Cadet Mentors
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That’s sort of my point - in the RW a pilot would step through a progression of various platforms on the way to a Viper, and as such would have that experience. For us we have to learn to tank with a Viper from the start…so, do you have a build-up syllabus for formation flight, com, ops, etc. on the way to tanking as part of basic airmanship/proficiency prior to getting to the point tanking “routinely”? Do people just end up falling out and RTB for BINGO because they can’t plug?..until they can?
Yes those skills are built in aircraft handling exercises and formation training. Flying formation on the tanker is no different than with an F-16, and we have entire chapter dedicated to training tanking operations, the contracts, procedures, and visual cues to do so successfully. I’ve never had a pilot that couldn’t get on the boom after AHC and FORM training and reading the AAR chapter, plus we make it a requirement to at least be able to achieve contact before joining, without the time frame in which it occurs being important until after entry into training. At worst you may have to give some tips, but by flight six or so, it starts getting a to be pretty good for cadets getting contact and successful top off, even in the turn. So that would make up for the fact most guys are having to learn to tank on the Viper, and honestly that skill is the least challenging of them all. Learning how to LGB loft, or drop bombs on profile the correct way for example, is a little more difficult.
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+1: I am working to structure the course into classes and have the Cadets working together more and also have more senior pilots participate in a non teaching role, to create a studying, more lively atmosphere versus the 1-on-1 training which is not optimal for both IP and Cadet.
My 2 cents, for what little its worth. Take with several grains of salt - while Ive held the role of Training Commander for more than one VFW, my methods have not been met with approval from those wings.
Classes, are absolutely a great way to go. Camaraderie benefits aside, it gets a lot of team members together, in an environment where its okay to ask questions, and okay to brainstorm ideas. Its not just limited to teaching, either. Weapons shops, where you get junior and senior pilots together to brainstorm mission profiles for various roles, have a similar dynamic.
The aim of your training, is (and I presume here) to produce junior pilots for the wing, with a minimum standard of capability and knowledge. This has several aspects to it. They need to have certain knowledge about the aircraft. You can most efficiently teach a group this knowledge, as a class. Set it up as a tutorial - Have the students read through course theory material ahead of time, then rock up for you to go through it, break it down, and explain any gaps in their knowledge. Real viper guys get months of this before they go near the plane. Thats not really feasible for most wings, for applicant retention reasons if nothing else. But you can break it up with flights, building on what the students already know.
Which brings us to the other aspect of instruction. Pilots need to graduate your course with knowledge, but also the skill to apply that knowledge. Knowing how to drop bombs is not much help if you lack the ability to actually do it. So, you need to put those skills into practice. Unfortunately, you cannot teach a class all flying at the same time. In the air, you can teach one person reliably, or two people poorly. Three people is just a mess in the air. There isnt anything wrong with doing large flights together, but you need a ratio of 1 IP per every 1 student. Most sorties are easiest on the student with just their IP to worry about, rather than two other jets and their IP near them.
So, we need classes for efficient ground instruction, and training sorties to put that instruction into practice. How do we make sure the students time isnt wasted? We need to have an efficient and effective order to train things in. Its no use teaching ACM if the student cant BFM, or even fly a loop. Similarly, if you dont know the EPs when you first fly with the instructor, you wont be able to stay in control of the jet if an emergency situation presents itself. So, you need a curriculum, a syllabus that breaks down each training task into building blocks, so that sorties build on each other in a logical progression.
How do we identify a syllabus, then? Well, that depends on the course you are teaching. You need to know, what is the whole point of the course? Lets assume for the sake of argument, this course is to train pilots with limited to no experience of Falcon, who have flown other flight simulators before, and have a bare understanding of the topics generally covered in ab initio. The goal is to train them to a standard we shall call (again for the sake of argument) Basic Mission Capable. This BMC standard will entail that they can assist in the planning of, and fly as a wingman in, a limited set of missions, which we will assume are DCA CAP, OCA-A, Strike, and BAI. So having identified the goals of the course, we need to identify every specific task expected of graduates of the course. This list is our Training Task List, and every item on it should be covered by the Syllabus. The fun part then is breaking down the TTL, into specific sorties, in an order that complex sorties follow simple sorties, and a common difficulty applies to each sortie.
So that just leaves one last major item. How do we decide whether a student meets the graduate standard, then? The hard part of flying as an IP is not generally the instruction, I find. Its the increased tasking, of flying the jet, observing the student, instructing the student, and assessing the student. Its that assessment that I want to address here. You need to be assessing how the student is doing, on every task, on every sortie. Keep notes! Every time the student does anything, think about the task - does it meet the standard you expect of a graduate? Its a Q then. Is it close? Q- then. Not close enough? Hook em (U). Be active in your feedback. Save it for the debrief, but let the student know how they are doing. Give praise where its due, but dont be afraid to tell them exactly where they need work. If they got 'U’s in critical items for the sortie, they can refly it. If they got a lot of 'Q-'s, they may want to refly it. The worst thing you can do as an IP, is let a student get away with ‘good enough’. You let them down, and you let the wing down.
So in summary. Classes are good for ground instruction, and let you convey important concepts to students, and ensure they understand it. They have an active feedback built in, and build camaraderie, done properly. One on one is essential in the air, for proper assessment of student capability. Even with good ground schooling, and excellent IPs, you will still have trouble running a course if the syllabus doesnt make sense, or the TTL doesnt cover all the tasks expected of graduates. Finally, even a well thought out syllabus, with ground schooling and smart IPs, will not produce good pilots consistently without STAN/EVAL. You need to constantly assess where students are at, and actively refly sorties if the student isnt making the grade.
Hope that helps.
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Yes those skills are built in aircraft handling exercises and formation training. Flying formation on the tanker is no different than with an F-16, and we have entire chapter dedicated to training tanking operations, the contracts, procedures, and visual cues to do so successfully. I’ve never had a pilot that couldn’t get on the boom after AHC and FORM training and reading the AAR chapter, plus we make it a requirement to at least be able to achieve contact before joining, without the time frame in which it occurs being important until after entry into training. At worst you may have to give some tips, but by flight six or so, it starts getting a to be pretty good for cadets getting contact and successful top off, even in the turn. So that would make up for the fact most guys are having to learn to tank on the Viper, and honestly that skill is the least challenging of them all. Learning how to LGB loft, or drop bombs on profile the correct way for example, is a little more difficult.
…heh…I must be SOOOO backwards. Bombing?..no problems here. Tanking? Fuhgeddabouddit…
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…heh…I must be SOOOO backwards. Bombing?..no problems here. Tanking? Fuhgeddabouddit…
I mean no offense here, but something I have observed with a lot of pilots is that they have trouble holding formation. If you can fly formation to the standard you should be at to fly the viper, you should be able to tank like its a walk in the park.
Fortunately, formation is something thats not too hard to improve your skills at, especially with practice. Some theory helps a little. You might like to have a read of the Formation Pilots Knowledge Guide. It helped me out quite a bit.
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I’m assuming the turbulence behind the tanker is modeled?..because I have a far easier time flying off the wing of another Viper (or a bogey…) than I do trying to hold form on a tanker at boom distance…so I wager there are secondary skills to be picked up in order to tank successfully. I just need WAY more practice.
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It sounds like you are in the wrong position on the tanker, then.
Practice is always a great idea!
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I’m assuming the turbulence behind the tanker is modeled?..because I have a far easier time flying off the wing of another Viper (or a bogey…) than I do trying to hold form on a tanker at boom distance…so I wager there are secondary skills to be picked up in order to tank successfully. I just need WAY more practice.
You should avoid the hot air behind the engines of the tanker or you’ll mess up the engine irl, as well as the wing turbulence. You should be in this position when in formation with it
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In our wing we are trying to capture the competitive process of just getting to the Viper, that it’s a priveledge to learn what’s contained in our course, and that’s just making it here, we still have to get through the sorties and training. Our course is about 4 months long, 60 hours on instruction total, 19 sorties, and every one of them is an evaluation. Our instructors first and foremost teach each member everything there is to know about the Viper, but also evaluate and make sure they have the ability to perform at the highest levels that our wing calls for. That’s what we are all about, I really hope this gives you a better sense of “what it takes.”
Redshift, I’m curious, you can do all this in 60 hours, 19 sorties? How many Ip do you have to cover that?
I sure can’t. How many of your fellow pilots went through that already and how many did you qualify?My experience is pretty different, our training program is 10 graded flights. 4 basics + 1 mid grade. Then another 4 + the final checkride.
the cadet can request any training flights he needs between graded flights. they can also train solo or together with other recruits.
Most of the guys wash out around the end of the 1st 5 missions - which is a real shame because the hardest is done because that’s where you learn the F-16 avionics which induce a lot of self study.
Very few are capable to overcome that and continue to the end.As for AAR training, I agree about formation. it’s a waste of time to try AAR before you’re confident with plain formation. But still you can be proficient at formation and still struggle on the boom.
I disagree with the statement that says AAR is easier than some AG stuff. In a sim, IMHO, AAR is one of the hardest thing you can do, especially in a turn.We don’t do AAR straight away. We concentrate on formation first, AAR comes in the second part of our training.
The problem IMHO is unless you’re a large wing with a lot of IP, a lot of graduated pilots and a lot of cadets, you can’t really separate regular TEs from training TE’s. you have to do both at the same time.
On one hand, it’s great, because regular TE’s for recruits is a great way to see where they lack, to motivate to learn more and become more proficient and at the same time it has a training part as well.
On the other hand, it’s bad for the seasoned pilots to have to spoon feed recruits during regular TE’s (although I feel that in the pilot community, we always mentor someone - so to me it’s not especially bad)
but to some pilot, it ruins their enjoyment to see the cooperation and teamwork effort go down the drain because of a recruit pilot. If that recruit can learn from his mistakes, then it’s a good thing though and it will be accepted by the seasoned pilots. If the recruit can’t learn and repeatedly makes the same screw-ups, then it’s a real issue.
We’re back to square one, Type B pilot and the difficulties to deal with them.Again, when you have a large pool of pilots, you can avoid the issue and separate training from regular TE’s. And say for instance you give access to recruit only when they have reached a certain level in the training program.
But with the lack of pilots all around, I find this hard to do.S
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RD,
Totally understand why you’re asking. Absolutely can be done in the time I describe and so far we’ve had great success, but it takes a lot of time. We have 3 IP pilots with myself doing the lions share of training, mostly because I am the most experienced in the wing and my schedule allows. I train in the evenings after the kiddos and wife are in bed, usually after 0100z.
Here’s the thing, yes it is so much material to cover and it is exactly what you think it is: a ton of work for each pilot. I’ve graduated 4 pilots in total in both IQT and MQT. 1 air battle manager that took me about 10 hours to show how to communicate during tactical control. I’ve trained around 15 others that have washed out, completely because it’s too hard. There are 5 pilots currently in training now that are in the final air to ground phase or wrapping up air to air phase so that number is soon about to grow.
I would say my passion makes it possible but I never look at this as work because every time I take a student up I am actually getting to learn more and master my skills, so no matter what even if the student quits it’s a win win.
Here’s my stats from the ARMS system at the 8th:
I’ve trained over 160 sorties and 280 hours in all subjects. It’s also broken down by other categories too. Those numbers will continue to grow (but hopefully slow as my fellow pilots in the wing put on their IP hats too as they grow in knowledge and skill) into the future
As far as perceived difficulty of AAR I find it becomes the least taxing subject in our training program. The bulk of study is on other subjects and it hasn’t been a major issue for us as of yet. One of the best ways to show the student is to remind them that movement around the tanker (or any formation) is relative headings and airspeeds. +/- 5 degrees here and +/- 5 knots there and you can move to any position with ease, assuming your saddled and in position. That reduces a lot of the headaches if you think of it in those terms. Then there are the visual sight pictures, contracts for rejoin, rendezvous, ect.
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thanks for the numbers
So would you agree that you have about 75% washout rates then right? 15/20?We have about 85% washouts
in the beginning, I didn’t really care about the wasted time on these washouts. Because as you said, and as our motto says, you also learn by teaching.
But nowadays it’s harder, because I’m tired of doing the same things and knowing that I only have about 15%-20% chances of success in the long term.
I aspire for more tactical aspects than simply devoting the best of my time to training others who will most likely washout…. -
@Red:
thanks for the numbers
So would you agree that you have about 75% washout rates then right? 15/20?We have about 85% washouts
in the beginning, I didn’t really care about the wasted time on these washouts. Because as you said, and as our motto says, you also learn by teaching.
But nowadays it’s harder, because I’m tired of doing the same things and knowing that I only have about 15%-20% chances of success in the long term.
I aspire for more tactical aspects than simply devoting the best of my time to training others who will most likely washout….Absolutely I’d say that is a good number and around yours for washouts, but now I’m trying to do a better job of screening to reduce that from happening in the first place. I’ve wasted my time and am over that non sense, in short I won’t train unless I feel the person is absolutely serious, passionate and committed now and I’m not afraid to end the training if
It’s not up to expectations anymore. I did a lot more hand holding earlier in our history, but these days I expect and demand pilots will continue to goto the next step. That is the reason I’m trying to be picky now, you spend 20 hours training and someone quits which I agree has gotten old already. Mostly because of the ingenuine nature of the student, they take your best knowledge and time, only to selfishly leave the wing with some sob story about their life getting hectic when really they just are the flake type who won’t admit it to themselves: they’re big fat quitter and this isn’t the first time ;).Come on now, where are the hardcore guys hiding? The ones who can fly solidly 2 wing flights per week?
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I wonder if academic qualifications as in RL might have a place in the screening process. I cant see it being introduced but it is surely a factor in success/failure at the high levels being discussed. Proven ability to study retain and understand knowledge of a technical nature and not quitting.
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Come on now, where are the hardcore guys hiding? The ones who can fly solidly 2 wing flights per week?
After flying 3-4 hours a day/night, almost every night, for a period of 10+ years… we’re tired and retired!
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Come on now, where are the hardcore guys hiding? The ones who can fly solidly 2 wing flights per week?
They got inspired, joined the Air Force and are now flying the real thing and busy as hell
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I wonder if academic qualifications as in RL might have a place in the screening process. I cant see it being introduced but it is surely a factor in success/failure at the high levels being discussed. Proven ability to study retain and understand knowledge of a technical nature and not quitting.
Definitely. The guys who stick around from experience are the real world pilots or student pilots. Every graduate of IQT/MQT has been involved in aviation real world in some way, either commercial or privately. The washouts have been the opposite, just sim pilots who may be very good, but don’t see the same value in doing that much training, they just want to blow stuff up quickly. So I guess previous experience is always a huge plus. My personal and humble opinion… We plan to fly this simulator for 5 or 10 years on average? Might as well learn all the roles, contracts and responsibilities too, right? Hopefully the new blood will come to see that too over time.
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Yup. Seems like the last 7 or so years of my sim experience focused mainly on training and constantly raising the bar. Instructing several students at a time on various steps: IQT/MQT/AQT/Element lead/Flight lead/Package lead/TE build/campaign management. Add that to your own personal gain/enhancements/knowledge and it’s a full plate indeed. This absolutely is a STUDY sim, not just a flight game and I think once a lot of newcomers figure that out they get overwhelmed and disinterested. That, and a lot of people just don’t have the time to invest to become/stay proficient. (I know I don’t anymore).
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I wonder if academic qualifications as in RL might have a place in the screening process. I cant see it being introduced but it is surely a factor in success/failure at the high levels being discussed. Proven ability to study retain and understand knowledge of a technical nature and not quitting.
It’s honestly not a bad idea as I think a large majority of the BMS community has a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
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You should avoid the hot air behind the engines of the tanker or you’ll mess up the engine irl, as well as the wing turbulence. You should be in this position when in formation with it
.This I know…already. I’m fine holding, it’s getting and maintaining center on the approach that are my problem…and not chasing the boom! I’m also still trying to figure out what my proper visual cues should be…just need more time practicing. LOTS more time…
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What tools (software) do you use to present topics, how strict are you, what are your benchmarks? and so on.
My intention is to go above the specific SOP’s your wing, squadron, or flight might have. Talk about the craft of teaching the new guys.
I believe the tools have been mentioned, but if it’s ok with you (and everyone else) I’d like to elaborate on the benchmarks a bit. Everyone does it differently; some are pass/fail, some are points values, some are a combination of both with a certain score/percentage being an acceptable “pass”. A lot are based on real-world documentation with a few edits/additions/deletions as needed to fit the needs of the sim. A few specific examples I’ve used in the past are the NAVTRAEQUIPCEN IH-315/AFHRL-TR-79-3 (USN, 1979) and the NAVAIRSYSCOM N00019-81-C-0098 (USN, 1986). Both of these provide specific benchmarks for ACM, and can be “custom tailored” to meet specific DLO’s of a training event. These are just 2 examples, and specifically for ACM training. Combined with other documents and a LOT of seat time, figuring out the best way for an organization to go about the business of instructing specific sorties for specific DLO’s can be made easier, without the necessity of “starting from scratch”.
As for the “craft” of teaching, not everyone learns the same way so an adaptable approach can sometimes be in everyone’s best interest(s). This can be most easily be achieved by having numerous IP’s available for any specific sortie, having one IP with several approaches, or a mix of both. A few reference materials I’ve used for “teaching the teacher” are the Aviation Instructors Handbook (CNAT P-905 PAT) and a Fundamentals of Instruction (there are several out there). These can give the TO or Lead IP’s some assistance in getting their peers up to speed and suggest different approaches to different issues.
There are literally thousands of ways to do it, most organizations have their own standards and most probably share some as well. At the end of the day, as long as the organization knows what they want to do, how to do it, and how to present it… it really comes down to WHO does it.
Hope I didn’t side-track too much, just wanted to give my own insight to the specific questions raised.
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This I know…already. I’m fine holding, it’s getting and maintaining center on the approach that are my problem…and not chasing the boom! I’m also still trying to figure out what my proper visual cues should be…just need more time practicing. LOTS more time…
Dont really know what else to suggest other than stick time. You can get to precontact easily by sticking the gun cross to the boom tip, and stabilising there. Contact is directly forwards of that position. Dont overcorrect, dont use a death grip on the stick, wiggle your fingers and toes. Breathe. If you feel like your formation is a little shaky, practice with the HUD switched off or down.