100 hour wonders.... amazing

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I would love to have an independent scoring or review/critique of my piloting skills. Some don’t care after their PPL, some wouldn’t listen to others input, and some think they’re Maverick from Top Gun.

I am low time and other than flying with a CFI occasionally and my one FR so far (“pass”), I never got the impression whether I was a good, bad, or average pilot. I’d love to know on a scale of 1-10 or 1-100 how bad-ass or sh*tty I am for my hours. Without that feedback (or some people’s ability to listen to feedback), we go on guessing how good we are.

I’m either the valedictorian or the special needs kid at my local high school of 1 student, me. Or I’m average. How would I know?
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I would love to have an independent scoring or review/critique of my piloting skills. Some don’t care after their PPL, some wouldn’t listen to others input, and some think they’re Maverick from Top Gun.

I am low time and other than flying with a CFI occasionally and my one FR so far (“pass”), I never got the impression whether I was a good, bad, or average pilot. I’d love to know on a scale of 1-10 or 1-100 how bad-ass or sh*tty I am for my hours. Without that feedback (or some people’s ability to listen to feedback), we go on guessing how good we are.

I’m either the valedictorian or the special needs kid at my local high school of 1 student, me. Or I’m average. How would I know?
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It’s all relative. I’m sure you could find someone to tell you you’re on either side of the spectrum
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I would love to have an independent scoring or review/critique of my piloting skills. Some don’t care after their PPL, some wouldn’t listen to others input, and some think they’re Maverick from Top Gun.

I am low time and other than flying with a CFI occasionally and my one FR so far (“pass”), I never got the impression whether I was a good, bad, or average pilot. I’d love to know on a scale of 1-10 or 1-100 how bad-ass or sh*tty I am for my hours. Without that feedback (or some people’s ability to listen to feedback), we go on guessing how good we are.

I’m either the valedictorian or the special needs kid at my local high school of 1 student, me. Or I’m average. How would I know?
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Sometimes the best you can do is "competent" :)

Other than the flight review sign-off, have you asked your CFI for an in-depth debrief to see where you are?
 
midlifeflyer said:
Sometimes the best you can do is "competent" :)

Other than the flight review sign-off, have you asked your CFI for an in-depth debrief to see where you are?
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No, but that’s exactly what I want to do, based on reading this thread.

I’ll keep my score to myself, unless I’m better than all y’all...

:D
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I would love to have an independent scoring or review/critique of my piloting skills. Some don’t care after their PPL, some wouldn’t listen to others input, and some think they’re Maverick from Top Gun.

I am low time and other than flying with a CFI occasionally and my one FR so far (“pass”), I never got the impression whether I was a good, bad, or average pilot. I’d love to know on a scale of 1-10 or 1-100 how bad-ass or sh*tty I am for my hours. Without that feedback (or some people’s ability to listen to feedback), we go on guessing how good we are.

I’m either the valedictorian or the special needs kid at my local high school of 1 student, me. Or I’m average. How would I know?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Veldhuyzen_van_Zanten
In addition to his duties as a regular airline pilot, he had been promoted to chief flight instructor for the Boeing 747.[3] At the time of his death, he was in charge of training all of KLM's pilots on this type of aircraft and the head of KLM's flight training department
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Katamarino said:
I said some pilots; definitely not all! Most pilots, GA or Commercial, new or experienced, are great.
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I think the psychology that makes a good pilot also create a personality that has to exert deliberate effort at being humble. Doesn’t matter what airplane or what circumstances they are pilots...
 
patience is a virtue
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I think the psychology that makes a good pilot also create a personality that has to exert deliberate effort at being humble. Doesn’t matter what airplane or what circumstances they are pilots...
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Yea humbleness isn’t a thing on PoA lol.
 
Someone asked where “You were at 100 hours”. IIRC, I was over the Ohio River across from Downtown Cincinnati and Newport KY in a Cherokee 180 with my pregnant wife and my two year old daughter when the engine ate a valve and ran smoothly only at idle.

Learned a lot that day and thankful for every flying lesson prior to that. I learn something every flight and every conversation with a pilot, if only on the very rare occasion that some d*** Pilot is going to wind up in a smoking hole some day somewhere.

Cheers
 
Kritchlow said:
...Then they hit about a whooping 100 hrs and think they know everything, and will argue 20,000 hour ATP guys....
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Where does a relative newcomer look to see what ratings and how many hours an Internet poster has? Even for someone like me, who has been around the forum for a while, there are many posters whose experience and qualifications are unknown to me.

Also, don't 20,000-hour ATPs disagree with each other on occasion? I'm not saying that it's a good idea in general to ignore the voices of experience, but sometimes even a low-time PIC has no choice but to make up his/her own mind about something.

That having been said, I definitely agree with post #46.
 
Meh. I got nothing to really add to the thread other than to say I’m a 300 hour PP (recent IFR) that has a pretty decent idea of where my piloting skills and knowledge rank.

Threads like this certainly make me less than thrilled to ask questions on here. As a matter of fact it makes me glad that I chose just yesterday to ask my weather related question on a different board.
 
arkvet said:
Threads like this certainly make me less than thrilled to ask questions on here. As a matter of fact it makes me glad that I chose just yesterday to ask my weather related question on a different board.
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Which is too bad, because there really is a wealth of knowledge here, but there is a small amount of jackasses that drown out the good folks sometimes.
 
Looking back when I was at 100 hours I was still needing 25 hours to start the IFR training. I needed approximately 70 hours after the private check ride. So the name of the daily game was cross country, baby, in the mighty Cessna 152....3.5 hours out, fuel up, then 3.5 hours back. Every day. All done by DED reckoning and pilotage, with a little VOR tracking at times. I learned a very valuable skill not taught by any flight school. I learnt how to eat while flying, and I learnt how to fill empty bottles while flying.....which not much later in my career were two very helpful maneuvers to know......
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I think if they took a photo of your junk when you get your cert, and store it in the database for other pilots to see and printed it on your cert, probably 99% of pilot arguments would never even start.
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Yeah but imagine the set on the guy/gal whose willing to pick a fight! :eek:
 
Katamarino said:
Of course it also works the other way around. There seems to be a tendency, once some pilots start flying for work instead of for themselves, for them to suddenly become massively snobbish and somehow convinced that anything less than an airliner is a deathtrap and shouldn't be allowed.
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As a guy who is relatively new to the airline scene, I was surprised at the amount of anti-GA undercurrent attitude there is among airline pilots, and how it seems to be rooted in some kind of arrogance.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I think if they took a photo of your junk when you get your cert, and store it in the database for other pilots to see and printed it on your cert...
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Wait...I thought that was the new policy. That's what the doc told me when he brought in the camera.

Nauga,
who told him 'wide angle' but he used telephoto
 
Kritchlow said:
I would absolutely LOVE to sit down with you over a few beers and pick your brain (gross saying, but you get my drift) about your experiences.
My point of this thread is most PPs don’t have the experience in every day flying to start telling a 20,000 hour guy how it’s done. Sure they can quote the rules way better than I can, but when it comes to every day practices more often than not the PP could take some advice from the high time guy.
Often here they don’t want to hear that advice.
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And most 20k hour pilots really have 500 hours total with final hour repeated 19500 times.
Sort of like a lot of mainframe programmers. They had one year of experience repeated 25 times.
I have found total time in general to be a very poor indication of actual experience level or knowledge

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455 Bravo Uniform said:
I’m either the valedictorian or the special needs kid at my local high school of 1 student, me. Or I’m average. How would I know?
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It is really impossible to know unless you have a chance to observe a lot of other pilots under a lot of different circumstances and doing a lot of different things.

Very likely it is only the guys who work in professional training departments (across the board, from the military to the airlines to the corners of the commercial world) who even have the exposure to know.

In many ways it is a meaningless metric because there are so many skills in aviation, and so many different ways to use and test those skills, that it is somewhat impossible to directly compare to someone else.

For example, military pilot training does a relatively good job of setting objective performance standards for individual tasks, and has a grading methodology that lends itself to comparison between individual students. It is far more granular than the performance and grading standards at any level of FAA training I've seen. However, the reality is that aviation consists of many different types of flying, and what constitutes a "good pilot" in one sector of aviation doesn't necessarily translate to being a "good pilot" in another sector. So, does it really have any meaning if a pilot excelled at military training if those skills that made him great in that environment don't make him great in another environment?

A student who graduates at the top of their USAF pilot training class probably has objectively good skills for their level of experience, and skills which will serve them well in the military flying environment compared to their peers. BUT...certainly there are plenty of CFIs on this forum who could relate a story they've heard about some hot-shot fighter jock who seemed thoroughly lost getting checked out in a 172. The same goes for folks in various airline training departments trying to get a military fighter guy through their first 121 training program. So is the guy who is good enough in the military environment to be a combat-vet fighter pilot, but struggles with learning to fly an airliner, a good pilot or a bad one?

On the flip side, as a T-38 instructor I flew with a number of USAF students who were "highly experienced" civilian pilots who were probably quite competent in their civilian capacity but who performed quite poorly in the military training environment. I personally saw this with a wide range of people, from Gold Seal CFIs, to accomplished IAC acro pilots, to airline guys and beyond. Some guys were just not good T-38 pilots, and some just didn't have the decisionmaking skills to deal with 400 knots and 7G. Some of them eventually figured it out and graduated, and some washed out of training entirely. Are those guys good pilots or bad ones?

I would argue that anyone short of Bob Hoover who thinks they're a "great" pilot simply hasn't yet exposed themselves to the type and character of flying yet to show them how little skills in the pantheon of aviation they really have.
 
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By the way, one of the things I like about this forum is the mix of airline, GA, military, and controllers.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Which is too bad, because there really is a wealth of knowledge here, but there is a small amount of jackasses that drown out the good folks sometimes.
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I’ve found that a lot of times when the jackasses finally leave the site a few new jackasses join and the cycle starts over lol. It’s never ending.
 
arkvet said:
Meh. I got nothing to really add to the thread other than to say I’m a 300 hour PP (recent IFR) that has a pretty decent idea of where my piloting skills and knowledge rank.

Threads like this certainly make me less than thrilled to ask questions on here. As a matter of fact it makes me glad that I chose just yesterday to ask my weather related question on a different board.
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I’ve got nothing against Kritchlow’s OP (in fact I think he is right to a certain degree), but I get where your coming from. I still post a fair amount, but I don’t take myself too seriously on here anymore.

Actually a lot of my questions are asked via private messages now to a select few members. Great way to avoid the verbal beatings lol.
 
tspear said:
And most 20k hour pilots really have 500 hours total with final hour repeated 19500 times.
Sort of like a lot of mainframe programmers. They had one year of experience repeated 25 times.
I have found total time in general to be a very poor indication of actual experience level or knowledge

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I’m not sure, but it sounds like you’re suggesting that at 500 hours you have all the experience needed for a successful future in aviation. Shucks, at 500 hours I was a CFI and never broke 6500 feet. At the time I truly thought I knew a lot more than I did.
 
Palmpilot said:
Where does a relative newcomer look to see what ratings and how many hours an Internet poster has? Even for someone like me, who has been around the forum for a while, there are many posters whose experience and qualifications are unknown to me.

Also, don't 20,000-hour ATPs disagree with each other on occasion? I'm not saying that it's a good idea in general to ignore the voices of experience, but sometimes even a low-time PIC has no choice but to make up his/her own mind about something.

That having been said, I definitely agree with post #46.
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Yes, high time guys disagree at times.
My entire point is that when another pilot has a different viewpoint you should not dismiss it offhand.
So, your high timers disagreement sort illustrates my point, although that does not happen often. Point being, many low timers think they know more than they do and are not open to other advice. I’m betting I fell into that category at one point, before I realized I still had a lot to learn.
 
tspear said:
And most 20k hour pilots really have 500 hours total with final hour repeated 19500 times.
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I agree that total time means less and less as the number gets larger, but you’re telling me that almost the whole of my experience has given me *nothing* as a pilot?

Flying crappy piston twins and turboprops in the ice and all manner of weather - a young kid trying to find the balance between saying ‘no’ and doing what it takes to log that all important multi/turbine PIC. Finally getting my ATP and a type in my first jet. Learning a more structured way to fly. How to work as a crew. Flew charter and corporate all over the world in a variety of aircraft, then finally went off to the airlines - chasing a more reliable schedule. More airplanes spanning generations of technology. Several different airlines, different cultures, different ways of flying planes. Hundreds and hundreds of airports. Almost a dozen countries. Dozens of different airplanes.

Countless lessons learned. Stupid sh*t I did that scared the crap out of me. Stupid sh*t other people did that scared the crap out of me. The learning *never* stops. And I can learn from anybody - 20K hours or 100 hours. Everyone brings something to the table.

I don’t think I’ve ever been one to point to my total time to show that my opinion is more valid than the next guy’s. But to say that every hour after 500 is the same - implying that I haven’t grown at all as a pilot in that time - is absolutely nuts.
 
Kritchlow said:
I’m not sure, but it sounds like you’re suggesting that at 500 hours you have all the experience needed for a successful future in aviation. Shucks, at 500 hours I was a CFI and never broke 6500 feet. At the time I truly thought I knew a lot more than I did.
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I just picked a number based on the before ATP requirements to fly for the airlines was passed in 2013 (the Colgan air reaction).

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kayoh190 said:
I agree that total time means less and less as the number gets larger, but you’re telling me that almost the whole of my experience has given me *nothing* as a pilot?

Flying crappy piston twins and turboprops in the ice and all manner of weather - a young kid trying to find the balance between saying ‘no’ and doing what it takes to log that all important multi/turbine PIC. Finally getting my ATP and a type in my first jet. Learning a more structured way to fly. How to work as a crew. Flew charter and corporate all over the world in a variety of aircraft, then finally went off to the airlines - chasing a more reliable schedule. More airplanes spanning generations of technology. Several different airlines, different cultures, different ways of flying planes. Hundreds and hundreds of airports. Almost a dozen countries. Dozens of different airplanes.

Countless lessons learned. Stupid sh*t I did that scared the crap out of me. Stupid sh*t other people did that scared the crap out of me. The learning *never* stops. And I can learn from anybody - 20K hours or 100 hours. Everyone brings something to the table.

I don’t think I’ve ever been one to point to my total time to show that my opinion is more valid than the next guy’s. But to say that every hour after 500 is the same - implying that I haven’t grown at all as a pilot in that time - is absolutely nuts.
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No. What you describe is experience, and this is rather rare, in any field. More high time pilots which post online from my observation went straight to the airlines from time building as a CFI.

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tspear said:
No. What you describe is experience, and this is rather rare, in any field. More high time pilots which post online from my observation went straight to the airlines from time building as a CFI.
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I think you’d be surprised by the breadth of experience. I’ve flown with a lot of different folks over the years, and my background probably puts me right smack in the middle of the bell curve. In fact, I’m usually embarrassed to even talk about it.

There are a lot of really amazing folks out there!
 
tspear said:
No. What you describe is experience, and this is rather rare, in any field. More high time pilots which post online from my observation went straight to the airlines from time building as a CFI.

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Just keep flyin that Cirrus buddy and you’ll be just fine ;)
 
CC268 said:
Just keep flyin that Cirrus buddy and you’ll be just fine ;)
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Lmao. I am a junior pilot :) but an opinionated one.

Tim

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Kritchlow said:
Yes, high time guys disagree at times.
My entire point is that when another pilot has a different viewpoint you should not dismiss it offhand.
So, your high timers disagreement sort illustrates my point, although that does not happen often. Point being, many low timers think they know more than they do and are not open to other advice. I’m betting I fell into that category at one point, before I realized I still had a lot to learn.
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I remember that when I got my first pilot certificate, a pilot acquaintance told me it was a license to learn. I didn't like hearing that, but boy did she ever turn out to be right!
 
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