Red light, green light, white light

Rote learning is a common method of teaching or learning specific information that can be of use to us later in life. Many of us may recall learning multiplication tables through repeated drilling or the use of flash cards. In circumstances like this, rote learning works.

I’ll be honest enough to tell you that I wasn’t one of those people. I resisted and I paid for my insolence later in my educational journey — one of the many reasons I graduated high school with a solid D average.

Later in life I came to use rote learning more effectively. For instance, memorization of the phrase “bad beer rots our young guts but vodka goes well,” was responsible for me learning the color coded value system marked on resistors used in electronic circuits.

You see, the colored banding on those resistors follows a standard pattern with specific meanings. Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue violet, gray, and white stripes across the components provide specific information. There are also gold and silver markings, as well as no marking at all.

But this isn’t a treatise on electronic components and their markings. It’s simply one of many good examples of where rote learning has value.

And you thought TOMATO FLAMES was a challenge.

Still, of the four levels of learning the FAA preaches, rote is at the bottom of the list. It’s a starting point. That’s all.

The full learning process will hopefully guide us from rote to understanding, then to application, and ultimately to the correlation level.

Each new step up the educational staircase leaves us better prepared to not just remember facts, but also to grasp what those facts mean in practice. Then we learn how to put that knowledge to use in real life. And, if we’re lucky, our brain latches on to the material with enough appreciation for the context of it that we can make use of that knowledge in similar but different situations.

My favorite example of this is the red light, green light, white light signals pilots may receive when operating in a towered airport environment should they lose their communication systems. These signals can also be used by ATC when working with pilots of aircraft that never had communication systems. The lights work — provided you know what the signals mean.

Rote learning didn’t work well for me in this case. But I assumed the feds wanted me to know this colored-light code in case I needed to avail myself of it one day. Which I did.

Trying to memorize a card that included three colored light options that had different meanings on the ground or in the air was beyond me. I found it tremendously difficult to learn and retain with any consistency. This, I knew, would be a problem.

Fortunately, I had a flight instructor who was a real pro. A truly dedicated individual who made every attempt to be sure his students moved along through the process competently and with confidence. He wasn’t an old hand, either. I was included in his first cadre of students. One of four, all of whom achieved great success thanks to our CFI’s dedication to duty.

This was the system he used to help us learn odd little details like the red light, green light, white light system of communication. He made us use it.

Yes, his method was that simple. Periodically when we were operating in a towered airport environment, he would have us request light gun signals.

You can do that, you know. If the tower is too busy they may decline the request, but I can’t recall that ever happening to me. Day or night, I’d occasionally request light gun signals. The tower would generally honor the request, which gave me the opportunity to see the system work in real life.

I’d pretend I was dialing in 7600 on my transponder, make pretend calls in the blind as if I couldn’t hear ATC’s response, and I’d get a real-world refresher on what those signals meant.

It was fantastic.

This might be described as contextual learning by someone better educated than I am. But it just made sense to me. I did it and it worked.

Thank goodness.

It was on April 9, 1991 when training became real life for me. Flying a Cessna 152 (N714ZA, deregistered as of June 2017) I departed Key West International Airport for a lovely evening flight that would cross over Marathon Airport before turning north for Sanford, Florida.

Departure was a breeze. Until it wasn’t. Within minutes of leaving the ground I realized I’d suffered a complete electrical failure on the aircraft. No flaps, no lights, no radios. With the sun setting, an active naval base in front of me, and nearly 300 nm of water and land to cover on the way home, I made a command decision to turn back for Key West.

This might have been a high stress situation had I never experienced this before. But I had. I simply returned to the field at 500 feet above pattern altitude and circled the tower. A flashing green light was my reward. I entered the pattern, got a solid green light, and landed without incident. This was my first real experience that proved training has real value when the poo-poo hits the fan. It also proved the good training can turn a potentially challenging situation into no-big-deal.

Like so many pilots who have flown for many years, I’ve had doors pop open in flight, ice has gathered on the leading edge of my wings, system failures have occurred, and on three occasions the engine up front stopped doing what engines are suppose do to. Yet I’m still here. All because of good training that was what we might now call scenario-based.

Yes, you can request unique training opportunities from ATC. Things like light gun signals. If you’re a CFI you should expose your students in a controlled environment. If you’re an experienced pilot on your flight review, ask for something challenging.

It might just make your life a whole lot more comfortable later on…when you least expect it.