How can we get better at teaching the fundamentals to our students?
Hey, MZeroA Nation, Jason Schappert here,
and you are listening to the CFI, Certificated Flight Instructor Podcast,
brought to you by our number one-rated online ground school,
with a new Learning Management System, the science of learning.
The fundamentals are infused in it already.
MZeroA.com to check it out and learn more.
This is, as you know, one of my favorite podcasts to do.
I love, love learning.
I love CFIs like yourself, or aspiring CFIs like yourself,
who are taking the time right now to say, "I want to be the best CFI I can be."
You've heard me say this scary phrase before to student pilots,
"Am I just learning to the capacity of my CFI?"
which, unfortunately, for 90% of students, is perhaps true.
But, not for your students and not for your future students,
because you are a good pilot who is always learning.
And, that's incredible.
That is absolutely incredible.
And, your students are blessed, they don't even know it.
Inflight Coffee a few weeks ago, someone was asking,
how do I know if I have a great CFI?
And, I was sharing what makes a great CFI, what makes a great flight school,
and all I could think was, man, if everything I shared over the past hour,
and I was sharing what great CFIs do,
the pre-flight briefs, the post-flight briefs.
What great flight schools do, all these things.
I said, if no red flags were raised, you have a great flight school,
and you have a great CFI.
If there are some red flags raised, you might want to think about this.
And, again, when I was talking about good CFIs,
was talking about you all.
When I was talking about bad CFIs, well, we won't ever name names.
But, I'm sure you know a few. And, you know what?
You probably had a few, and I had a few, too.
But, you learned from those CFIs.
In fact, I've learned more from my bad CFI's
and I have from some of my good CFIs, fortunately, or unfortunately.
That's just how the laws of learning work sometimes.
And, speaking of the laws of learning,
we're talking today about the fundamentals.
How can we help our learners--
and that is a newish buzzword for MZeroA, and we're going to begin,
instead of calling our students, students, we're going to call them our learners,
because that's what they really are.
They are learners, and we are all lifelong learners.
We'll still stick with the phrase, "student pilot,"
but these are our learners.
And, they're your learners, too.
How can we help our learners get back to the fundamentals?
Get back to the basics?
For starters, I would imagine, if you're watching this,
there's always the rare chance you just stumbled across this video.
If that's the case, welcome.
We produce three other podcasts, the Private Pilot Podcast,
the Instrument Pilot Podcast, the Commercial Pilot Podcast.
You're listening to the CFI Podcast.
You can listen to us on iTunes.
You can watch on Facebook or YouTube as well.
I'm waving at you, Facebook and YouTube, right now.
We produced in March of 2021, for those who listen to this later,
a series called, "The Fundamentals."
And, I would encourage you, in fact,
it is a must before you dive deeper into this,
to go watch the entire series.
It'll probably take an hour of your time.
Call it movie night with you and your spouse.
I know, very romantic.
Or, a movie night with you and the dog.
I don't know what your life situation is like right now.
Call it movie night.
The first video is 27 minutes alone.
They get shorter from there, I promise.
But, it probably adds up to, maybe, just shy of an hour of content.
But, it is valuable content.
Because, I believe so many students--
Current CFIs, back me up on this, or maybe future CFIs,
from your own training, you know this.
So many students unfortunately unbeknownst to them,
meaning they don't understand or they don't even realize it's happening,
they've built their training on what I'm calling a sandy foundation.
We want to build our foundation of our home on a rock, on limestone.
We want to put four pillars into the rock, not into sand.
Because, when the big, bad wolf comes,
he huffs and he puffs and he blows our poor little foundation down.
How do we know we've built a foundation on rock?
Well, this Fundamental series helps you do that.
It's a five-video series,
and the first four videos are all strong pillars of your table,
whatever you want to call it.
The fifth video is putting the tabletop on top.
And then, March 30th,
you know I'm doing the great livestream, MZeroALive.com,
where I'll take it a step further with you on that.
And, I just cannot wait to be sharing more about that with you all.
Livestream, a lot of love has gone into that.
So, I'm just very, very excited to be sharing all of that with you.
So, we're looking forward to seeing you all there.
Anyways, how can we teach this to our learners, though?
How can we teach the fundamentals?
How can we get to the basics?
I just shared this a little bit ago.
I recorded the Commercial Pilot Podcast as well.
Many times, we batched these podcasts through.
And, that was in the batch.
And, one of the things I was sharing is a video.
In The Fundamental series, if you watch, there's a video called,
"Know Your Airplane," and it's not the most glamorous thing.
In fact, it's the video right now with the least amount of views,
because it's about constant airspeed climbs
and constant airspeed descents and pitch and power settings,
and things that just aren't--
I know we can post a clickbaity title, like,
"He landed with one blade on his propeller,"
and you'd get 100,000 views or something crazy.
And, we don't do clickbaity stuff like that, as you know.
There are people out there, you're probably thinking,
"That person does that."
And, there's no value to it.
I would rather just deliver a ton of value and have less catchy titles
and less glamorous footage because we're building these fundamentals,
and you as a CFI or aspiring CFI, know that
I pitch for airspeed, I power for altitude.
Pitch and power settings are life.
If a student can grasp that, their training becomes so much easier
because it's a pillar in the rock, not in the sand.
Yet, so often, what do first lessons look like?
It's a discovery flight.
It's a flight over the house, over the parents' house,
over a friend's house, over their work, whatever.
And, you want them to have fun.
You need to show them that flying is fun.
But, by lesson two or three,
you have to be doing the less glamorous things,
like pitch and power settings.
And, I remember doing my pitch and power settings
in 6-7-1-1-Juliet, a little Cherokee 140.
And, it was summertime in Florida, getting bumped around.
My lessons were 0.4
because I was getting nauseous just focusing on instruments
and trying to look outside.
I don't even know what I'm looking for outside.
What do you mean the horizon? I see the horizon.
What should the horizon look like?
Show me.
Pitch and power, and look outside.
Those two things don't go hand-in-hand.
How can we be telling a new private pilot,
"It's all about your pitch and power settings?"
"Well, I'm sitting there, staring at the tachometer,
trying to get my power settings right,
and trying to get, I think, airspeed right,
because you mentioned something about airspeed is so important.
I heard this Jason guy say, 'Airspeed's king.'
And then, you're telling me I got to look outside, too?"
We can start building a sandy foundation so early on
if we don't allow students to build a strong foundation,
a strong fundamental of pitch and power settings.
Because, you can't teach great landings without a good,
I'm going to say good, I'm not going to say great,
without even just a good understanding of pitch and power settings.
You can't teach slow flight and stalls and steep turns
if they don't understand pitch and power settings.
It is so basic.
You might be saying,
"Jason, I'm just trying to teach these new students how to taxi."
I get that, too, and I've spent 0.5
teaching someone how to taxi as well.
Those are interesting lessons.
They're always in August in Florida,
and you wonder why taxi with the doors open, a taxi lesson.
Those, I get it, are no fun sometimes.
But, student pilots need that as well.
Did you know, by the way,
the original Piper Cubs did not have brakes?
They always had to be so particular about their landing power settings
and their speed and their touchdown points
because they did not have brakes.
They just let inertia roll themselves out, so they came to a stop.
And, the grass helped to slow them down a lot.
But, when you don't have brakes, you manage your pitch and power,
and I'll add another "P" to there, your point, your landing point,
aiming point, and landing touchdown point.
Pitch, power, and point.
Coach Ray, let's write that down.
It's a good idea. Coach Ray and Tom, edit all these.
These are my Coach Ray, Tom, let's write that idea down.
That's a good one. Pitch, power, and point.
When you don't have breaks, and then you know what?
Now, I'm getting on my soapbox again.
When Piper finally did add brakes to the Cub,
they added heel brakes.
Did you know that my 1940 J-3 Cub has heel brakes?
Do you know the primacy of 10,000 hours of toe breaks,
and then you hop in the Cub, and you have to use heel breaks?
For starters, I don't know about you, maybe, it's just me,
I need to take a yoga class or something.
My calves are not that flexible.
I feel like I'm busting Achilles tendon,
trying to flex enough to apply a heel break-in that seated position.
Maybe, I need to, maybe, even take some yoga classes
and get more flexible is what it is.
But, anyways, that was a tangent that was unnecessary.
But, it does illustrate the importance of, once again, pitch and power.
Because, in 1930s, when we didn't have brakes,
and then even in 1937, when they introduced heel brakes,
we still had to be on our game with that.
And, if you want to ever come fly a 1940 J-3 Cub,
you're going to be flying with heel brakes,
just something else to get used to.
Pitch, power, point. Write that down.
That's important. Let's add that to our lesson plan, CFIs.
I think that's good. I don't know where it came from.
Sometimes, garble comes out.
Sometimes, wisdom comes out.
I don't know if that was either of those two things, though.
Anyways, we have to teach our students these basics.
And, it might be a fun story to share with them.
Hey, listen, back in the day, they didn't have headsets,
they didn't have brakes.
You got all the luxuries here.
And, we're going to learn how to utilize these luxuries.
We're still going to learn the basics, though, with that.
So, that's something I want you to focus on with your students,
pitch and power.
What does it take to make a 90-knot descent?
What does an 80-knot descent look like?
When do flaps add to that equation?
Teaching them these things in the traffic pattern as well,
because pitch and power is just as important
throughout my traffic pattern.
It's something else we must realize, too.
We say a perfect landing starts with a perfect pattern.
We say airspeed is king.
We can teach our students all these catchy little phrases.
If they can't apply it,
and one that students have such a hard time applying is this:
I pitch for airspeed, I power for altitude.
Team, I'm here to tell you,
it took me 300 hours for that to finally click for me.
And, one day, I said, "Whoa,
I pitch for airspeed, I power for altitude."
It makes so much sense in the landing environment,
in the slow-flight environment, in the instrument approach environment.
It makes so much sense.
I used to think, "I'm going too fast.
Bring power back."
In some instances, like I'm in a nosedive,
that's going to help.
But, I'm too fast in my approach.
Let me pick up my nose just a degree, just two degrees.
Basic stuff like that.
You go, "My airspeed's back in check now."
I didn't change my power setting.
My power setting was fine, because my power is my descent.
I want 500 feet per minute.
But, all of a sudden, went from 90 knots to 95 knots.
Just pick that nose up just a hair, Jason, just a degree.
That's all it takes for five knots.
That is the level of precision and detail
when a student understands that.
And, for a student to understand,
I pitch for airspeed, I power for altitude.
You must teach them those basics.
You must teach them working through those maneuvers in the air
and working through those basics.
So, again, I've rambled on more than enough here.
I hope you will join us March 30th.
MZeroALive.com.
We'll be live via Zoom because I want to see your smiling faces.
That's what it really is.
So, looking forward to that.
Head over to MZeroALive.com, March 30th, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
I'm looking forward to seeing all of you there.
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you for your emails.
It is the lifeblood and the oxygen of what we do.
Have a blessed, amazing, outstanding rest of your day.
And most importantly, remember,
that a good pilot is always learning.
Have a great day, everyone. We'll see you.