Yes; this is horrible, but the Q I would ask is whether ATPL FTOs on the mainland do anything different.
Of course, this was also a bit of a swipe at the UK training scene, which always seems even one little bit more backwards than everywhere else… why, I don’t know.
I think this is rather common also elsewhere, But I really have no insight into any Euorpean career flight training schools and their procedures nowadys.
The UK ATPL scene has always marketed itself as high class, traditional, very proper, producing pilots with the right attitude, etc, etc, and the professional pilot forums have always had loads of UK FTO instructors bad-mouthing FTOs other than the traditional famous UK ones, saying that if you get your CPL/IR in Spain, Greece, etc, you will never even get an interview. And loads of ATPL cadets have bought into this marketing. What they were taught or not taught doesn’t really matter because few of the skills are applicable to a RHS jet job – which is just as well
It seems to me, one get used to pull the mixture lever way back once you start flying a long touring mission on full throttle at max MTOW and half fuel in the tanks or alternatively when owning/renting dry
Other than that, you probably don’t have much financial incentives (wet rental) or people just get reluctant to lean, especially, when it does not make much difference (full rich while on circuit/local low flying for flight training)
The usual way to save fuel in flight training is to reduce throttle/cruise speed (actually that is when leaning is important for engine life), so you come across someone who flies the Warrior on cruise at 80kts and get surprised that you can continuously fly at 105kts almost fully open throttle while pulling the mixture 3/4 of the way…
On plug fooling due to mishandling of mixture, well a lot can be said about “proper engine management” in general but again the question of how much of that is a direct cost/benefit to the user? or how much of it is reflected in the SOP?
When I taught for the CPL at an ATO. We were told to leave the mixture full rich all the time.
At the weekends where I taught a small me crummy RTF we taught leaning as I mentioned before.
Not leaning the mixture isn’t just a UK thing, it goes on a lot at sea level schools in the US, too – I’ve seen it. The teaching of correct mixture usage seems to be inversely correlated with the formality of the school :-) Freelance instructors and ‘club’ type schools seem to teach it, the formal part 141 school (and more formal part 91 schools) don’t. On the other hand, teaching of old wives tales seems to be correlated with the formality of the school. I suspect this is because in those, you’re now on the nth generation of 350hr instructor who has seen nothing but the part 141 training environment whose knowledge was passed to them by the previous 350hr instructor who had seen nothing but the part 141 environment and so on.
I commented on that video on YouTube saying that I was surprised to see they weren’t teaching leaning and engine management.
Got a fairly brusque reply saying I was making quite a leap with my assumption and that they flight plan based on the full-rich fuel burn. Not sure if the pilot in that video really knew what I meant, but then if nearly all his flying has been within the training scene then it’s quite possible he doesn’t really know how to lean properly. You can lean effectively even without instrumentation – it’s not as good – but still effective – and the PoH/Lycoming guidance expects you to.
When I first learned to fly, three of the four instructors I learned from, were FrAtpl.
Prob no more real experience than a regular 100hr PPL.
WRT Leaning, having read lots of articles, some of which I even retain, I wouldn’t lean anything for cruise without the appropriate instrumentation.
GA_Pete wrote:
WRT Leaning, having read lots of articles, some of which I even retain, I wouldn’t lean anything for cruise without the appropriate instrumentation
What power setting do you usually have?
I’m leaning now with Engine Monitoring.
But in consideration of your power setting enquiry, I’m wondering if you were thinking about the reduced risks of low power setting and leaning?
I imagine many club or group A/c with less powerful engines are run routinely not far from around 75%.
That’s just a guess though.
We used to run the 180hp Robin at 2500-2550 rpm always. That must be close to 80%.
Similarly other 172’s and PA28’s I’ve been in have been run the same. They can be quite slow otherwise.
At that setting the margins are reduced.
