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Would You Believe That You Can... 2010-03-18
Be a non-instrument rated pilot and fly in VFR condition of top of overcast at night in a VFR only aircraft Fly with VFR minimums only one mile Fly into a thunderstorm Fly into icing since there is no FAR limitation for flight into icing conditions Avoid all thunderstorms by remaining very VFR Depart a runway as short as minimum distance in POH Join the night frequency of accidents club just by flying into the ground Survive in a twin by flying it just as you would a single. Fly safer by training for safety in a specific aircraft. Match experience by getting realistic training Increase the value of experience by getting a lot quickly. Increase the risk of flight as weather conditions deteriorate. Avoid midair collisions by avoiding airports and VORs while flying above 5000' AGL. Survive most all engine failures by making a controlled landing type crash. Increase your chances of an accident by flying out of the c.g. than over-weight. Control your flying fate. How Flying Plays with Your Mind Flying has induced high level of personal anxiety, confusion, and inability to process information. Under stress even the intelligent have trouble performing two tasks at the same time. Usually when two tasks are presented together the tendency is to perform one while sacrificing the other. The task having the greatest threat focuses the attention but over time the stress fades to a moderate level. Pilots can focus attention on low and moderate threats but the focus on high threats fade quickly. High stress attention levels cannot be maintained for long since attention turns to peripheral cues. A threat that creates anxiety, learned helplessness and inability to perform must be trained and retrained. so that rational decision-making and effective information processing makes coping possible. Such an anxiety threat cannot be allowed to become chronic because hyper-vigilance becomes focused. Typical aviation stress areas subject to focused hyper-vigilance are turbulence, landings, stalls, and radio It takes an instructor with high perceived expertise, trustworthiness and authority to reduce the stress. As an instructor I will work on only one stress factor at a time. Once resolved to an acceptable level, I use it as the kite to which I can tie others as a tail. Does this work? Not always and not every time. The student who becomes chronically anxious, unable to see progress and frustrated by uncontrollable events needs to be returned to work on basic skills. Complex performance rests on a bed of basics. It is the weak basics functioning on an illusion of mastery that existed in the past that needs refreshing. The instructor must assuage student guilt feeling and insecurity by building a constructive problem-solving recovery program. Beating a student with a sense of failure with repeated failed lessons will impair the student's innate ability and motivation. The student is under a terrorist like attack by the unknown evils residing just outside his knowledge and performance base that poise credible threats that will cause him to: feel helpless and become unwilling to effect solutions adopt a sense of hopelessness toward any positive change disrupt his previous study and flying schedules have feelings of suspicion, anxiety and fear about events only in his mind. What the student should do is to build a support system via other pilot acquaintances, internet news groups and family. Second, the student should work with his instructor to design an action plan of things to do that will emphasize any positive aspects and self-efficacy. You do not dig your way out of a hole. Taking Chances We have no means to measure the willingness of an individual to take risks. We have no means to measure the amount of luck an individual will have in a given situation. It is recurrent training that will expose a pilot to the latest additions and retractions in the flying process. Driving vs Flying If they taught people to drive like they do to fly you would have to: Know how to deal with (or avoid) every kind of weather. Know every system in your car, and how it works. Be able to read a map, and memorize every symbol on it to make sure you never get lost. Accurately estimate fuel usage (to the minute), understand the optimum power settings for duration and range, be able to predict varying performance based on weather and temperature variables. Memorize the motor vehicle laws. Check your tires and brakes prior to driving. Practice a tire blowout at 70 mph. Get special training to drive in bad weather. Get a checkout in any new vehicle you wanted to drive and if it was a high performance vehicle get even more training and a signoff from an instructor saying you are ok to drive that type of car. Take a driving test every 2 years to make sure you are still a safe driver. Must have less than a .04 blood alcohol level and not be within 8 hrs of your last drink. Pass a medical exam every 2yrs if you are over 40 and every 3 years if you are younger. Simulate a crash from a bridge into a lake, and memorize the procedures that would afford the best chance of survival and escape. And then...they'd let you go around the block for a couple months, and if that worked out ok, you'd be able to go to the next town with the instructor's written permission. After a time, you'd take a written examination to demonstrate your knowledge of the above, and if that worked out ok, you'd get to spend hours with an examiner to deem you safe to carry passengers. After all that, you'd be sharing the road with others who've gone through the same training as you did. Despite all this, once in a while an accident would still occur. 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