Turns Around A Point ISN'T THE POINT!

All right, everybody, so today's topic is, uh, again, kind of aimed towards you CFIs or CFI candidates out there, but certainly, uh, no matter what rating or certificate you are currently pursuing, um, anything from private to instrument to commercial, this could be beneficial for you, um, and especially if you are planning to become a instructor in the future.

We are gonna talk today about the difference between teaching a check ride maneuver versus teaching a fundamental skill because all too often when I'm working with my CFI candidates, uh, you know, we do ...

We structure our lessons to where they come and they, they teach me something in the classroom on the ground, um, and then we typically go out to the plane and we go and they teach me it in the plane.

And so often they come in and they say, "Okay.

Today we're going to learn turns around a point." And they proceed to teach me turns around a point, but then I'm sitting there as the student, the quote unquote student, and I'm just asking myself, like, "What is this maneuver? Why are we, why are we doing this? What is the point of this thing?" Okay? Um, and it's because while the CFI candidate I'm working with, um, may have done a perfectly fine job of explaining this maneuver, turns around a point, uh, we gotta remember that a turn around a point is simply a check ride maneuver, and it's one way we demonstrate the broader concepts and the fundamental skill of...

That's right, ground reference maneuvers.

Okay? So we wanna be teaching fundamental skills first and foremost, and not check ride maneuvers.

So the difference would be something like this.

The difference is you come in and you say, uh, maybe you've watched hopefully my podcast episode on the what, why, how method, okay? And we always wanna use the what, why, how method.

So they'll say, uh, "Today we're talking about turns around a point." That's the what.

Why? "Well, we, uh, we need to be able to fly our plane around a certain point and maintain a constant radius." Okay? Uh, I'm being a little bit, little bit, uh, short on that explanation and, and I would expect more from my students, but, uh, for the purposes of this example, we'll just go with that.

Um, and then they get into the how.

They might not even really say the why.

They might just get into the how.

So, "Hey, we're gonna go around, we're going to pick a spot, we're gonna clear the area, we're gonna pick a spot on the ground, and then we're gonna make sure we start going downwind, and we're going to, uh, start flying around our spot, and we're gonna maintain a given radius around our spot, and we're gonna change our bank angle throughout the circle to make sure that our radius stays the same." And again, this is a very just kind of brief, uh, example.

But, you know, the turn around a point, like I said, it's an example of the broader category and fundamental skill of ground reference maneuvers.