Well, depending on your perspective neither 20 hours nor 40 hours nor 1000
hours is "enough" to assure one is ready and safe to fly as PIC.
I have a friend who has 1000+ hours who still goes out and practices
touch-and-goes, especially cross-wind and considers himself to still be
learning.
So ANY number or hours is in SOMEone's opinion going to be "appropriate"
"not enough" "significantly less than it should be" or "more than enough" as
a basic requirement to fly.
Any number of requirements in hours and training details is going to be an
imperfect compromise between making it too expensive and to onerous vs.
not enough to be safe.
As you know it is still legal today to go out and buy a part 103 legal
single-seat ultralight, jump into it and takeoff without any training at
all.
Many people did that in the 80's and some got killed and many became good
pilots.
I got into flying hang-gliders in the late 70's with almost no training.
I bet SOME of them are people who today might be walking around saying
"nobody should be allowed to fly without at least 40 hours training."
As for your take on the REASON the sport pilot rule was created, that
depends on who you talk to. The reasons include these:
1) Yes, as you say to allow pilots of fat UL's to transition into legal
flying.
My contact at EAA estimates that as many as 2000 of the only about 4000
pilots currently having sport pilot licenses came in that way...
grandfathered in with being credited for their logged UL hours and
experience.
2) More than one experienced GA person has told me they believe that
higher-ups in the FAA simply didn't like having unlicensed pilots flying
around ... didn't like the whole UL thing. So they have pretty successfully
"improved" UL flying almost out of existence.
Notice that today it is virtually impossible for someone to get real
inexpensive accessible UL training:
There are no longer any such things as "ultralight trainers" nor any more
low cost Basic Flight Instructors (BFI's).
One used to be able to get a UL trainer and BFI in the air for an approved
10 hour course complete for something in the neighborhood of $600 -- trainer
plus two seat UL trainer. To go the full sport pilot route is realistically
going to be closer to $3500+.
In my area there used to be about 12, today there are none, and there is no
CFI equipped to or willing to train someone who shows up with a true legal
ultralight and says "please teach me how to fly this thing safely."
3) Older private pilots afraid they're not going to pass their next FAA
medical were interested in pushing the sport pilot initiative.
An unknown number of these guys and gals are flying LSA's with their private
pilot licenses but no current medical.
4) Some in the CFI community pushed it hoping it would bring a flood of new
pilot students in (because of the lower cost, etc) at a time when the number
of new student pilots coming in was (and still is) dropping and the total
number of GA pilots in the USA going down while the population is going up.
5) And finally, yes, there was and are all those in the FAA, the EAA, the
AOPA and among those who love flying, who hoped and hope that LSA and sport
pilot might open the very expensive (to most people) doors into flying to
more people.
-----------------------------
3b. Re: Rod Machado's new Sport Pilot book is out!
Posted by: "Helen Woods" Helen_Woods@verizon.net hwoods4421
Wed Aug 10, 2011 6:13 am (PDT)
I believe 20 hours was established as an appropriate amount of time to
transition and ultralight pilot to a more GA-like LSA, not necessarily
to train a student from scratch. Remember, this whole rule was
initially establish to transition fat ultralight pilots to legal flying.
Helen
On 8/10/2011 9:07 AM, Jim Lawrence wrote:
> I would certainly hope the training is not significantly less! I am a
> Sport Pilot and the only difference between my training and PP is hood,
> night, and length of x-country. Perhaps 20 hours is enough for
> weight-shift but not for SEA especially like a Skycatcher or Technam.
>
> Know the ground school material and get ample training or die (or kill).
>
> James Lawrence
> Sent from my iPad
>
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