On May 11, 2005, at 6:33 AM, MikeEasley@aol.com wrote:

Most of the accidents we have had in the Lancair community are not due to lack of skill, but poor judgement.  We've had people fly into thunderstorms, do low passes and high G pull ups into stalls, fly with engine problems, stretch a glide while passing over a perfectly good runway, etc.  While recurrent training is important it doesn't solve the problem of poor judgement.

Gang,

Just back from putting on All Red Star, it was a great success and even attended by Legacy drivers Scott Alair and Don Barnes who stopped in to check things out.

I, too, am frustrated by reading Shannon's accident report, and countless others like them. I do have to disagree with Mike's statement above.....ALL of them are a result of poor training. Gang, training *includes* instruction in risk management. Flying into a thunderstorm is most likely a lack of training, as are the others mentioned above. Low passes with high G pulls can safely be accomplished...we see them at airshows every weekend. BUT is that person qualified, and does he know the FAR's? Does he/she understand why those regulations were put in place? If they did I bet you in the vast majority of cases those decisions would have been different.

My point here is that while a properly trained pilot is plenty capable of performing all of the above poor judgment items, it is my experience that MOST CFI's do not do a good enough job of training pilots. Just like a child establishes all of his/her thought and habit patterns early in life, so does a pilot. Most CFI's instructing for PP licenses are more concerned with building time to get on to their real goal than they are mastering the art of flight instruction. It is no wonder the FAA is now failing over 50% of pilots taking their first CFI checkride...they have caught on to the fact that something needs to be done about the quality of the instructor pool.

True, you can lead a horse to water, but can't make it drink. However, the likelihood of it drinking is also directly related to the quality of water, and how hard you've made him work to get to it....

Barry