34 | February-March 2017 | Powered Sport Flying Ignore the FAA The faa makes a lot of rules that are meant to serve the flying and non-flying public. In fact, that is one of their primary missions. However, rulemaking is normally meant to be about minimum standards, and that is clear when it comes to flight training. It’s pretty obvious that the more training someone gets, the better a pilot they become. Minimal training correlates to minimum skills, knowledge, and judgement. More is definitely better, but it makes absolutely no sense to require that everyone be a student forever while waiting to become the best they can be. Although to be fair, that is why many of us consider ourselves students our entire flying careers. There is always something to learn! So the faa had to draw a line in the sand somewhere. They had to set minimum standards. They do their best to make sure that those standards will allow the average student to get the time with an instructor they need before testing to become a pilot. Since it is a government mandate, people assume that a number is magical. But the required number of hours doesn’t take into account student aptitude, prior experiences, commitment, or training styles, among many other factors. Not a magical number. Almost an arbitrary number. And that is why the number should be ignored. If the faa says it takes 15 hours of dual time to prepare for an airplane sport pilot rating, plan for a little more. Maybe plan for a lot more! The older we get, the more challenging it gets to pick up a new skill. It also depends on the kind of airplane you are choosing to learn to fly. A simple sub-100 mph airplane is going to be easier to learn than a slippery, higher performance composite airplane. On the other hand, young kids with a lot of simulator time may not even truly need the 15 hours of time. But those are really the exceptions, not the rule. So that brings us to transition training. In the sport pilot world, there is no listed number of hours needed to transition between categories. Many pilots immediately latch onto that and assume that means that no transition training is needed. That is not what the faa is saying at all. Moreover, that is not what common sense says either. Of course you are going to need training time when moving from a simpler aircraft like a powered parachute to a more complicated aircraft like an airplane or gyroplane. How much training time for such a transition? Perhaps as much as someone just starting out fresh with no aviation experience. Often times there are things to unlearn, as well as to learn. Controls behave differently on different categories of aircraft. An interesting quirk is that just as it takes an investment of training time to move from a simpler category of aircraft to something more complicated, the same thing applies for a move from an airplane to something more basic like a powered parachute. But again, how much time? For this, my experience has been that it has less to do with time and more to do with numbers of operations. Meaning, of course, takeoffs and landings. If you perform the same number of takeoffs and landings as is required for an initial rating, odds are you will be in pretty good shape. Now that typically means (again) almost the same amount of time that you need for an initial rating. What you don’t have to worry about is any cross-country training, which is a big bonus. That leaves us with ultralights. Ultralights are the category of aircraft (or air vehicles) where the faa states no amount of dual training time is needed in order to be legal to fly. So while it may be completely legal to take a running leap off of a mountain under a paraglider with no prior training, does anyone think this really makes any sense? Hopefully, of course not! And even more importantly, the faa is not trying to imply that training isn’t needed. That is clear in the preamble to the ultralight rules. In fact, the faa wrote the rule with the intention that the industry would develop its own training standards and programs. It’s even clear that if safety wasn’t adequate, the faa may revisit ultralights with standards and training programs of their own. Fortunately, ultralights have proven to be remarkably safe in general. It isn’t a matter of mandates, it is a matter of common sense and self-preservation on the part of pilots. It is a matter of people taking flight seriously and pursuing the training needed to be safe and avoid personal injury. Now the challenge is on the faa to actually make more training available and viable. That is one of the goals of usua…
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