A happier pilot is a better pilot. A more confident pilot is a better pilot. A more relaxed pilot is a better pilot. A more competent pilot is a better pilot. If any sort of training hits only one of those, then you will become a better pilot.
Aerobatic flying is more dangerous than other types of flying, but I don’t see the relevance. We are not discussing survivability.
Martin wrote:
Like with water crossing. I sure will do my best to avoid ditching but I still take the survival gear and do the training.
But do you also practice ditching itself? You could to some extent by getting some training on a floatplane or flying boat. But then, everybody knows that their water landings are completely different from what you can expect in the ditching of a Pa28 or Seneca. And therefore nobody says that practicing water landings makes you a better pilot… For me, exactly the same applies to aerobatics training, at least as long the aircraft one flies are not very similar to the ones used for those aerobatics.
At the end of the day, if you do gain an aerobatic rating or take an unusual attitude course (which is derived from certain elements of the aerobatic rating in any event I understand), surely the key benefit is derived from having to learn to do it properly with an instructor and to then regularly practice recovery from unusual attitudes or at least brief on it so that the reaction is more muscle memory or instinctive rather than having to think what PARE meant when in a spin (or whatever the procedure may be). The difficulty is if, as in my case, you have an aircraft prohibiting spins or aeros…
A more experienced pilot I occasionally fly with sometimes reaches over and pulls the throttle and then sits back smiling whilst I switch to PFL “mode”. The first time I was quite surprised then slow in the action (but think I would have got us to the field… just). Point is, it was a surprise and my reaction was not an immediate relfex one.
I do see a benefit in learning aerobatics as it teaches much more about what the aircraft is doing than when doing some stalls or steep turns in the PPL. Separately, having sat in the back of a Nan Chang doing aeros, I am quite keen on getting the rating at some point for the sheer exhiliration of it!
It doesn’t. Car analogy: does being a race driver, driving constantly at the limit of grip, handling understeer and oversteer with a smile make you a better driver on the motorway? It doesn’t. Noone will see the difference between you and the next guy. Yet, you are a better driver, just not using your skills. You’ll only see the difference when outside of comfort zone.
I learned a lot about vehicle control from riding motorcycles so for me there is that analogy, always in the back of mind when flying. I could certainly ride a motorcycle reasonably well after a couple of years, but to learn how to ride fast on alpine roads without problems, and react immediately, consistently and without fear when something funny happens took a long time and lots of practice. Let’s say 5 or more years of consistent practice. After 10 years I probably peaked because I stopped riding as much and now unless I do it for a full day every weekend for a couple of months, or go on a two week ride on mountain roads, I’m relatively rusty.
I try to remember when flying that I will likely never reach the same skill level in a plane, or even close. And no short training session will get me there, even if it might give me a incremental boost. This is reinforced if I fly with really skilled pilots, a couple of which I would love to someway emulate if it were possible. One started flying aerobatics at age 14 and the other has flown on the US national aerobatic team. With those guys if the plane does something weird, departs in an odd way that scares and disorients me, they just fix it like a machine… boom, boom, boom on the controls, smooth and deliberate, the right amount at the right time, and the plane is straight and level again. I know this feeling from riding motorcycles, and I respect it. The same is true with flying new or unusual types, one of those guys can seemingly fly anything, immediately, and well. I think those guys are vastly better pilots (certainly to when compared with me!) as a result of their life experience flying aerobatics, and training to make any little incremental step in that direction is valuable to me. That’s how I see getting an aerobatic ‘rating’.
LeSving wrote:
A happier pilot is a better pilot. A more confident pilot is a better pilot. A more relaxed pilot is a better pilot. A more competent pilot is a better pilot. If any sort of training hits only one of those, then you will become a better pilot.
+ 1 !
what_next wrote:
But do you also practice ditching itself?
If it were practical to practice ditchings, we could have that discussion. Ditchings aren’t practised because that is a rather impractical and expensive exercise – not because they wouldn’t be beneficial to pilots’ abilities.
No doubt will both aerobatic and ditching trainings make a pilot better, if ever so marginal, as will any training that gives the pilot motor skills that could be of use in a particular emergency situation. To what extend it makes a pilot better and if the cost/benefit ratio is good enough to actually advocate this, can be debated. It is fair to say that if you’re doing everything you can to stay within the envelope of your bizjet, you will most likely never need those motor skills. However, should such an unlikely situation arise (and unlikely situations do arise), the trained and prepared pilot will no doubt react in a more favorable way.
teloco wrote:
Car analogy: does being a race driver, driving constantly at the limit of grip, handling understeer and oversteer with a smile make you a better driver on the motorway? It doesn’t.
That’s a good analogy and of course it does. A driver who is trained in handling understeer or oversteer (either through racing or a safety training, like many automobile clubs offer) will be a better driver. Not so much on a straight motorway, but e.g. on slippery ground, it is easy to get into an understeer or oversteer situation (wet, snow, leaves) and of course the trained driver will better handle this than someone who is taken by surprise and who maybe doesn’t even know what understeer and oversteer means.
For what it’s worth, I allowed myself 12 minutes of aerobatics “training” in the Extra 300 a couple of weeks ago. I have no illusions about the (non-existent) benefits of this short demo to my flying skills but it was great fun for the first 10 minutes. Then my stomach didn’t like it so much any more and we quit (in time). I agree that if you want to learn aerobatics, you should do a full course and in a less performing aircraft. Flying the maneuvers in the Extra 300 is really just too easy to benefit from it at all.
Patrick wrote:
A driver who is trained in handling understeer or oversteer (either through racing or a safety training, like many automobile clubs offer) will be a better driver
In Norway driving on a slippery course is mandatory. Most people learn how to get the car straight, but some never learn it. Those that do becomes better drivers, and those that don’t becomes safer drivers (although slow ones) because they know for a fact that they are not able to handle the car when it is slippery. That is the other aspect of it, you learn more about what your personal limitations are. I think this span is extremely wide, from barely being able to land an aircraft in a slight side wind (and no hope of improving it), to having no problems doing an aerobatics program with close to no practice or training. Everyone will improve with practice, but you have limited time and resources for it, so there is always a limit.
Bathman wrote:
My worry is you might be giving people the required skills to kill them selves.
Funny you should write that since I have long thought that an IR gives you the opportunity to kill yourself legally in new ways… 
what_next wrote:
But do you also practice ditching itself?
I probably would if it could be done reasonably safely and, well, affordably (trashing planes would make the training quite expensive, not to mention that I’m not keen on polluting the environment). I did some flying in a flying boat but not because of this – aspects of this scenario that really worry me wouldn’t be addressed. This is actually one of the situations where I would prefer to have an airframe recovery parachute.
Another example. In some situations, you’re supposed to have a parachute. It seemed silly to me to have a parachute when I have never used one so I took a course. And you can bet I investigated how to bail out without hitting anything.
As far as making you a better pilot, I think anything more demanding makes you better. For example a sailplane can make you better. It can improve your coordination. If you train for XC, you will be much more exposed to landing on unprepared surfaces. You could regularly do turns at much higher bank angles, quite close to stalling. And you should be much more intimately familiar with stalls. Yes, sailplanes are from performance perspective completely different beasts, the lessons will, however, stick.
