It has been my experience that the people who are the most educated, ie,
someone who has a Dr. degree and has spent a lot of time in the education
process where focus is required, makes one of the worse pilots. This is
also a very limited sample that I dealt with but gave 100% results...none of
them was worth a crap at flying high performance. I will say right now that
does not cover the spectrum of people...only those that I was working with.
The problem could have been that they were older and learned slower but I
attributed the problem to the lack of the ability to disperse their
attention on what was going on. They tended to focus on only one area at a
time which is deadly in the flying business. As an example, on takeoff with
the T-37 we used to shoot for 500 ft and 200 kt to make the turn to the
downwind or leave the pattern. I had one student that flew for 20 miles
straight ahead trying to hold on to 200 kt! He completely forgot what was
going on outside the airspeed indicator...we were supposed to be flying
landing patterns. :( This student had trouble all the way through the
program but I am afraid that he made it out the door.
People who can spread their attention among all the activity in progress in
the cockpit are the ones who seem to do the best...keeping track of
airspeed, fuel, altitude, attitude, threats, targets, wingmen, and
position...not to forget the minor details of how the airplane systems are
working, locking on the radar, interpreting threat warning system displays
and audio inputs, navigation to the target and weapon status. Attention is
focused on the most important detail at the moment such as attitude and
altitude when close to the ground. You can not count the people who have
flown into the ground while trying to visually keep track of formation
members while flying low levels...due to over-concentration on visual
contact with members versus the terrain. In this case, looking ahead and
controlling attitude and altitude are primary.
People who have the ability to track all the activities at the same time are
the very best pilots...you can recognize them at parties because they listen
to you for about 3 seconds before moving on and their eyes are always moving
away on other subjects...probably very irritating people. I have also
become aware over the years that some pilots have extraordinary sensory
systems...excellent eyes with wide fields of visual acuity, sixth sense,
good hearing, and extremely good reflex actions. Their airplane becomes a
part of them.
So I guess where I am going is that the ability to spread attention
effectively is where I see value while focusing on the most threatening
factors is required only at certain times and detracts from overall
effectiveness. The overall thought that comes to mind is that practice
makes perfect...all pilots I worked with started out slow in a particular
phase such as air-to-ground or air combat tactics but after working out for
about a week or so the touch would come back and the pilot would be at home
again in that arena. There were so many things to do that you had to handle
most of them automatically by habit in order to hang on to the factors that
made you better than someone else.
I think in the modern fighters the pilots are maxed out on attention
capability...there is just toooooo much information available to be digested
quickly. The emphasis has been on computer assist to lighten the load.
Thoughts for the day!
Reid Fairburn
Creative Kingdom, Inc.
cr_king_at_seanet.com
253-946-9455/4815