Bridging the Gap

The Evolution of Flight Training

On July 20, 2007, the FAA issued Advisory Circular 91-78. It states that pilots can replace paper charts with an EFB (Electronic Flight Bag – FAA-speak for tablets running flight management apps) for most part 91 operations as long as the application and chart data is kept up to date. It recommends that you carry a backup source of data, like a 2nd tablet or phone or paper charts.

Today, tablets running EFB applications (i.e. ForeFlight, FlyQ, Garmin Pilot and others) are common in cockpits. However, students wanting to become proficient with EFB are hard pressed to find a CFI that will not only teach them how to use an EFB, but also how to manage their use in the cockpit.

Until recently.

A few months ago, Justin Cleland, co-owner of JB Aviation and Mike Nowakowski, CFII and the Chief Flight Instructor at JB Aviation’s Flight School at Galt Airport, sat down to update the school’s syllabus.

Mike recalls, “Justin and I sat in development and discussed what we’re going to put in the syllabus. We added items, and then we stepped back and asked, ‘Well, wait a minute… is this relevant anymore?’”

The concepts still apply, but the methods were outdated.

Justin agreed, “We struggled with that. We want to teach what’s going to help you in the air, the things that are going to make you a better pilot.”

Teletype limitations required coded weather reports. He asked, “How does that make someone a better pilot? Instead of spending an hour translating NOTAMs and METARs with a student asking, ‘What does this mean, what does that mean,’ and ‘I don’t understand that,’ we read the decoded weather briefings and ask more meaningful questions. The student is learning something important for the next hour. That’s a huge advantage.” 

“There’s a sense that you’re not a good pilot if you don’t do things the way you were taught years ago.” Justin added, “That’s not the way it works. Technology moves forward!”

Transitioning from the PTS and adopting the ACS required a seismic shift in preparing students for their checkride. The ACS teaches “single pilot cockpit resource management.” A skills gap can exist between flight instructors and students, who come in expecting to learn how to use an iPad in the cockpit.

Mike says, “As a flight school, we have to answer that, otherwise we’re not going to be in this business for long. Some instructors feel they’re just here to teach you how to fly, not how to use a tablet in an airplane. We don’t agree with that mentality.”

Justin recalled flights with students as a CFI, “We’d be on our way to Monroe and we’d tell them something has happened and we’re going to divert to Beloit. We’d ask, ‘How many miles is it to Beloit?’ Well, four minutes later after looking at their sectional and we’re already passing Beloit, the student would say, ‘Seven miles. We’ll be there in seven miles.’ That question is fair game on a Checkride. Now, they can just grab that magenta line in ForeFlight, drop it over Beloit and say, ‘Four minutes and twenty-two seconds.’ That frees us up as instructors to do more, to provide more complicated scenarios and add more depth to the training.”

The EFB reduces the workload, improving the safety and efficiency of a flight so the pilot can concentrate on the flying.

“When I get into an airplane now, I have ForeFlight connected to my headset and my ADS-B transponder. It’s a 3-dimensional volume of continuously updated, live information: weather, traffic, TFR’s, runway closures, winds aloft, even fuel prices. It’s like having a co-pilot!”

“It’s talking to me, telling me I’m 10 miles out and what the AWOS frequency is, what the CTAF frequency is. It’s telling me when to set up for a 45-degree entry into the left downwind for the runway I’m going to use. It’s calling out a 10 mile final, 8 mile final, 6 mile final. Live traffic is pictured on my iPad and it’s telling me about it, audibly!”

He exclaimed, “You can’t tell me we should disregard those amazing benefits just to use a manual E6B and a paper sectional.”

But they knew it can prove distracting too. And they had concerns about the potential for an EFB to make a pilot lazy. When students are taught to use it correctly, they agree that it can make for a more situationally aware, safer pilot. They wanted to close that skills gap. The flight school needed to add EFB expertise on the team. Fortunately, that expert had an airplane and hangar right there at Galt.

Ron Friend is an Advanced Ground Instructor, and a ForeFlight guru. He joined the discussions. They talked about how to incorporate ever-evolving EFB systems into the flight training syllabus.

Intro to ForeFlight, Ron’s first class, has been added to the syllabus. He uses a foundational approach that includes how to enter pilot and aircraft information, how to do a weight and balance computation, and basic flight planning.

Ron said. “You still have to populate ForeFlight with specific information from the POH before you leave the ground.”

They decided to not allow students to use an EFB in the cockpit until they can prove to the instructor they can fly from Point A to Point B with a chart in their lap.

A DPE might not ask you to use a manual E6B, but you will probably be asked how and where ForeFlight got the performance information to do its calculations.

But a student learning just how to use an EFB won’t know anything about magnetic variation! That’s a built-in function of ForeFlight. You don’t want to get in the airplane with a DPE and have him or her ask why you decided to fly at 4,500 feet, with your only reply being “Because ForeFlight told me to.

“You still have to know the concepts,” Justin said. “As my math teacher used to say, ‘I want to see your work.’”

Ron created a second ForeFlight class titled, How’d it Go? He teaches it after a student has used ForeFlight in the cockpit and has had a taste of what it’s like to be a little overwhelmed by the information it provides.

A section of Ron’s hangar is set up as a classroom, complete with a large screen monitor and a Redbird simulator. Ron said, “I can take the iPad out of an airplane, mount it on my simulator, turn it on, and there’s no difference in ForeFlight between the plane and the simulator.”

“The new generation of students is very comfortable with the technology, and we want to bring them in. That’s the future. The tools are already being used. JB Aviation teaches students to use them effectively.”

Mike added, “We don’t just want to make better pilots, we want to make safer pilots.”

News from JB Aviation

Meet our Newest Instructor
Dan Johnson

Dan is a retired American Airlines pilot and has been flying for the past 53 years. He has accumulated over 26,000 hours of flying, including time as a crop duster, flying airfreight and commuter, and flying float planes in Alaska. You may have seen Dan around the airport. He’s owned several airplanes throughout the 20 years he’s been based at Galt. He currently has two planes, a Rans S7 and a Piper Cub. He provides Light Sport flight instruction for JB Aviation in the Sling 2.

Congratulations to Jake Berge! He earned his private pilot certificate on 10/22/2018.|
Pictured with DPE, Dave Monroe on right.

Congratulations to CJ Lerum! He earned his private pilot’s license on 11/10/2018.
Way to go Jake and CJ!

Congratulations to JB Aviation mechanic, Troy Schlote!
He recently earned his Inspection Authorization (IA).

Early this year, I finally got back to pursuing my PPL, a project I began 32 years ago. The changes that have occurred over that time period are enormous. The weather information available on-line is incredible. Heck, when I started, there was no on-line.

What makes no sense are some of the things that haven’t changed. One example is the continued insistence that students learn to read and translate old teletype encoded METARs. Being able to make sense of that gibberish makes me feel as though I’ve gained entry to a secret club. But how does that make me a better pilot?

It also amazes me that a guy in the late 1930s came up with something so indispensable to pilots that it lives on and on and on. I’m talking about the E6B. Its propensity for inaccuracies due to the width of a tic mark or the penciled dot on the wind correction window led generations of pilots to make conservative decisions when planning flights. Ok, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

However, if you ask pilots when they last used their old whiz wheel, most say, “when I took my written.” I heard about one guy who keeps his on the cocktail table to impress visitors. He admitted that he doesn’t have many visitors. I’m betting he doesn’t have a spouse either.

We now have less expensive and more accurate E6B apps on our smart phones and iPads, but it’s nice to know ground schools are keeping some slide rule manufacturer in business.

Student pilots are still taught to navigate using tools that are artifacts from another century, but that isn’t my point. The real burr under my saddle is that it leaves them to patch together knowledge of EFBs from YouTube videos or to do their own in-flight experimentation. There’s a serious instruction gap!

To those who believe today’s iPads range from an annoyance to an abomination, depending on your level of neo-Luddism, you need to be aware that the FAA gave EFBs their official blessing in Advisory Circular 91-78, eleven years ago. Look it up in your 3-ring binder of ACs from 2007.

Stories about tablets overheating or batteries dying or data not being updated, should be teaching opportunities for CFIs, not reasons to ignore them! Instead, how about teaching a class on cockpit management of portable electronics?

Of course I don’t advocate that we stop learning pilotage and dead-reckoning. Also, knowing what your butt is feeling in the left seat of an airplane is an important skill to have if your airspeed indicator fails. But why is it any less important to teach someone how to manage their iPad information in flight? Let’s get with the program, people!

Incidentally, after I brought up some of these points up during Checkrides and Chili, Mike Nowakowski, the head CFII at JB Aviation’s flight school, informed me that they recently added ForeFlight classes to their syllabus. That conversation led to the feature article this month, titled Bridging the Gap that begins at the of this newsletter. I say, good for you, JBA!

Finally, lest everyone think I’m being a curmudgeon (ok, I am), there are some serious thanks I’d like to offer. First, to my wife, Marie, who keeps me from drifting too far off the centerline. She was happy to see these particular ideas committed to paper ’cause she is mighty tired of hearing me complain about ‘em.

Also, during this past year I have been fortunate to meet a number of interesting people: pilots, CFIs, DPEs, businesses owners, airplane enthusiasts, writers and readers, people with stories to share. Everywhere I turn, there are fascinating folk and friends that I simply hadn’t met before. Thank you all for enriching my life.

It is with great pride that Galt Traffic once again presents…

Planes on Posts

No sooner had we sent out the October edition of Galt Traffic, than this beauty appeared in our email. Craig Frank spotted this Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC3 at the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport (CYXY) in lovely Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

Craig says it’s his favorite weathervane!