Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Here in the UK it's an offence to use a cell phone which is in your hand, you are only allowed to use hands free phones. It helps a little but the biggest problem is that when you are talking on a cell phone, you are not concentrating. Age, experience, whatever makes no difference, you will be booked for it.Back to the topic of young drivers using cell phones. That is actually another prime example of parents teaching their kids their bad habits.
Every day, I see some mother or father driving with a phone stuck to their ear with a kid in the back seat. Kids learn from their parents.
Thanks for the reply. I guess what I meant was that if one could get to the place on a simulator that you would have the muscle memory of what to do instinctively the first time out it would make things alot easier and perhaps safer.Learning to fly is certainly different. Usually you have ground school first.
I went through several weeks of ground school before scheduling my first flight when I learned to fly. On that flight though, my instructer through me in the deep end. I had the controls from the beginning. Took the plane off myself. Of course the first flight was just basic familiarization. Left and right turns, descents and climbs. He had me fly it to the runway, but he landed it.
Of course this was in a very docile forgiving Piper Cherokee.
The driving course I have described is much more stringent and structured than drivers education in school. It actually prepares you for driving.
.....
There is a lack of basic skills, like when turning what direction should you use a narrow or wide turn. A systematic step by step process for parallel parking, how to actually merge lanes, how to properly use the zipper method, etc...
Unless you're a taxi driver using a PDA which looks remarkably like a mobile phone with an app and satnav, in which case it is okay to break these laws.Here in the UK it's an offence to use a cell phone which is in your hand, you are only allowed to use hands free phones. It helps a little but the biggest problem is that when you are talking on a cell phone, you are not concentrating. Age, experience, whatever makes no difference, you will be booked for it.
Here in the UK it's an offence to use a cell phone which is in your hand, you are only allowed to use hands free phones. It helps a little but the biggest problem is that when you are talking on a cell phone, you are not concentrating. Age, experience, whatever makes no difference, you will be booked for it.
I'm sure the Cobra really was a car as it had car doors and flew very low, less than 10000 feet, to be effective. Jeez, you wouldn't even get over the Alps flying like that, you'd be better off driving one of those Peugeot or Mercedes diesels. The Cobra was okay for the Russians because there were no mountains between the Urals and the North Sea, although luckily they never got that far because we suckered them into taking Berlin while we advanced into East Germany and nabbed the Nazi's best scientists. Except the ones that escaped to Antarctica in flying saucers.Ok, I looked closer at the heading.I have been blamed for this
whole thread.
OK then, someone mentioned highway speeds in a parking lot,
I can do that.
View attachment 512956
Yep, that's my baby.
I work for a police force and they go to considerable lengths to try and enforce it. They have hired HGV cabs so they can check on HGV drivers, buses so they can look down on people in cars and even set up an ANPR set in an agricultural tractor as they are high up and can see a considerable distance ahead.It is here too. It is just not enforced. A close friend of mine is a cop. Drives around posting on facebook while driving.
Hello DerAdlerIstGelandet,
I am not trying to get into an argument about the quality of your driver training versus what the kids are getting around here.
I am just noting that most of the points you are raising have been addressed from what I can see. The quality is subject to debate because I believe there is really no substitute for experience and knowing where to spot problems before they happen. The program has changed A LOT since I went through it a few decades ago. It is a lot more rigorous and the my Son's instructor was the fellow who signed off on his driving test, so I presume he has some kind of certification from the local government.
I am not sure what you mean by narrow or wide turn. Fastest line through a corner? Kind of depends on the car.
Regarding parallel parking, some people get it and some people don't. I watch a lady who could not figure out how to move her car over a couple feet when she didn't line up properly in a parking space. Doesn't really mean she's dangerous on the road. It just means she isn't all that skilled.
We all have our opinions, but although I agree that being able to operate a car with a manual transmission is a useful skill and I enjoy manual shift cars, in the daily commute through rush hour traffic an automatic is a lot less fatiguing. It gets quite annoying when traffic is moving at about 2-3 MPH and you realise that the slowest you can go with the car in gear is about 7 MPH.
- Ivan.
In my state (VT), a Driver Ed teacher has to go through a rigorous training course and then is certified to teach Driver Ed ONLY. They can hold other certifications, but can't exercise them concurrently. If they're hired to teach D.E. that's all they can do. Students don't get near a car until they've had half a semester of classroom work, and then they're still in class for the rest of the semester. Only the sharpest get by with only six hours of driving; the rest get more.I am not sure that learning to drive from a Math or History teacher is the best method either
Especially one who's main goal is to stay alive while teaching.
Well, a computer flight sim can give you a perceptual and procedural memory, but not a valid muscle memory. The control feel and response rates as well as the visual and kinesthetic impacts are so different that subliminal responses acquired on the sim aren't going to translate exactly to the plane.Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone here can tell me if you can learn the basics of how to fly on a good simulator.
I dont mean to be a competent pilot on a simulator but just so that when you take your first flight the muscle memory is already there so at least to some degree it's familiar and you know what to do instinctively instead of trying to think it through your first time out.
Thank you for your insight. Gives me a better idea what to and what not to expect.Well, a computer flight sim can give you a perceptual and procedural memory, but not a valid muscle memory. The control feel and response rates as well as the visual and kinesthetic impacts are so different that subliminal responses acquired on the sim aren't going to translate exactly to the plane.
Now if you can learn to absorb the behaviors and responses of the sim conceptually in terms of what situation requires what action without focusing on feel and habitual response, the sim will serve you well. Keep your brain in the loop and your reflexes out and you'll do fine. When you first get in the plane expecting rapid initial progress, you'll be disappointed, but once you get over the initial hump you'll take on new steps in the process faster than most. Don't expect it to make a massive dollar reduction in the overall cost of flight training. I've had students who came self-taught on desktop sims and were convinced all they needed from me was a sign-off so they could go fly solo and teach themselves the rest. They were highly resistant to any input from me, and totally ignorant of what a danger they were to everyone around. I had to find creative ways to safely let them scare the crap out of themselves to get their attention. A touch of humility can be a great learning aid. It's you that's footing the bill.
Good luck and have fun!
Cheers,
Wes
Saw THAT coming!
A lot depends on the chemistry between you and your insructor(s). Not everybody's teaching style meshes well with everybody's learning style. Don't waste money on an explosive concoction that could blow up the chemistry lab. Most important, have fun!:Thank you for your insight. Gives me a better idea what to and what not to expect.
Well, a computer flight sim can give you a perceptual and procedural memory, but not a valid muscle memory. The control feel and response rates as well as the visual and kinesthetic impacts are so different that subliminal responses acquired on the sim aren't going to translate exactly to the plane.
Now if you can learn to absorb the behaviors and responses of the sim conceptually in terms of what situation requires what action without focusing on feel and habitual response, the sim will serve you well. Keep your brain in the loop and your reflexes out and you'll do fine. When you first get in the plane expecting rapid initial progress, you'll be disappointed, but once you get over the initial hump you'll take on new steps in the process faster than most. Don't expect it to make a massive dollar reduction in the overall cost of flight training. I've had students who came self-taught on desktop sims and were convinced all they needed from me was a sign-off so they could go fly solo and teach themselves the rest. They were highly resistant to any input from me, and totally ignorant of what a danger they were to everyone around. I had to find creative ways to safely let them scare the crap out of themselves to get their attention. A touch of humility can be a great learning aid. It's you that's footing the bill.
Good luck and have fun!
Cheers,
Wes
Certainly sounds like good advice. Thank you!A lot depends on the chemistry between you and your insructor(s). Not everybody's teaching style meshes well with everybody's learning style. Don't waste money on an explosive concoction that could blow up the chemistry lab. Most important, have fun!:
Cheers,
Wes