There is a huge amount of risk compensation in GA activity so, yes, the low-hour flyers tend to stick to easy flights. Most people who get a PPL are smart enough to do this.
LeSving wrote:
Bottom line, the 12 hour pilot is not within the “risk group” of private GA, he is not “spoiled” by “high” currency. He doesn’t take flying lightly, doesn’t take risks and so on. He just isn’t likely to end up in a bad situation to start with. Each of those 12 hours are much more “worth” than each hour when flying 120. This is a fact, and it’s also a fact that those 12 hours means a lot on a personal level. In fact, it means enough to keep flying instead of quitting altogether. Each additional hour is “worth” more the less you fly.
Hmmm, not entirely convinced by some of that logic. Pilots flying low hours will usually be pretty conservative both as to weather and where they go. Equally there are some high hours pilots (I have in mind commercial pilots) that will spend a huge percentage of their time in the cruise and the rest in a very regulated and managed enviroment. I often think pilots with lots of landings in all weathers, all conditions and a variety of places are the “best”, at least within their aircraft type operating parameters.
I have also always believed currency is super important. I am not so sure now. Experience is equally, if not more important. I think its getting to the point where you have that fountain of experience to which to refer that is often ultimately important. If you are also very current, even better. Current, but without the experience, doesnt cut the muster when the more serious problems arise. I suspect a good 2,000 or 3,000 hours is the starting point in GA.
Timothy wrote:
You think that the learning experience generated by sitting in the aeroplane as PIC is greater, hour for hour, than doing scenario training with an instructor? You must have encountered some really bad instructors.
Maybe I didn’t put it clear enough. There is a huge difference between the currency needed for a professional pilot and a private pilot. I don’t know where EASA has got the 12 hour minimum from, but it’s there as a limit. It could be a simple function of total risk exposure per year vs risk per hour, I don’t know. Is a 120 h pilot 10 times “better” than a 12 hour pilot? Obviously not, no statistics shows this to be true, it’s the opposite, so there are other factors involved also. With minimum currency, a pilot will mitigate the low currency by taking less risk (fly only in nice weather, only short trips and so on). In addition, he will also be much more alert, more focused on the flight, he got more nerves if you want. He will use longer time, be more set on doing things right, take longer time to prepare between each flight. I think we all can agree on this.
Bottom line, the 12 hour pilot is not within the “risk group” of private GA, he is not “spoiled” by “high” currency. He doesn’t take flying lightly, doesn’t take risks and so on. He just isn’t likely to end up in a bad situation to start with. Each of those 12 hours are much more “worth” than each hour when flying 120. This is a fact, and it’s also a fact that those 12 hours means a lot on a personal level. In fact, it means enough to keep flying instead of quitting altogether. Each additional hour is “worth” more the less you fly.
But the underlying reality still remains. He only flies the minimum to keep current according to EASA, and why is that? Time and money, obviously. The budget is set, and it is very limited. Whatever you add, means you have to remove an equal amount of time/money. It’s far from a given that you will come up with anything at all that will “improve” the situation for a 12 h pilot by removing even one or two of those hours. For a 120 h pilot, the situation is different because each of those hours are “worth” relatively little. He can easily replace some of those hours with something “worth” more. For a professional pilot, each additional hour is “worth” close to nothing, thus anything other than flying one additional everyday hour will improve him as a pilot.
It works that way here on EuroGA, which was created to create a good information resource for European GA.
So now you have a new thread.
I was going to post an explanatory link for TDODAR (because the vast majority of GA has never heard of it) but the one posted some time ago under Abbreviations has gone dead, and I suggest that anyone who is interested does a google, which brings up several aviation related hits.
Cos that’s not how conversation works.
I can see I will soon have to create
TDODAR (merged thread)
and spend half an hour moving all the posts from all the threads (several of them) which went off the rails 
Why can’t people start a nice focused thread on risk management or whatever call it? Almost nobody will read a thread on a PA28 losing a wheel, past the on-topic posts which started it. It would also save me time.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I think there are many pilots that would not know how to apply themselves to various scenarios.
This is why you are trying to train not the skills of how to deal with each possible individual failure, but a generic approach to the situation.
The most difficult of the six letters to teach is the first one, “T”; that is where this conversation started in post 07. The ATCO did a great job in telling the pilot “Don’t panic, we have plenty of time; I don’t know exactly what we are going to, but I do know that we’re going to work it out between us in time.”
The symptom was rough running. I ran through the normal things of fuel pump, changing tanks, one mag at a time and enrichening mixture. Then the engine stopped.
I was helped by the fact that the last thing I had done was to enrichen the mixture and that led me to suspect a rich cut. I leaned very aggressively and got the engine restarted.
I forget the exact cause, but it was a small leak in either a diaphragm or a valve in the fuel system which was allowing too much fuel into the mixture.
This was in 1986, so memory is flaky.
Timothy wrote:
I don’t really understand why scenario training is an alternative to 12h of flying? You’ve lost me there. Most of the scenario training I do is embedded in either other training or in mentoring.
I think there are many pilots that would not know how to apply themselves to various scenarios. I know they can / could reach for the checklist but that isnt always the whole story. As a simple example how would most pilots work through some smoke in the cockpit. On a more specific subject in some aircraft there may be various means of deploying the u/c. You may well know there is a charged bottle of gas under the seat, but how many pilots would actually locate the pull mechanism and activate the blow down. I am not suggesting it is difficult, but at night, by yourself, if you have rehearsed exactly where the bottle is, and how to discharge it, you are a few steps ahead of the game.
What was the tb9 issue?
