two paragraphs.
Simulator time has been proven to work quite effectively. While definitely not a replacement for actual flight time, to say you learn nothing from it is blatantly false.
It is also very possible to have both low cost and high quality. With ANY product or service you can can choose two of three qualities; cost, quality, convenience. If you want high quality and low cost then you pay with a greater inconvenience. If you want high quality and convenience, then you pay with a higher cost. I chose high quality at a low price for my flight training by paying with the inconvenience of trading my labor and skills for flight time.