The problem with ignorance is that we tend to ignore how ignorant we are until we realize what we don’t know.
It’s often observed by people that their training (whether PPL, IMC or IR) stopped a long way short of being really useful. It taught the fundamentals, but not enough to empower one to really go places.
Short of flying right seat for a commercial operation, under the supervision of a captain who is actually himself building up his experience, no amount of PPL training will actually prepare you for “flying places”, or it will be so expensive that nobody will afford it. And who says that freshly minted PPLs all want to go places?
I think the PPL training is just fine. What you need thereafter is an environment in which you can hear tall stories about what others have done, being surrounded by people who have gone places and came back to talk about it so you can learn from it. An aeroclub that organizes trips during which the participants can learn the ropes by an instructor. That is the aeroclub equivalent of line training. Places like EuroGA is a substitute/complement to such aeroclubs.
As a young PPL in Norway I used to hang out at my aeroclub during weekends. There would always be other pilots around, at that time all much more experienced than myself (since I had virtually 0 hours). Lots of hangar talk, descriptions of destinations around Europe, engines, airplanes…
The worst thing that can happen to a young PPL is being on his own with little possibility of mingling with other pilots.
LeSving wrote:
It’s pure nonsense nonetheless.Hey, if I repeat that to myself enough, will I believe that?
A subtle point you don’t appear to have grasped is that you don’t teach experience…its an irrelevant observation.
All learning effectively comes from experience. Experience, as the saying goes, is the product of bad judgement. Accordingly, whilst there is nothing to stop anyone from just getting on and doing a particular thing in isolation, it should be recognised that this is a particularly inefficient way to learn. You’ll only (likely) end up repeating the mistakes of everyone who went before you. You’d have to be quite a “special” person to only want to learn from your own mistakes.
The whole point I was trying to address was to highlight efficient methods by which people can share their experiences, and help others progress and become more capable than they otherwise would in isolation. Having an active aero club with a large source of experienced aviators is the ideal, though this is a rare thing. Video resources appear to be a great way to impart the benefits of experience, especially as the audience is potentially large.
masterofnone wrote:
All learning effectively comes from experience
Most definitely not, but that is beside the point. A fresh PPL knows all he/she needs to know to fly wherever he wants. What prevents him is mental obstacles based on the fact that up to that point he has been doing only what he has been told. Suddenly he needs a reason to go somewhere, whereas earlier he did that cross country trip to get that PPL, and that was more than enough reason to do it.
I don’t think we disagree. It’s just that getting out of the “student mode” and into the “PIC mode” is not something you can do by doing more training, in my opinion. That is like putting out fire with gasoline. It’s a well known phenomena. The first time I got to know about it was when doing gliding in the early 1980s. The fear of leaving gliding distance from the home base is the same thing, only more “visible” and tangible.
A PPL gives you a license to be “free as a bird”, but you have to jump out of the nest yourself (mentally speaking). I mean, what you want to do is to fly with the flock. The only way to do that is to find a flock and fly with them. For those wanting to cruise around Europe IFR, then I guess this place is as good as any to find one or several flocks.
