Don't become a smoking hole in the ground!

If you've ever thought about getting your pilots license, you've wondered how difficult it could be. Sometimes things are only as difficult as you make them. Focusing on the small things, or fixating on seemingly important matters can seem like a good idea. After all, every major project that we complete is made of many small parts. We're all guilty of trying to be perfectionists from time to time. Wouldn't it be a shame to fail at our life's biggest project due to the weakest link being just one small detail? Unfortunately, the weakest link is more often than not, you!

I have had the pleasure of working with many types of students, ranging from age 13-76, and many nationalities as well. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's impossible to learn how to fly without looking out the windshield. I'll use a recent student as an example. We'll call him Jim. Jim was about to enter his senior year of high school, and was spending his summer vacation taking lessons. Now, Jim was very bright, and studied everything that I told him to on his own. He picked up radio communications very quickly. He followed procedure, used the checklist, and remembered almost everything that I told him. Why then, could I not get him to fly a circle around a water tower without losing 400 feet?

Several years ago, I had a run in with a captain (George) at a corporation I was working at. It was the longest day that I spent at work with over 9 hours flying through the snow and ice. He was very meticulous, and could fly an ILS very well, without any significant deviation. He took time to plan every detail, and was very 'good' at pre-flighting the whole aircraft. On one trip when he was still a co-pilot, at 27,000 feet a warning light came on in the cockpit. It was for the baggage door in the nose of the aircraft. The captain at the time asked him where his keys were. George stuck his hand in his pocket, but his keys weren't there. After they had landed, George ran up front to get his keys, unfortunately, they are somewhere in Nebraska. His captain saw that there was a new dent on the engine cowling. One inch higher, and Georges keys would have taken the engine out. There is a reason that the last line in the pre-flight checklist says to do a final walk around. Sometimes it's difficult to see things that are wrong until we step back. But in his defense, he the gauge he was checking in the baggage compartment was in the green. :)

Sometimes it's better to step back, and view something as a whole, and let the chips fall were they may. Allot of the little things will take care of themselves. It is so much easier to tweak a few little things at the end of a project, than to micromanage every little thing that comes up. But then again, who am I to criticize all those micro managers out there?

So, what did I do for Jim, and how is Jim's flying now? Well, i covered all his gauges with a notebook so that only I could see his gauges for a whole flight. He deviated no more than 200 feet and less than 10 off of heading for the entire flight. Not bad for having no precision instruments to go by. It's a little ironic though. If he goes on to work on his instrument rating, he won't be allowed to see out of the window at all.
Don't become a smoking hole in the ground! Life has windows! Look outside.