Forty-three percent. That's the percent of members of my soaring club that don't have a private pilot's license. In round numbers, it is 39 people. Some are Juniors -our program is quite large with between 20 and 40 teenage members but even so, 17 of our senior members lack a private pilot's license. In the 8 years I've been a member, no one (including me, who already had a private pilot's license) has gone from new member to private pilot in a single season.
As you can imagine, with 39 members, the queue for CFI time is lengthy, especially when you throw in the variables of weather, aircraft, and student availability. It's a small wonder that any of our students senior or junior, ever get their license! In addition, we've lost several tow pilots through the regular ebb and flow of membership and end up scheduling many of our CFI's as tow pilots (many of them are tow qualified), reducing the scheduled opportunities for training.
I became Junior advisor last year and tracked how many of our 19 student pilot Juniors made it to their solo flight last year. It was a grand total of 5. That's about 1/4 of the active Juniors (we are at the 20 Junior level right now) and is good, but it could be better. This started me seriously thinking about the why it takes so long to become a private pilot in our club and whether there were ways to reduce that.
The Student-Instructor model - a very costly way to learn how to fly
Our instructors tell me it takes about 70 flights for us to solo a pilot (Junior or Senior). If each flight is around 12 minutes long, that's 840 minutes or around 14 hours of flight time spaced out over 18 months. If it takes the aforementioned 18 months to get to solo, that averages to a little under 4 flights a month. It seems like more because we rarely fly over the winter, so the dedicated students make a point to get out and fly as often as they can when the weather is good. But the average is about 4 flights a month. At 12 minutes per flight (no lift) that's as little as 48 minutes a month.
It gets worse. Consider how precious that flight time is -particularly for primary flight students. They don't fly the takeoff, tow, or landing. That 12 minutes is reduced to perhaps 6 minutes at first. Things happen so fast that they don't know what is going on, or aren't primed to watch the right things and the CFI either doesn't have time to explain it or it just doesn't sink in. Once on the ground, if the weather is good, there is usually a line of students waiting to fly, so post flight discussion is curtailed and preflight instruction for the next student is likewise curtailed. Throw in some time between flights and it is no surprise that progress is slow.
On the flip side, CFI time is one of the most precious commodities we have. Ou club has a varying population of CFI's, most recently we're on the low side, but even with on years with a good population of CFI's, if more than one is available at a time, it's unusual. Not to mention that when students get frustrated by lack of progress and quit, there goes the CFI's investment in yet another 'dry hole' and the necessity to attract new club members who will repeat the cycle.
That means the minutes in the air REALLY count and we seem to spend a lot of them getting students familiar with the rhythm of a flight or relearning things they ought to be familiar with if they only flew regularly enough.
A 12 minute flight with a tow to 2,000 feet costs a senior student about $32. The main variable is the length of the flight but our Schweizer 2-33's rent for just $7 an hour, so even a lengthy flight doesn't add much cost. It's the $11 per thousand foot tow and the $8 hookup fee that are the bigger ticket items. Take that $32 X 70 flights and it costs a student around $2,240 to earn a private pilot glider license.
Shortening the Training Cycle and Improving the Quality of Learning
So what? That's the way it has always been, some of our experienced pilots would say. They forget, of course, the frustration the student goes through as he/she tries to learn not only the basics of flight but to fit in with a whole new group of club members -all of whom seem to be more experienced and unsympathetic to the struggle of the new pilot.
Fortunately, in this day and age desktop PC's are so powerful, they can simulate soaring flight and provide that jumpstart that our students need. Besides the obvious benefit to students, simulation provides the following to a club:
CFI multiplier
- Simulated flight starts immediately. There is no need to wait in the tow line, nor is there a need to land for a relight because altitude can be added instantly with a keystroke. That means the student spends much more time flying. Consider the normal 12 minute flight cycle for real life flight. In a 1 hour period, between repositioning the glider, after landing and post/preflight discussion the best you can expect is 3 twelve minute flights per hour. (36 minutes of flight). A primary student is lucky to fly half of that (18 minutes). When seated at the simulator station, the student will fly the majority of it. If more than one simulator is available, one CFI can easily train and oversee two or more students (we've had as many as 4 at a time), multiplying their presence by severalfold and doing so in a shorter period of time.
- You don't have to have a CFI instruct the student. You just need a motivated and qualified helper (another private pilot) that you instruct how to conduct the lesson. That frees up CFI's for actual flight duty.
- Having a ground instructor who is not a CFI may prep them for upgrading to a CFI rating.
Time machine.
- Students spend more time flying the simulator, and are practicing the same maneuvers over and over, speeding up the muscle-memory coordination skills they need. Consider even the most basic maneuvers such as learning the relationship between pitch and airspeed and coordinating shallow and steep turns at constant airspeed. Because each hour of instruction includes a much higher percentage of the student flying, they master these skills quicker than if they practice in the real aircraft in 6 minute chunks of time.
- Motivated students can purchase their own simulation gear for less than the cost of 6 or 7 real life flights and practice maneuvers at home.
- Training can be performed at night, during the off season and during howling rainstorms. There is no reason to cancel a sim session due to tow pilot availability, too many students, or maintenance. Thus, students can arrange to train when it suits them and reduce the number of times they must shoehorn their busy lives into real life training.
- Reduced number of flights to learn maneuvers. This translates into not just time but money savings.
Higher quality students.
- The simulator allows students to practice maneuvers under the watchful eye of the instructor. Being able to pause the simulation allows a discussion to take place if the student need help understanding. Simple things like turning 'smoke on' allows the student to go outside and see how smooth or ragged the turn he/she just made was. Replay capability allows both student and instructor to critique a maneuver or a landing. All of this sets the stage for a student that knows what is going to happen in real flight, has already practiced the maneuver numerous times and understands the concepts behind them. This means a higher quality student who is better prepared to learn how a real life maneuver is performed and able learn more from the flight than a student who is not similarly prepared.
More complete training
- Most people are concerned about the fidelity of a simulator, but there is an advantage to the fact that it is only an approximation of real flight. For example, it is easy to demonstrate to a student what happens when they are too far downwind to get back to the field. How about a low altitude skidding turn that develops into a spin? Thermal and ridge soaring techniques can be explored, aerotow no-no's, all can be explored without danger to life or aircraft. Crosswind training, weather conditions that exceed pilot capabilities, estimating glide performance with headwinds/tailwinds/crosswinds, the effects of turbulence on flight instruments and maneuvers, all of these conditions can be introduced at will, not just when they exist in real life.
Starting a Movement
Of course, this is a completely different way to train and it is difficult for us to let go of our concepts of how things 'should' be done. This leads people to focus on what they perceive as the deficiencies of simulation. This is natural but the evidence suggests that existing simulation is good enough to keep from introducing bad habits to students who learn through simulation.
Of course, 'real' pilots who have not taken the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of simulation based training are often the most vocal. The list of reasons that simulators are useless run from their inability to simulate subtle and detailed weather phenomena to video or flight fidelity. This is hogwash but it stands in firm and often united opposition to introducing pilots to flight training via simulation.
So how do you start a movement? If the arguments about cost, time, and CFI availability won't get you anywhere, do what I did - get off the dime and ask new students if they are interested in simulation. You do not have to be a CFI - I'm not. Make sure you announce to the club leadership that you are doing this and that you'd love to have advice from a CFI but that you'll proceed without them if you don't get any volunteers. What that will do is strike fear into the hearts of those who ARE CFI's because they are certain that you will be training these students 'wrong'.
They might be right. I don't really know because they agreed to help me out and I showed them a complete CFI manual I'd put together that spelled out the lessons and order that I intended to use. We conducted a few sessions to see how it went and I found that they are willing to try this technique.
More on that in part 2 of this post.
