Page 42 - Volume 14 Number 4

Effective Recurrent Training
by GIL WILLIAMSON and BRIAN TURRISI
Editor’s Note: The following article by COPA® members Gil Williamson and Brian Turrisi “takes turns with their narrative,” so it is specified by their name to help guide the reader.
Gil: How current are you? What’s the size of your competency envelope? Can you use all the functions of your avionics confidently? Recurrent training is a subject that has fascinated me for a long time, born out of careful observation during my military service of highly trained pilots who went on “reserve one week a month status,” resulting in a significant reduction in proficiency. The second factor is recognizing the human propensity of forgetting. The retention curve has been studied extensively since the German psychologist, Julius Ebbinghaus, identified both the learning and forgetting curve in the late 1800s. It turns out that without reinforcement we forget roughly 90 percent of what we learn in 30 days. Depressing isn’t it? The key is with reinforcement, or as the education psychologist calls it “rehearsal,” we can reduce this loss dramatically.
I can also tell you that memory does not improve with age. I published an article some years ago in the then
Cirrus Pilot magazine, pointing out the superior accident record of commercial and military pilots who systematically train on a continual basis. What I have been looking for is a practical way for general aviation pilots to do the same thing – train constantly (reinforcement) and systematically (efficiently) using the limited time and resources we have. What we are going to describe is something that CSIP Brian Turrisi and I have developed over the last several years. We think it gets us closer to what the pros do.
This approach, in fact, started before I trained with Brian. CSIP Chuck Copley introduced me to the Cirrus recurrent training syllabus, and we used this as the basis for our training. Chuck moved away and Brian retired from his medical career, moved here, became a full-time instructor and we started working together.
Brian: I started to work with Gil about the time he made the transition from his G2 with Avidyne R9 to a G6 with Prospective Plus. He had completed the transition training and had the basics mastered, however, we both felt that the Cirrus standard recurrent syllabus didn’t cover the avionics to the depth we desired. Gil took the Cirrus syllabus and added a comprehensive list of avionics capabilities in which he wanted to become proficient. He constructed a spreadsheet with the tasks and we made our best guess on how many times each function should be performed over a six-month period to retain competency. Over the next six months we used this as our training framework. Gil felt that our minimum frequency of training should be once every month, so our syllabus would be complete in six training flights over a six-month period and repeated twice a year. After the first six months we refined the syllabus and continue to tweak as training needs are identified.
Gil: Figure 1 is the two-page spreadsheet that Brian and I use. There are four sections, the first two are close to the Cirrus Aircraft recommended recurrent training tasks, with some minor additions. The first section is general flying activities described in the Cirrus Interactive Flight Operations Manual (IFOM) that we review as needed. Brian observes on each flight and suggests any best practice improvements or new wrinkles he observes. The second section is specific tasks that we perform a minimum of once in the six-month period, however, they are repeated if the need is identified. We only check these off the first two sections when we specifically focus on them since some, like landings, we perform multiple times each session. Section three is the avionics functions we added. Section four is a review of emergency procedures and avionics functionality. It is my job to go through the manual, checklists or IFOM, review the operation and then Brian checks my understanding. We use our preflight planning discussion or breaks between tasks while flying to review this section.
40 ■ COPA Pilot
MAY 2019