Jetwhine

Aviation buzz and bold opinion

Flight Training

Finally, a New Take on Flight Schools

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Discussing the dismal number of student starts in the 1990s, my Flight Training magazine coworkers and I wondered how flight schools located where the nonflying public congregate, like shopping malls, might fare. Learning about two new aviation education efforts at EAA AirVenture 2012, we’re about to find out.

AV3-019_thumb[1]Zulu Flight Training, a subsidiary of Continental Motors, just opened in a mall in Spanish Fort, Alabama, not far from Mobile. Its partner in the program is Redbird Flight Simulations, which provides the latest in advanced, full-motion simulators. Whether pursuing their private pilot certificate or instrument or multiengine ratings, students will be introduced to—and practice—all key flight skills in the sim before getting into an airplane.

With ground and simulator school conveniently located, students are more likely to show up for lessons. “Our goal is to provide a consistent, structured and stress free environment at a set price to help people obtain their pilot’s license whether it is for a career or pleasure,” said Zulu Chairman Rhett Ross. That includes full disclosure of all course offerings and services to ensure that the curriculum or price never surprises students.

Zulu  also offers proficiency training, and other pilot courses will be announced in the coming months, Ross said. As the pilot location proves itself and resolves inevitable kinks, Zulu will expand to other locations around the country. To help celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Piper Cub, Redbird simulated it with motion. It’s been awhile since I flew a Cub, but its response was spooky accurate. All it really needed to complete the simulation was a fan-blown slipstream through an open door.

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An iPad in Every Student’s Flight Bag?

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At every turn, it seemed that everyone at EAA AirVenture 2012 had an Apple iPad, except me and one or two others. Aviation apps were hot items this year, and several of them would make effective, essential tools for pilots in training.

First up is Jeppesen’s new e-book versions of its well-respected pilot and maintenance technician manuals. They are starting with the private pilot and mechanic texts, but in due time all will be available at the Apple iBookstore. The library weighs nothing and once downloaded, accessing each volume using the iPad full suite of features doesn’t require an Internet connection. When they begin instrument training, students should consider Jepp’s Mobile FliteDeck new Version 2.0. Among other features it provides a paperless cockpit, and its announcement coincided with new JeppView nav data subscriptions that offer greater flexibility and economy.

AV2-004_thumb1More important for students is Lightspeed’s FlightLink app for its new Zulu.2 ANR headset. Connected to the headset battery box by a cable, the free app is a cockpit voice recorder that records the entire flight (or other specified time) and gives instant recall of the last 2 minutes by touching the appropriate point on the narrow graphic audio display on the left side of the screen. The rest of the screen is a digital scratch pad, as Lightspeed’s Teresa De Mers demonstrates here.

Some may consider this app nice to have but not essential. If you’re a student at any level, think again. But back in the microcassette days I learned first hand that recording every flight lesson was an invaluable tool that made every flight more educationally productive. Let’s face it, like all students who are learning to fly a real, live, vibrating, noisy airplane in the air with other airplanes nearby, I was only half listening to the important things my CFI was telling me.

By listening to the tape after each lesson, I didn’t need to repeat the flight—and the mistakes—until I finally heard her. Once was enough. This app is way better than my old microcassette recorder, and the Zulu.2 ANR headset is not only light and effective, it comfortably fit my big ears and fat head. A cable connects the iPad to the Zulu.2’s battery box, and the audio quality is superb, complete with the headset’s ComPriority and Bluetooth connectivity for streaming stereo music or phone connections.

To answer the headline’s question, yes, an iPad should be in every student pilot’s flight bag, and from what I saw at AirVenture, that doesn’t mean students will have to buy one, they just need to bring it along. — Scott

An Iconic Primer on Spin Resistance

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The Icon A5’s spin resistance show & tell

When I hit the play button on this video, I was ready to pounce on every syllable of marketing hyperbole. Instead of half-told truths, I got a concise, comprehensive show & tell on what makes an airplane stall, why it’s bad for everybody involved, and how the full-envelope stall resistance of the Icon Aircraft A5 improves safety.

If this is what aviation marketing looks like when it’s controlled by test pilots and aeronautical engineers, we need more of it. First, they didn’t get all mathematical and speak in Greek letters about the different aerodynamic aspects of stalls and spins. They used words everyday people would understand and married those words to video that made each point.

Comparing the side-by-side results of stalling the A5 and Cessna 150 and applying full right rudder when holding full aft stick, and then rolling into 30-degree banks, was genius. So was a comparing the A5’s stall descent rate (1,000 fpm) with a skydiver under canopy (1200 fpm). It’s probably no accident that these examples meet the Part 23’s spin resistance parameters.

And remember, this is a light-sport aircraft, certificated to ASTM standards, not Part 23. But Icon has decided to go the extra mile, and that in itself is worth something, especially these days, when doing the bare minimum (or less) seems to be the standard at so many businesses in every field. In closing, the video touted the spin-resistant amphibian as a trainer, which it will likely be, but its video is certainly an educational winner. —Scott Spangler

Reflecting on Flight Training’s Matriarch

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Evelyn Bryan Johnson died May 10, 2012 in her 102nd year. She was a flight instructor. She stopped counting the number of people she’d taught to fly when the number passed 3,000. A designated pilot examiner since 1952, when I met her in 1997 at her induction to the NAFI Flight Instructor Hall of Fame, she’d given more than 9,000 checkrides.

Diminutive, whippet-thin, with all seeing eyes that didn’t miss much, Evelyn was one of the most unpretentious people I’d ever met, in aviation or out of it. She’d be, I think, as surprised at whose reporting her passing. Google News lists 398 outlets, from NPR and and all the major newspapers, to local Tennessee medial outlets and Sky News Australia. And I’m sure she’d shake her head at the focus of their reports, her total flight time, 57,625.4 hours, according to the The New York Times.

You see, the teacher many called Mama Bird, who finally retired in 2005 at age 95, didn’t really care about numbers. What mattered most was flying, and flying safely, whether she was teaching a newcomer the ways of aviation or examining their skills and knowledge at the end of training. Every flight, she told me later, was an educational opportunity, and that’s what kept aviation compelling.

Evelyn lived most of her life in and above Morristown, Tennessee. In my waning years at Flight Training one of my unfulfilled goals was sitting down with her and the patriarch of flight training, William K. Kershner, who lived, until his death in 2007, a couple of hours to the southwest, in Sewanee, Tennessee. Another unpretentious teacher for whom flying safely and making the most of every educational opportunity mattered most, we talked about getting together often. But our respective schedules never coincided for what I’m sure would have been an epic conversation.

What set these historic teachers of flight apart from the rest was a fundamental tenet of education that seems missing today. At its core, education, aviation or otherwise, really isn’t about curricula or technology. What matters most is the personal, human connection between teacher and student, united in a shared passion for learning. And that the best teachers are really still students who eagerly share what they’ve learned with others. — Scott Spangler

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Flying Fun is a Relative Term

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Phatic speech is what we say without thinking to start a conversation. “What’s up?” are the ones I hear most, and for the past 30-some years my answer has been the same: “Anything above eye level—it’s a relative term.” This usually stops people in their tracks because they didn’t expect an answer, especially one they have to think about.

Brandon Nesmith & Mariano Rosales in a floating Cub.

“Flying fun” is another relative term, because fun is a personal pursuit. Below is a case in point. Unless you live in Alaska (or somewhere like it) earning a seaplane rating doesn’t make much sense for most pilots. I mean, really, without taking off your shoes you can probably count the number of places that rent floatplanes to rated pilots off the street.

But as a friend from my EAA days, Mariano Rosales (with Table Rock Aviation manager Brandon Nesmith in the back seat), clearly shows here, learning how in a Cub, with the door open, sure looks like fun to me, and I’d give anything to be in his place (if I fit in the front seat of a Cub, that is)!

In his blog at the Air Facts Journal, John Zimmerman acknowledges this relativity in Want to Fix Flight Training? Have Some Fun. His honesty is startling: “As flight schools we’re selling the wrong thing. Instead of offering a fun and unique experience that is rewarding at every step, many flight schools are simply trading $10,000 for a piece of plastic that says Private Pilot.”

And he explains, succinctly, why it’s the wrong thing. “For better or for worse, the student pilot of 2012 is very different from the 1970s man who walked into the local Cessna Pilot Center. In particular, customers today are after meaningful experiences, not necessarily checking the box. “The aviation lifestyle” may sound like a catchphrase, but it’s what most student pilots are seeking.”

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