I'll make the same points I've made before to no avail.
The gyro accident rate is orders of magnitude higher than the FW rate for hours flown or new student starts.
FW have been teaching people to fly with a very high success rate and have taught tens of thousands more students than gyros.
Anywhere gyro training differs from FW training therefore should be examined VERY closely.
The three areas that I see that are most divergent from FW are:
1. Not as much ground school resources.
2. Limited availability of local instruction leading to cramming lessons and limiting time with an instructor in the next seat.
3. Teaching with crow hops.
Issue number 1 has recently been addressed with things like the Gyropedia program and Tim's US ground school course and those will certainly help.
Issue 2 remains a problem as most gyro instruction seems to be crammed into a week vacation at the instructors location and pressure on both student and instructor for student sign-off. Contrast this to the way most FW students learn with little time pressure and an airport near their home and they get signed off when ready and even after sign-off to solo will be back with flying with their instructor very shortly working on XC flight etc. So the instructor is constantly catching problems that develop.
I will come back to number 3 in a minute.
A huge cause of take-off and landing accidents then is what Vance posted above and is basically doing the wrong thing with the controls at the wrong moment. Hence Vance started this post about what the controls do.
Vance you can spend hours pedantically explaining things to someone on the ground, in this forum or in fight about which control does which and they may logically have a perfect understanding of it. Likely can repeat it back verbatim. YET THE FACT REMAINS THAT THEY ARE NOT MOVING THE CORRECT CONTROL IN THE CORRECT DIRECTION AT THE CORRECT MOMENT.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Phil said it above- Not because they can't or don't understand XY or Z but because their experience is NIL and so their terms of reference are sub optimal.
Every sport is about muscle memory and sight picture. A ski racer going 80 miles an hour does not logically think about what he has do with his legs to make the next gate any more than a pilot logically thinks about what he does with the stick- If you are landing and drifting left your eyes see that sight picture and your brain tells your hand to move the stick left and it happens in a millisecond because you have done it that way a thousand times.
So why are low time pilots NOT moving the flight controls correctly in that millisecond- I believe it is not quite as Phil said their experience is NIL - it is because their experiences are contradictory. WHY?
BECAUSE OF CROW HOPS.
Crow hops- the one main difference between FW instruction with it's great safety record and Gyros with their terrible safety record.
In a crow hop you are teaching them to do all sorts of things they should not do in a regular take-off and landing. Not use full power- not climb out immediately at Vy, not fly a stabilized landing approach, not flare and feel the gyro settle- So you are building in all sorts of sight picture and muscle memory combinations that you do not want them to do in regular flying. It is no wonder that when flying on their own they move the flight controls in the wrong way at the wrong time becasue you have built into them many different and unnecessary experiences. They will for certain be slower to recognize deviations from correct flying.
If you always fly a stabilized pattern you will be quick to notice and correct any deviations whether by wind or control movement.
If you always do EXACTLY the same thing on take-off the same- but it some take-offs you are taught to reduce power for a crow hop and others not you will not recognize getting into a bad spot until it's too late.
Last time I mentioned this you explained you did crow hops cause it saved time- Please see item no. 2 above.
Last time I mentioned this someone else (who had been taught with crow hops) blithely replied crow hops are an essential skill of gyroplane flying- WHY? What is essential about them?
I've got a thousand hours and have flown all over and have never had to do one. I could certainly do one today but that is with tons of experience.
Rob
Thank you for your input Rob.
I don’t know what avail you are looking for.
The goal of this exercise for me is to find a way to improve the accident rate for gyroplane with an annual advanced flying course.
I told John from the beginning that it would be difficult to identify weaknesses with a written test. I have often been surprised at the answers I get when I ask simple questions during the written pre-solo test and am trying to figure out a way to expand on the value I find in that.
It amazes me how few gyroplane pilots read and follow the Pilot’s Operating Handbook for their aircraft or fill in the V speeds during their phase one testing.
The written test I am imagining will only help to direct and focus the flying portion of the training.
Most of my clients initially have a hard time with power for altitude and pitch for airspeed. They know it intellectually but don’t feel it and when they are above the target altitude they lower the nose.
Because there are so few gyroplanes and gyroplane instructors I found I needed to create most of my own teaching aids.
The majority of my CFI mentors are fixed wing flight instructors.
I liked the teaching aids that I used when learning to fly Robinson Helicopters.
My fixed wing ground schools were not as good.
Gyropedia addresses this to some extent and Phil is working to better address the USA market.
Some flight instructors in the US are embracing The Gyropedia system.
I have not yet had success with it.
I recommend Tim’s course for my primary students for the knowledge test.
It would be nice if there were more gyroplane flight instructors and I have felt the pressure of time constraints because most of my clients are from more than 200 miles away.
Recognizing that is not the same as doing something about it.
I have a good friend who went from teaching in gyroplanes to teaching in fixed wings because he could make a lot more money with a lot less trouble and expense teaching in fixed wing aircraft.
That problem is not likely to go away any time soon. Reducing the accident rate and reducing the insurance rates may help.
The average flight experience of the accident pilots after removing two outliers (4,010 and 990 hours) and the students is 98.9 hours. I don’t know how that could be addressed with a regulation.
I was not taught crow hops in modified RAFs, SparrowHawks, Dominators or in The Predator and I do not teach crow hops to most of my clients.
I fly a consistent pattern with a stabilized approach as much as practical wherever I instruct.
Different people learn different ways and sometimes I find crow hops a useful training tool.
Crow hops are a part of transitioning me into a client’s single place and transitioning them into their gyroplane.
Crow hops were part of flight testing in fixed wings for my father.
It does not appear to me that any of the takeoff accidents involved anything related to crow hops.
I don’t know if anything will come of this effort.
I find value it the process.