LeSving wrote:
The notion that theoretical knowledge somehow can mitigate lack of “muscle memory” is highly dubious at best IMO.
I agree.
And in any event, theoretical knowledge is only as good as you can apply it. Looking at the stuff we need to pass our exams, many people choose to simply binge learn and throw up the whole stuff the day after their exams. In much ballast stuff that is even ok, but in other things? It’s also a waste, as you have invested time to learn it, why throw it away?
Meteorology is one of the most hated subjects in theory. I was no different, even though I had an interest in it even then. But seeing how lots of pilots today struggle to understand even basic concepts they had to learn to pass their exams and therefore make bad decisions at times is just sad. We lost another Mooney in Switzerland in the alps when he flew into IMC and into a mountain last Sunday. Or how many people came foul of the hated altimeter theory or have never grasped the background behind Density Altitude… accident reports are full of them. Met is one of the things which can make your life easy if you apply it or hell if you still think of it as a hated subject.
I loved maps from my early childhood, thanks to my dad who also did and taught me on our hiking trips. How many pilots are uninterested in reading maps or even basic geography? I’ve come across several. It’s GPS today so who needs maps? I’d claim, au contraire. Yes, you get better maps, the possibilities of stuff like Google maps or the online maps available on many government sites (the swiss one is excellent and also has the ICAO map on it) is a map-lovers paradise.
When I instruct, the question which always sets me off is “Do I need to know that?”. Appropriate it may be, reformulate it into “will this be in the exam” makes it (slightly) better. Knowing too much is a thing for crime movies, not for aviation subjects or even less so for general knowledge.
LeSving wrote:
Really good aerobatics pilots often also are good in technical sports, such as downhill skiing, ski jumping or rally, motocross and so on.
I would say no correlation at all. I used to fly unlimited. I know a lot of unlimited pilots (well not that many – there are very few people at this level). We are all very different. Some are very athletic. Some are not at all outside of a cockpit.
hammer wrote:
Some are very athletic. Some are not at all outside of a cockpit
Don’t they say you need to be “10G short & fat” to make it (sorry for lack of PC 
)
I have no problem with people wanting to learn stuff. In fact I encourage it, if only for mental well being. What I take issue with are statements like "You must learn English to fly. You don’t. But the law says that if I want to fly outside of France I need ELP . I want to fly outsiide France so I learned English. Well actually I learnt most of it as a kid in school.
Then some on this thread claim “you need to be educated”. The question to ask is educated in what? The challenge of flying brings an opportunity to expand one’s horizons which could lead to an interest in meteorology, aerodynamics, law etc. But a cursory knowledge is all that is necessary and as others have said most things can be learnt by rote for tests and obtained easily before a flight.
Finally, I don’t believe flying is a talent. I think it is an aptitude. Flying aerobatics at the top level or competition gliding, they are talents.
LeSving wrote:
Really good aerobatics pilots often also are good in technical sports, such as downhill skiing, ski jumping or rally, motocross and so on
I always enjoying seeing the Russians sixty somethings sweep the board in the FAI World competitions, I doubt they did any technical winter sports :) other than snow shoe walking!
The precision of their gyroscopic manoeuvres is somewhat unearthly.
At last for VFR flying, another human variable is awareness of what’s around you. Completely separate from inteligence and education.
To be aware of weather, traffic, engine around, etc.
RobertL18C wrote:
I always enjoying seeing the Russians sixty somethings sweep the board in the FAI World competitions, I doubt they did any technical winter sports :) other than snow shoe walking!The precision of their gyroscopic manoeuvres is somewhat unearthly.
Looking at what their training and formation used to be, most of them have passed what amounts to an engineering school on the way to becoming a pilot. At least when i was involved with some of them, years ago, that is the impression I got. These guys guys go through rigid selection and get trained really well. No wonder they perform well.
gallois wrote:
What I take issue with are statements like "You must learn English to fly. You don’t.
What I actually said is
I regard that (English) as a absolutely vital skill if you want to be in aviation, no matter in what capacity.
No, you don’t need to learn English if you want to fly in France and with airplanes which have French documentation. And I think in France you can get pretty far in aviation without it. I’ve had a lot of friends who were either out of French pilot schools or actually had French ATPLs. I also spent some time on an Air Toulouse Caravelle with that crew. And handled Air France. The stories from those guys were impressive. I learnt a lot from them.
You took a choice, mainly because you, like most others, had a foundation in school and “just” needed to upgrade it to aviation. Looking at your very good skills reflected in taking part in this forum, I’d say you’ve done a great job of it. But there we go: To take part in this aviation forum, English is needed. If you want to go to Oskosh, fly abroad, e.t.c. same thing.
If I want to fly in France, particularly in FR only airfields, I also have to make a choice. I speak french but i don’t have a French RT (as of now, it’s been on my list for a while including LP). I might be miffed because you lock out non-french speakers from a sizable numbers of airfields but from a safety point of view there is not much one can say against that. Even if no other European country has such rules.
gallois wrote:
Then some on this thread claim “you need to be educated”. The question to ask is educated in what?
There is formal education and there is informal. Strictly speaking, pilot training of any kind is education, as it is not usually self-acquired knowledge. In the end we are all saying the same thing in differend wording. You need some amount of skill, knowledge, aptitude, talent, call it what you wish, to safely operate an airplane. As there are many ways to Paris, there are many ways to get to the point where you are a safe pilot.
gallois wrote:
Finally, I don’t believe flying is a talent. I think it is an aptitude.
You know what, I agree. I called it talent for lack of a better word, you call it aptitude. I think in the end we mean the same thing. I’ve seen pilots who are so at home with their airplane that their actions is a symphonie between man and machine. And I’ve seen brilliant engineers who became pilots who know all there is to know and then some and who sometimes struggle to “talk” to the airplane. That does not make them less safe in most cases but it is a question of character and person.
gallois wrote:
The challenge of flying brings an opportunity to expand one’s horizons which could lead to an interest in meteorology, aerodynamics, law etc. But a cursory knowledge is all that is necessary and as others have said most things can be learnt by rote for tests and obtained easily before a flight.
It did all that to me, not all subjects alike and some out of necessity.
Sometimes however I think it is sad that many pilots only learn to the test. Ok, there are some subjects where knowing the answers by heart is not fatal (in the true sense of the word) but others in which a certain understanding of basic principles would a) do away with the question binge learning as you would know the answers out of understanding and b) give you a basis on which to talk to people you will need to get information from once you have the rating you learnt for.
In my wildest dreams I never would have thought I’d end up in meteorology, as I did quite by chance when my then employer went bancrupt. 20 years there have given me a lot of understanding of problems I struggled with when doing the met exams. Eventually you learn to break down the meteorological problems into pretty basic understanding of how meteo works. When I talk to people on the phone who wish to know the weather for whatever occasion, this is very evident.
There are people to whom telling that a warm/cold front is approaching from where, which direction and a timeframe that is all they need to know because they understand the implications of a front for their undertaking. Others will need a step by step prognosis on what will happen. Or what happens around a Low in our area, what the different phenomena are and how they work and what happens in typical weather situations in your area.
Someone who understands that flying towards a warm front particularly VFR will mean lower and lower ceilings while flying away from it is mostly no problem has a very different life expectancy than someone who has never understood that. Likewise someone who has never really understood all those altimeter questions is much more likely to eventually getting it so wrong that a piece of granite ends his career.
The best instructor in Meteorology I ever had was a truly exceptional nuclear physicist from Geneva. His day job was a scientist at CERN. He taught us ATPL level meteorology. We loved every single lesson the guy held because it was fun, interesting and he really knew how to make you “get it”. And of course navigation with the living legend (the last active navigator) who at 80 gave lessons which kept you upright in your seat. The only sign of his age was that we had to sometimes remind him in which language the lesson was to be held (english, sorry) because he sometimes started in one of the other 8 he spoke fluently.
I teach basic aviation to new meteorologists. I love every minute of it and I hope so do they.
Met is actually a good example. Yes, with a lot of theoretical knowledge you can undertstand a lot of it. And there are different levels of theoretical understanding that can all help. For example: Many “Meteorologists” do know how pressure changes with altitude but are not necessarily able to explain why – while for physics students that is a typical “warm up” question in the bachelor exam for theoretical physics because it is only solving a simple differential equation that you do not need to remember because it is so simple to construct even if you don’t (the pressure at a certain altitude is basically the weight of the air above it).
And for some questions you even need to learn “theory” as there is no intuitive way to get it (because a metal or a prsuure chart uses lots of “codes” that you just need to learn how to understand).
On the other hand: Some of the by far best meteorologists I ever met are old local farmers who hardly passed elementary school but could by just looking at the sky (and observing the weather for the last couple of days exactly tell you how the weather tomorrow is gonna be. They have no idea what we call a war front or an occlusion (because that is linguistic convention they never learned) but they anyway know what will happen.
Same with almost all part of flying: Yes, there is a theoretic way to learn much of it – and then it comes to coding convention of some information you have to – but for the vast majority of skills there is also an intuitive approach.
hammer wrote:
Some are very athletic. Some are not at all outside of a cockpit.
It’s not about “being athletic” in a visual sense, like a blood trimmed 10,000 m runner or something. It’s about the ability to control the body/vehicle/ski/etc. That may require muscles and stamina, but not necessarily in “blood trimmed” amounts, and it’s very far from the major requirement needed (I said technical skills). Ski jumpers is a perfect example of this, but also sailors although in a different way (Olympic class sailors). Show Jumping is another. The world cup won by a 60 year old. Makes you wonder if anyone can do it
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I stand by my statement, that more important than whatever diplomas you may have is the willingness and ambition to learn and to absorb information whereever you can.
To be honest here, that willingness and ambition correlates very nicely in real life with the diploma(s) you have My grandparents had no education because they had no means of getting it, not even “proper” (official) hand working skills. They had no choice but to start working at the age of 14-15, and slowly build their lives from that. Today it’s simply a choice for everyone. You certainly can get by with the bare minimal of education today by “being clever”, but why would you do that? The common and tired phrase is that “life teaches me”, with the assumption that “life” suddenly stops teaching people with education. It’s pure nonsense of course. An education is an addition to the stuff “life” teaches you, it’s not a replacement. I couldn’t care less how people live their lives, but nonsense is nonsense nonetheless.
As I said, I have not seen any correlation with day job and flying. Why should there be? This implies there is a correlation between flying an airplane for fun, and the more existential choices people makes for a gazillion different reasons as well as the absence of choices they may have experienced. It’s pretty absurd to think there is such a correlation. The other possibility goes toward a class segregated society, in which higher education correlates with higher “class”, and where mainly the higher class (meaning rich parents) can afford flying for fun. This correlation may very well exist some places, but has nothing to do with skills, aptitude or education whatsoever.
