See post #12
OK, didn’t see that.
Two lessons, sometimes even 3 here.
PiperArcher wrote:
Then again I was learning German up until recently but gave up because my head was spinning after my weekly 1.5 hour lesson of being spoken German to, and to the point where it was beginning to stress me out and I dreaded it. I realised I have capacity to learn a lot. but I just cant do languages.
If anyone learns a language that way (1.5 hour lessons once a week) they learned it that way despite the teaching method not because of it. Humans are naturally predisposed to learn languages and few people are genuinely bad at languages, it’s more language teaching is done wrong most of the time. I was “taught” French at school by that manner and it doesn’t work and I think anyone who passed their French at school did so in spite of the way it was taught, not because of it – and as a result of failing French twice I though I was “bad at languages”. However, a few years ago I started Spanish and did it in a self-directed and fun way, using the introductory stuff from the BBC website, some Rosetta Stone to learn words quickly, watching bits of Spanish TV that interested me, joining various Spanish forums that interested me, joining some language learning websites where you can converse and practise, going to a local language café, and going to Spain. Within 6 months (starting in my mid 30s) I had learned more Spanish than I did French in 7 years of school French lessons. 14 months after starting Spanish I gave a technical talk on the design of an ethernet card in Spanish.
I also thought I was bad at mathematics (probably for the same reason, although I have to say much of it was due to laziness when I was at school) However, recently I passed with distinction my first calculus course. The reason why was it was taught in a way that made it interesting, by teachers who were obviously passionate about teaching and the subject material.
Over the years I have done up to 3 instructional flights with the same student in one day. In Europe we use the building block principle of instruction where there is a logical progression between exercises. Often a little extra continuity will assist the student especially when they get stuck on a plateau. It is important to have a suitable break between exrcises and not to make them excessively long, a student starts to slow diown natrually after 40 minutes. Two 50 minute exercises can be more valuable than a 1.5 hour sortie where the student switched off halfway through.
When I taught Flying Scholarships we would receive a new batch, of mostly zero houred students on a Monday; by Friday most were solo. With perhaps one exception, I don’t recal a student who could not comfortably manage two exercise in the same day.
I think it is a good use of time. When I did my PPL in 2000, I flew twice per day and got the PPL after 4 weeks and about 50 hrs. When I did my IR in 2002 I did it similarly. I was short of FAA XC time so had to build that up at the same time. My longest day under the hood was about 6 hrs, arriving back at the airport at 2am…..I must say by the end of the IR I was thoroughly fed up though! When I did a bit of aerobatics, as it was an hours drive to the airfield I’d turn up in the morning, do a flight, land for lunch with the FI and then go up again in the afternoon. Worked out nicely.
When a friend of mine came back to the UK to convert his IR to JAR, for the first week he did 1 hr per day in the sim, then for the remaining 3 weeks he did 1 hr per day in the aircraft, with weekends off. He was kind of gobsmacked at the inefficiency of it and considering he was paying for somewhere to stay to do this course a bit pissed off.
I am off to the US this summer and need to re-validate a few things. I have asked for a FI and aeroplane for two days between 10-16:00 and intend to fly as much as I can.
So what you are doing seems pretty sensible (and normal) to me.
Jojo wrote:
student in his thirties … professional commitments … He decided he wanted to give it a try…. My student was delighted. …Can anyone see a problem with this?
The only problem I can see is if he can’t keep up with the theory side of things on his non-flying days. If two flights gives him too much to process during the rest of his already busy week. Then it could become counter productive. But a happy student is a good student. Perhaps you can ask the student to provide feedback to the CFI about how he wants his training to happen.
I’m currently training 5 overseas students on an intensive PPL course, they are trying to do it in a month/5 weeks. The aim is to fly them twice a day every day if possible. There have been a couple of three times a day occasions. They are young and absorb info well, but we are now running into inadequate standard of English for R/T.
That reminds me in the States you can do a PPL in three weeks. Overloading the student, maybe, but they still succeed. Demotivating the student, don’t think so. Blasting holes in his flying budget. Well obviously there is a market for it!
Blasting holes in his flying budget.
How so? Chances are, the total number of required hours is less than if you spread out the course over years (with frequent “refresher” type lessons).
In good wx, and with a bright young motivated student who is focused on the job, and flying 7 days a week, there is no reason why one could not do the US PPL (40hrs) in 3 weeks. 2 flights a day…
It assumes the exams, the medical, etc have all been done beforehand, otherwise the whole project gets a bit risky. The schools here in the UK don’t normally like the exams being done all up front, but some years ago I helped one young guy to do that (did some ground school with him) and he had all 7 exams in the bag before starting flying. I also flew with him, planned a few trips, etc, and he did the PPL in the min time of 45hrs. He was done really quickly and saved a load of money. I suggested to him that he doesn’t tell anybody about the informal training until he is finished 
The normal UK PPL takes a year…..
