High Altitude/Mountain experience

[Astro]

Mountain flying is about first knowing and validating the aircraft limits, evaluating the environment, and then evaluating your own comfort level/limits.

All flying is like that.

 

There is a much smaller bubble of power margin at high DA

As there is in an R22 at max gross weight (which is pretty much all the time while dual anywhere).

 

Mountain guys always talk a big game, but the only reason to train up there is if that's where you want to spend your first few years as a CFI.

[Wally]

All flying is like that.

 

As there is in an R22 at max gross weight (which is pretty much all the time while dual anywhere).

 

Mountain guys always talk a big game, but the only reason to train up there is if that's where you want to spend your first few years as a CFI.

I have very little real "mountain" time and most of that being instructed. What impressed me was the planning for the event, the on site evaluation of the environment and the technique to minimize the effects of that environment. It was a great deal more than mere power management.

Everything I learned had some application in 'flat land' flying but that knowledge provides exceptional ability in only very very rare situations.

As an illustration, talk about approaches with a group of professionals and you'll discover that the majority insist on stable final at a fixed angle into the wind. That's how they were taught but it's not a real world solution to a lot of problems at low DAs; and much much fewer where the DA and winds might substantially vary because of orographics and with the added complication of limited airframe and power plant capability.

The average student is sufficiently challenged by pre-commercial level mastery of physical aircraft control, like stable hovers, that additional technique requirements will only delay the basic mastery and may well discourage the student into assuming incapability in economic terms.

[SBuzzkill]

I agree with Wally.

 

Master the basics and then head up to the mountains. I had a couple hundred hours before I took a mountain course and it was a very challenging and humbling experience. It took a lot more time flying in and around mountains to even begin to use and fully understand the concepts that I was being shown in the course. I had the techniques but the experience just wasn't there yet.