RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE BACK SEAT By Jeff Orchard
Judgement Day
Recent events at the field have given me a lot to think about. As instructors, we have a duty and responsibility to help people become safe pilots. A large part of the process is to provide a base of knowledge that the student can draw upon to develop the skill required to bring a flight to a successful and safe conclusion. Another even larger part is for us to assess the judgement of each student and decide whether we think the student has the innate ability to know when there is trouble lurking and what to do about it...in a timely manner.
I have a friend named Charlie. He lives far, far away, so I think I'm safe mentioning him here. He is one of the smartest people that I know and is well respected in academic circles for his ability to analyze an issue in depth and to glean every possible solution from the facts that can be gleaned. And his solutions are often innovative and unusual and eminently workable. The only problem is that he sometimes spends hours or days arriving at his conclusions. Why, just trying to decide which movie to see is fraught with phrases like, "In my opinion or I think or on the other hand". But we usually make it to the second show.
Pilots and firefighters are required to make quick decisions and to exercise good judgement in making those decisions. Sometimes lives are at stake. It has been my experience that judgement is not a learned skill; you either have it or you don't. Therein lies the rub. How does an instructor assess judgement and then help a student find his good judgement? A pre-solo student may have excellent judgement, but lack the experience to remedy a situation. An instructor can help with this by making suggestions and corrections as needed. As the student approaches solo, the instructor expects to not have to make as many comments as before in weird situations. The student may not even recognize the problem until well after the instructor is getting antsy, but then suddenly, just before the situation becomes a full-blown emergency, the student has the "omigod" reaction. The instructor (beads of sweat beginning to dry as they begin to form on the students forehead) relaxes just a bit and gets ready to watch the show. The instructor is also prepared to step in if necessary to save lives. "Just doing my job, Ma'am."
If you are in a unique situation and I'm with you in the back seat, and you think I'm being awfully quiet, look around you and assess your situation. It could mean that I think you are about to demonstrate your judgement for me, and I'm just waiting to see what comes next. Or it might mean that I think you are doing so well thermalling at 9,000 feet upwind of the airport that I'm taking a nap. (This also is a story for another time.)
Instructors may also put you into a strange situation to see how you react to adversity. If you are really high on final, I might lock the spoilers closed with my knee. I've had students swear loudly almost the whole length of the runway nearly crushing my kneecap in their attempt to wrestle the dive brake handle open. And I've had those that realized it was more important to figure out why the brakes don't work after they land and crank the glider into a steep slip or S-turn. Which pilot would you rather fly with? Which one do you want flying your airplane?
Intentional rope breaks are the traditional method of assessing judgement, but there are a few other good ones out there. No, I'm not giving ALL my secrets away. As glider pilots, we must live with the fact that we are always 10 minutes from a forced landing. This situation is always a good one for demonstrating judgement, but it rarely happens with an instructor on board, so there is no one to independently assess your performance while it is happening. Many will assess it afterwards, however.
The old adage is "Any landing is a good one if you walk away from it". Carrying this a bit further we could say "A really good one, you can fly away from". My rules for cross-country flight are simple:
1. Fly from field to field.
2. Use the lift that you find while flying from field to field to stay up.
3. At 1500 feet AGL, keep looking for lift, but work yourself into a position to enter a normal downwind leg to your chosen field.
4. At 1000 feet, commit to land.
5. Land.
Note that there is no second guessing between item 4 and 5.
These rules are simple and they work. You probably won't win any contests by following these rules; if you want to fly in contests, buy a glider.
I devised these rules for myself right after a memorable flight that found me at 400 feet in zero sink with either a crowded parking lot or an apple orchard to land in. With the proverbial beads of sweat forming, I noticed that about 1000 feet south of where I was there was a series of sewer lagoons surrounded by woods. They were a little downhill of where I was too, so I went for it, theorizing that anaerobic bacteria generating heat might save the day. I was right. There was very STRONG incentive to stay aloft in the 70 FPM lift. The turns were as gentle and smooth as any you've ever seen, and I may be among the first to core a thermal by smell.
I picked up a recent issue of Science News the other day that had an article by Bruce Bower entitled "Rational Mind Designs...Research into the Ecology of Thought Treads on Contested Terrain" (SN vol.150, p. 24). I paraphrase what the author said to make it apply to this story.
"Intelligent decisions get shaped by numerous, sometimes contradictory imperatives in the...world, such as the desire to maintain consistency, to revise thinking in the face of new information, to reach a swift verdict, or to make a judgement that can be justified afterward. Individuals do not usually possess the time, knowledge or computational ability to reason 'optimally'. 'Fast and Frugal' formulas for decision making offer a promising alternative."
The author goes on to propose, "That (we) information-processing systems make decisions with the aid of 'Satisficing Formulas'. Satisficing, a Scottish term that blends satisfying and sufficing, refers to the strategy of picking the first satisfactory option out of many choices instead of waiting to survey all possible alternatives."
I suspect that this is good advice to follow in many aspects of our lives, not just the aviation part. I'm tempted to send a copy of this article to Charlie, but I'm afraid he'll swear at me all the way down the runway. Think. Have fun.