i have been humbled and even learned a few things

[Guest pokey]

as many of you on this forum know, there is still plenty to be learned, we all can brag, myself? i thought that one day "i would know it all"......how quickly that thought fades and you learn to realize that you are not the only "bozo on the bus"

 

edited to thank all of the ones who truely have something to contribute---yes even you avbug,,,, (did i say that?)

Edited September 27, 2014 by pokey

[aeroscout]

At one point early in my career I remember telling one of my instrument instructors how much material there was to study, and how long it took to study it. I asked him about studying harder and longer to get higher scores on writtens and orals and such. I asked him how he was able to remember it all and I recall he made 2 comments. He said he had probably forgotten more than he remembered, and introduced me to the concept of diminishing returns. In a way he was also saying that the more he progressed in his career the more he realized he didn't know.

I find myself at a similar point in my career now as he was then. Except for the lessons I had to learn the hard way, a lot of the comparatively trivial knowledge just seems to slip away so much easier. The clarity of knowing how much you don't know is no comfort.

[Counterrotate]

Oddly enough it's often the trivial stuff that hangs you out to dry when you make a mistake and get caught by the wrong folks.

[WolftalonID]

This is exactly why I wanted to be a CFI before heading out in a different path for a career. I know that by spending a year or two teaching the material day in and day out, it would further engrain it into my mind. As well, learning to be more proficient in research, and knowing where to look for answers.

 

As students, we tend to study for the test, for the checkride, for the certificate in our wallets....then celebrate, drink beer, and forget most of what we crammed for in a few days following the checkride.

 

As a CFI, I am constantly referencing my books, lesson plans and trying to be ahead of the questions my students may propose... Trying

[eagle5]

This is exactly why I wanted to be a CFI before heading out in a different path for a career...

Funny, this is exactly why I feel the complete opposite.

[Francis Meyrick]

Knowledge...

 

Um. Define? Must know? Nice to -know? Ought to know? Fail check ride because you didn't know but really it ain't gonna hurt you? Or IS IT gonna hurt you, not because you forgot a trivia, but because you're getting lazy? Sloppy? Over confident?

 

Pride comes before the fall, and even if you just slither-GRAB and HOLD ON to that rocky cliff edge... (Phew!)... you find yourself flying away, and thinking mature, professional Aviator thoughts. Like:

 

"MAMA....!!":

 

"I AIN'T EVER GONNA DO THAT AGAIN....!!"

 

I have a word file, hidden away in a dark and dusty corner, and I have a fairly short, but searing list of "Oopses...!!" enumerated there. Big "Oopses".

 

Once in a while, I'll visit with that list. Kind of reflect on it. Ponder "stupid" kind of thing. I TRY not to add to it. That's MY list. I know it's there.

 

Some of the haughty "shouters" I have met, the exalted ones, the Sky Judges, the Immaculate Ones.... I think they forgot their list. Or, more likely, they erased that file. Never happened.

 

With that file 'delete' process, they also erased much of their... humanity.

 

I don't wanna be like that. Does that make sense?

 

Fly softly.

 

[avbug]

When I was just out of high school, my first job was fixed wing ag. I thought I had the tiger by the tail, and when my WWII pilot boss told me he had some teaching to do, my eyes glazed over and I tried to think of any thing at all that I could be doing somewhere else. He pigeon-holed me one evening at his house, armed with models of two airplanes, to talk about formation flight, and working fields.

 

We did everything in formation, primarily because it saved on the use of flags, and it made for better coverage in the fields, and it allowed a new, young pilot to be kept under very close watch. It's hard to go awry when sandwiched between two 15,000 hour pilots, spraying a field.

 

My boss began talking about wake turbulence, formation in the ag turns at the end of the field, and he brought up what turned out to be the salient point of the conversation; energy or inertia. I thought I knew all about flight near the edge of the envelope, which is where we were in those low ag turns, often pulled tight enough we felt a buffeting. Get into someone's wingtip vortice, and get dancing on the rudders, and it can aggravate a stall (which might be at an altitude too low for recovery), or lead to a spin entry over the top or on the inside. That's what I thought.

 

So you fly through a little "dead air," he pointed out. So what? The airplane has energy, it has inertia. You may be briefly at too high an angle of attack, you may feel the buffet, but the airplane was still moving forward, still flying through it. One doesn't simply fall out of the air. Fly the aircraft until there's nothing left to fly (a lesson which applies to all operations at all times). He was right. It changed my perspective. He also taught me a thing or two about proper rudder use, keepings wings level, and so on.

 

Point is, no matter what you're doing in the business or where you are, there are times when you're going to learn things that you didn't know, or relearn things that you thought you knew.

 

The ones that concern me, and I meet a lot of them, are the ones that know too much, and the ones who can't be taught because they're quite convinced of what they don't yet know, or what they know incorrectly. I see this most commonly at the lower levels of the experience spectrum, because more experienced pilots have been humbled enough in the aircraft and on the line and in the field, enough times, to realize that there's a lot more to the business of flying aircraft than one often thinks. The question that everyone should be asking themselves over and over, second by second of every flight, is what it is that he or she doesn't know yet. I see the other aircraft, but does that mean I see all the aircraft? I see the powerlines, but are those the only ones? I see the wire, but are there others that extend further, or that are strung higher? I've been out of that location two dozen times before, but does that mean I can take off this time without calculating conditions now? The engine ran fine on the way in, so it should run fine on the way out, right? What don't I know and what do I need to do to know it, and where do I need to look to find it?