CFI Problem

newbiepilot said:
Thanks Henning. I am not taking this personally. Otherwise what is the point of having an open-ended discussion.

My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite. It bothers me beyond doubt. As I mentioned, this was not the first case but this was definitely a nail in the coffin for me.
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On the audio panel, there should be a switch labeled "all, crew, iso" or "all, crew, pilot". Flick that to "iso", and things get a lot quieter. Useful when the CFI got too yappy and I needed to talk to ATC.
 
newbiepilot said:
Thanks Henning. I am not taking this personally. Otherwise what is the point of having an open-ended discussion.

My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite. It bothers me beyond doubt. As I mentioned, this was not the first case but this was definitely a nail in the coffin for me.
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My gut says that your instructor is trying to get you to do exactly that, tell him to shut up and leave your airplane alone! You have to be in control, you have to be PIC. Quite honestly, at 40 hours you should be able to do the basic tasks you mentioned in your OP. The concerning thing for me was that you said " I know he want me to multi-task but then i started panicking", there is no place in an airplane for panic. I don't know if Henning is right or not, but he could be. If you cant take control and be in command of your airplane, then he is right and you need to find another place to spend your time and money. If you can do that, then do it. I also would recommend just flat out asking your instructor what his opinion is of where you are in your training and what his expectations are. Good luck OP, I wish you the best.
 
newbiepilot said:
I am very meek by nature and I don't confront and agree to everything.
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What Bryan said.

In flying, YOU must be the Pilot IN COMMAND. That means that sometimes ATC will tell you things and you must say "unable". If you just "agree to everything", sooner or later, you and your passengers will die unless you can assert yourself.

Yesterday, I had my first cross country with him. I *hated* the entire experience. He was very annoying, ****ed and disrespectful. He kept asking me where we are and then while i was looking at the map he pulled the throttle back and then 2 minutes later he was asking me why we descending and thing like that. I know he want me to multi-task but then i started panicking. He asked me to do all radios and i had my share of hiccups. He was very ****ed off with that. He was asking me why I can't remember simple calls. Pretty much in the entire flight he was complaining about something or other. He forcibly took controls (we were safe and no emergency) without positive exchange of controls. Things like that. You get the picture.
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Maybe your CFI is being a jerk and you need a new one. Or, maybe he's a really good instructor and is trying to get you to break out of your meek shell and take command of the situation. If your CFI is talking to you on final, for example, it's not because he doesn't know that you want to be concentrating on your imminent landing, it's because he wants you to tell him to be quiet! You'll have to do that with your passengers after you get your ticket.
 
Thanks Mike. You might be right. I have reached a point where I am going to say "if you want to control the plane, first ask for it and don't touch the controls till then"

I will talk to my CFI about your last point.


mikeinbama said:
My gut says that your instructor is trying to get you to do exactly that, tell him to shut up and leave your airplane alone! You have to be in control, you have to be PIC. Quite honestly, at 40 hours you should be able to do the basic tasks you mentioned in your OP. The concerning thing for me was that you said " I know he want me to multi-task but then i started panicking", there is no place in an airplane for panic. I don't know if Henning is right or not, but he could be. If you cant take control and be in command of your airplane, then he is right and you need to find another place to spend your time and money. If you can do that, then do it. I also would recommend just flat out asking your instructor what his opinion is of where you are in your training and what his expectations are. Good luck OP, I wish you the best.
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newbiepilot said:
Thanks Henning. I am not taking this personally. Otherwise what is the point of having an open-ended discussion.
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A refreshing attitude, and a good one. :thumbsup:

My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite. It bothers me beyond doubt.
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"Quiet please" is fine, no f-bombs required - But if he's causing a problem, you need to assert yourself and tell him to stop - He's likely doing it with the goal of getting you to do exactly that. And that is the sort of thing you MUST be able to do as pilot in command.

"It bothers me beyond doubt" is another thing you need to change - If you let this sort of thing eat at you, it will affect your performance for the rest of the flight. You've got to be able to shake things off and just deal with them later, after you're safely on the ground. Otherwise, small mistakes will lead to larger mistakes, and in an airplane that is potentially fatal.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
A refreshing attitude, and a good one. :thumbsup:

"It bothers me beyond doubt" is another thing you need to change - If you let this sort of thing eat at you, it will affect your performance for the rest of the flight. You've got to be able to shake things off and just deal with them later, after you're safely on the ground. Otherwise, small mistakes will lead to larger mistakes, and in an airplane that is potentially fatal.
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Thanks, Will try harder.
 
newbiepilot said:
Thanks Henning. I am not taking this personally. Otherwise what is the point of having an open-ended discussion.

My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite. It bothers me beyond doubt. As I mentioned, this was not the first case but this was definitely a nail in the coffin for me.
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My issue is not you controlling the aircraft either, rather your reactions to very minor stressors. I you think your CFI being a dick is ****ed up, confusing, and distracting, I promise you it is nothing compared to what aviation is going to throw at you with weather, turbulence, mechanical issues, and traffic situations.

You just can't react the way you do, and in my experience this is a nature over nurture issue that you will never know you conquered until you are facing death in the next 2 seconds.

That is the risk you take in continuing, you will become far more overwhelmed in the future that the piddely crap your CFI was pulling. The question is will you pull it out of your ass or not? Well, in order for me to bet on you doing it, I would need to know you have incredibly good karma. Depending on what you do in the healthcare field, you may have that going for you. If you are in the business office, I would stay away from flying.

I give you a 20% chance of pulling it out with neutral or worse karma. I have buried friends I should have told I thought they shouldn't be flying, so I don't hold back from letting you know my thoughts, it keeps my karma clear. Try sailing sometime and see I you don't think it's a better way to spend your recreation dollar. Even in the Midwest small one design boats like a 470 are great fun.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I think you owe it to yourself and, perhaps even to your CFI, to give it a shot.
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I think at this point the CFI is praying he does, it would be the correct reaction he is still failing to get. Instead he gets a student that can't keep their **** together under minor stress.
 
Henning WILL NOT give up although he has not personally met you, know your abilitys nor your reactions. I would not use the F word either in the cockpit, as this would be " unproductive" but I would tell him for certain , back on terra firma , what I thought of him and tell him to get lost. I became lost on my first x country, in an aeronca champ, very nervous. landed at a private grass strip and got my bearings. I had written down several freq. but the paper got lodged under the seat and I could not find it. Told the instructor all about it later, he laughed and said, " do Anotherone" ! this was 50 years ago 4500 hours ago, never scratched one, never damaged one. Lots of fun, go for it. Lots of hot gas on the Internet.
 
I'd just quietly go fly an hour or two with somebody else to see how it went. All students would benefit from time with a few different instructors. Get some perspective and use their individual strengths. Life's too short to spend it mad or looking for conflicts. Flying's a joy. If you aren't feeling it find somebody that'll get you there.
 
I'm kind of in the middle on this. As an instructor there is always one thing I ask myself every time I sign off anything:

"Will I feel like I failed to do my job if I see their name in a NTSB report with an airplane full of fatalities?"

I would absolutely hate to live with the regret knowing I didn't fully do my job and an accident happened. I accept the reality that even if I DO my job perfectly it's still possible I could have to read a newspaper article about a student of mine some day. I just want to know that if that happens I'll read it without regret because I know I did everything I could.

I will always push a student to the point that they mentally break down (especially in instrument training). I do that to ensure they keep functioning in a total overload scenario. I critique what they did and how they can improve and make sure they know the priorities of aviating to keep them alive.

I've had students incredibly ****ed off in the airplane before. Honestly though, I don't think any of them were ever really that ****ed off at me. And they always came back. And they always thank me for making them improve.

I fly a lot..and when I'm training in a new plane sometimes I will get an instructor that pushes me to my mental edge and it feels like I'm a 10 hour student again. I appreciate that they do that because it's humbling and helps me ensure that I can still take proper command actions when the **** hits the fan. Earlier this year I had to tell an experienced instructor to basically STFU when they were giving me type specific training and the weather degraded on us unexpectedly with very busy controlled airspace above our heads. The instructors priorities were all wrong and the instructor was taking actions that conflicted with what I determined as the PIC to be the best action. I finally had to establish command and say "we're doing this, if this does not work on the first time, we're climbing like hell, and calling up ATC for help, no exceptions". Your instructor is trying to make sure you can do that.

If you don't like your instructor, find a new one, but if your primary reason for doing so is because you're upset that he buried and overloaded you...Then you might want to reevaluate your thought process because that's our job.

Instructing is a serious responsiblity and much of it is fun. But it's not all fun and games. There are days where I know the student feels like absolute **** because of their performance and I know I put them in that situation.

A good instructor will let them know WHY they overloaded them, what they did wrong, and what the student should do next time to better handle the task saturation. It's also important that an instructor doesn't completely demoralize someone so they end up stopping training. It's always a fine balance I'm paying careful attention to. I won't bury a student on every flight but I certainly will at various stages in their training as appropriate to help them develop their ability to command under stress.

One day, many years from now, or perhaps next week, you might be in command of an aircraft that literally starts to come apart on you, in terrible weather, with screaming passengers in the back. Handle it correctly and you might walk way. If you survive it'll be because you had an instructor that taught you to be in command in a high-stress task-overload unexpected environment.

Flying is really kind of boring and not much happens. Until something does. Then often what is going wrong increases exponentially. Things get exciting, stress builds, and you have to prioritize and remain in command. Those that do that well live. Those that don't hopefully wash out, if they don't wash out, they have a strong likelihood of ending up dead in a very busted up airplane.
 
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newbiepilot said:
I am very meek by nature and I don't confront and agree to everything.

Yesterday, I had my first cross country with him. I *hated* the entire experience.

I am a Healthcare professional and have a very busy schedule.
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What do you do in the medical field EXACTLY? If you're in a trauma area, practicing emergency procedures in the cockpit ought should feel like sloooow motion and multi-tasking should be second nature. If you're meek with an ATC instruction that you know is bad, it could cost you your live, quit now ... your PIC not ATC and being meek might get you killed.

Henning said:
If you are at 40 hrs and in this state of mind, my advice is for you to quit flying.
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Am in agreement with Henning here ...

FastEddieB said:
My take is that there's an incompatibility between student and instructor.

One should think long and hard before announcing someone is fundamentally not pilot material. I think you jumped the gun badly here.

Of course that's just my opinion.
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I have, and don't think he is .... not without a LOT of changes. If he's meek about an ATC instruction that might get him hurt, he's going to ride it out saying," Well, they are ATC and we're SUPPOSED to do what they say."

newbiepilot said:
My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite.
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Not good. You should be treating him as a passenger, including a preflight brief on exchange of controls, sterile cockpit, etc.

Your instructor wants you to control the plane no matter what it is doing. If it is descending, you need to fix it and have a FLOW to take care of that problem. Unless english is a second language, you should have been handling the radios about 20 hours ago.
 
newbiepilot said:
Thanks Henning. I am not taking this personally. Otherwise what is the point of having an open-ended discussion.

My issue is not controlling the airplane. My issue is someone yelling, and fiddling with my controls when I am trying to aviate, navigate and communicate. I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite. It bothers me beyond doubt. As I mentioned, this was not the first case but this was definitely a nail in the coffin for me.
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I've never resorted to that level of "assertiveness" but one day with a CFI who was covering for the one I usually use, at one point I didn't say anything, but I immediately returned to the airport. After landing I reminded the CFI he was there to teach me, and not show off, nor use my time and $$$ to practice his commercial power off landings. Apparently he had been doing this with other students, but I was the one who caught on.

I tell everyone who gets in the airplane with me, including CFIs, that if a radio call comes thru, immediately stop talking because I need to listen and it's a safety issue. They get one chance, then I remind them again. Then they don't get to fly with me again.

This is a conversation you need to have on the ground, before the next flight. Ask if he is doing the distractions deliberately (multi-tasking in the air is important to understand what tasks are important, and which ones can wait). If so, then explain you need to get comfortable with one or two tasks at a time, then add more.

For the longest time I made the CFI handle all the radio calls as we transistioned from cruise to landing. Not because I can't do the radio - for me, that's the easiest part of flying! But because I wanted to concentrate on watching for traffic and the landing. I had the worst time learning to land (and 70% attributed to a lousy CFI who couldn't teach and didn't want to teach but as a newbie I didn't understand that).
 
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SixPapaCharlie said:
Curious, are you male or female?
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Unfortunately, the research on gender differences in aviation is fairly old, 10-15 even 25 yrs (Johns Hopkins and a few others including the Navy). I was involved with a research project earlier this year with the Air Force, and the subject came up at an FAA presentation of the results. The researchers were disappointed they didn't have more women, but as they pointed out, the percentage they had was just about the same as the percentage of women in aviation overall.

http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2001/gender-aviation-crashes.html

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p006957.pdf
 
newbiepilot said:
I am not sure if i can say shut the f* up to my CFI. I just keep quite.
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As PIC, it's your responsibility to keep yourself and any passengers alive. You must be able to shut down anyone and anything getting in the way. No need for f-bombs, but sitting back and taking it is potentially fatal. How would you react if you were driving on the highway and you passenger started yanking on the steering wheel?
 
40 hours in 4 months means you're flying pretty regularly. You've soloed so you passed a number of initial checks. Apparently, you are judged to be competent to take off, fly and land an aircraft on your own in a set-piece scenario.
Completing a cross-country at 40 hours may seem a little late, but we don't know your environment. It may be you're in a busy area where more prep is needed. It may be the CFI is milking your for time. Maybe you've done your hood, solo in a towered airport and night landings already. That isn't clear. In any event, I don't know if you're behind in your training or not.
It's not stated how clearly the CFI prepped you for your x-country. We don't know if he expect you to be able to find yourself instantly or if he expect you to prioritize tasks and whether he articulated that. I go over a cross-country in considerable detail with a student and tell them before I go what we are going to do, how we are going to do it and how well we are going to do it. That includes how to deal with unusual situations.
Your side of how the CFI acted is not flattering to the CFI, but we don't know his side of the story.
My suggestion is to try another CFI and be prepared to change CFI. Tell him your objectives and when the flight is over, ask him his assessment - do you have what it takes to make a pilot flying as you expect to fly. Ask him if he sees things that are going to be more difficult for you than other students and how to deal with them.
After this, you could even consider a third CFI but you may not need that. It's your money and your goal. A CFI should be able to teach you or should be willing to advise you to abandon flight.
Your manner of presentation is not conducive to confidence that you are ready for the command part of pilot in command, but in my opinion we don't know enough to conclude that yet.
 
The CFI is simply fishing for a certain response whatever it may be.

When I did my mock check ride a few days before my real one I had a similar experience. I went up with a different CFI to check my skills. He was a crusty old SOB and tried to make me miserable. We did the normal items and then he went for the jugular. We did some very unusual attitudes, spins, and 60* turns. It got pretty bad and I thought I would fail miserably on check ride day. We were headed to an airport to do a soft field landing and on final he pulled the mixture and killed the engine. I made the runway, landed and got out. He got out and asked me what I was doing. When I walked around the airplane and asked him if he was ready to see who was tougher on the ground, that I was sick of his crap. He laughed and said good job, you will do fine on the check ride. He was simply looking for my breaking point, and he found it. He then explained that most that he does this with ask to go back to the airport and call it quits after he demonstrates the spin. Looking back on it, I'm happy he did all that. To this day, everybody at that certain airport that trained there talks about how big of a d**k he is. I look at him as an old school sort of guy that was making sure somebody is ready to be PIC. His way may not be for everybody, just like the OP's flight instructors way.
 
I am on board with some of what Henning has said. To me, it sound slike your CFI is trying to distract you and see if you can multi task. You failed to notice the power reduction through auditory and visual stimuli. I teach my students to listen to what the engine is doing, not relying on what the tach says. You also failed the pitch change by staring inside of the cockpit which then became an unusual attitude because the plane was doing something you didn't know or want to happen. It sounds like a stress and multi task assessment, and you didn't do very well.

My suggestion to you is to talk to your CFI and get a realistic assessment of where you are in training and an assessment of what you are doing right and wrong. At 40 hours, you should be getting ready for the check ride if you are a fast learner. I solo students when they are ready, and the fastest I have trained is 12 hours. Some take longer, so I know the 40 hours to check ride is not always a hard and fast rule, but you should be farther than you currently are.

The flying part should be automatic, or near enough where you don't need to think about how to do a specific thing like turn and climb at the same time. You are progressing to the point of having to use the majority of your processing power to concentrate on other tasks. Noticing changes in the flight characteristics of the plane, like a power reduction or pitch change, should be near instantaneous or a scan developed so it is caught within a few seconds of it happening (10-15 max).

There are some things that you can do to help you out with these things, and your CFI should be instructing you on how to do these things. My favorite one is to tell pilots to fold their map so they can hold it in one hand and to hold it up to the dash so any pitch or bank changes can be see with their peripheral vision. Another one is to delegate responsibilities to other people. I specifically tell my students that they have an experienced, rated, and competent pilot in the right seat. Not using them as a resource is a huge mistake. Does this mean I will do everything for them? NOPE. But I will help with tuning radios, maybe holding a map, looking for traffic, and other small tasks. As their training progresses, I do fewer things for them, but they always have me as a resource.

To summarize, you should be taking more of a command presence in the airplane. If he is jabbering too much, tell him politely to shut up. If he doesn't do that, say that you are terminating the flight and turn back to the airport. One of the items in risk management is the passengers. Manage the passengers and ensure a safe flight.

tl;dr buck up and stand up for yourself. You will do fine.
 
Perhaps Henning is just trying to rattle your cage and get you to tell HIM to shut the f*** up!
 
OP: Keep in mind that the guy telling you to get out of aviation is the only poster in the thread who slid a Cessna 310 to a grinding halt on pavement with the gear still in the wells.

Just get a different instructor if you don't get along with the current one.
 
wby0nder said:
Perhaps Henning is just trying to rattle your cage and get you to tell HIM to shut the f*** up!
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It wouldn't hurt, but that is not my intent. He seemed genuinely thoughtful and accepting of the quick and dirty, so I decided to clarify and give him his range of odds for his future in aviation.
 
Henning said:
He wasn't being an a-hole, he was influencing minor and typical stressors to the situation which at 40hrs should have been trivial yet there was a "near panic" reaction. The CFI is there to get them ready to serve in a command function. Self described "meek and non confrontational" are not traits that are conducive to command ability.

The OP is doing something they aren't wired to do, they aren't having fun. Aviation is deadly and expensive, why would one pursue it if they don't thoroughly enjoy it especially when the odds are it will kill them?:dunno:
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Agree, with one caveat.

Your reactions are not what one would expect of a student with 15hrs, let alone 40, calling yourself "meek" well in my mind the meek only inherit the earth in 6' boxes, ZERO business in the cockpit if you really are a meek person.

Also panic? That chit will kill you faster than a bullet, you were flying on a nice VFR day, with your CFI beside you and you're panicking over something?? that's another trait that will kill you dead in a second without a CFI to save the day.

I work with healthcare folks, and there are quite a few words to describe em' meek and non confrontational isn't in the vocabulary :yes:

So

THE CAVAET,
Maybe, just maybe, it's something with how you're jiving with your CFI, find another CFI, preferably one with high time and experience outside of instructing. Tell him everything, or just have him read this thread, and go up with you.

Ask for his completely honest opinion, ask him if he sees you as someone he would trust to fly his family.

That will be your answer
 
denverpilot said:
OP: Keep in mind that the guy telling you to get out of aviation is the only poster in the thread who slid a Cessna 310 to a grinding halt on pavement with the gear still in the wells.

Just get a different instructor if you don't get along with the current one.
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What does that have to do with the OP or what Henning said about it? Looks like you just took an opportunity to take a personal swipe.
 
I am no longer a current CFI, but have about 4,500 hours dual given.

I tried to do my best, but being human I could get frustrated and sometimes let it show.

I got along with most of my students, many of them inherited from other instructors, often due to lack of progress for one reason or another.

But sometimes the dynamic just wasn't there. It happens.

While it's fair for an instructor to add some "stressors" into training, for the most part I wanted my students comfortable - not stressed or feeling badgered. I have only heard one side, but badgering is what the OP made that cross country sound like.

Just my thoughts. Regardless, a few hours with another instructor would still be my recommendation.
 
mikeinbama said:
What does that have to do with the OP or what Henning said about it? Looks like you just took an opportunity to take a personal swipe.
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No. Folks come here looking for advice, but really have no idea who they're communicating with.

Just fair warning to the OP that the BS is high and deep here at times. Best person for the OP to talk to about it? Their CFI. Or another CFI.

Henning can crash whatever he likes, and have whatever opinions he likes. I don't care.

OP comes back in six months whining that four CFIs all have this same bad attitude, that might be a different story.

40 hours is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Lots of instructors out there.

The OP hasn't said anything that leads anywhere other than needing to go talk to their CFI or simply finding another one. Anything else is simply bad advice.
 
OP take your CFI out and get pizz drunk together and roll around in the dirt a little bit with him.

You two need to bond.

You should idolize your instructor. He is God to you.
 
you asked for advice, here's mine:

you said in 4 months he was "mostly annoying". grow a set of balls, grab a new instructor and fly that mutha f$#@ing plane. come back and report if anything's changed. if you've reached 60 hours and you haven't done your 2nd XC, yeah, move on.

and don't ever, EVER miss an opportunity to drop an f-bomb. trust me, I'm a professional.
 
People that don't swear freak me out.
 
denverpilot said:
No. Folks come here looking for advice, but really have no idea who they're communicating with.

Just fair warning to the OP that the BS is high and deep here at times. Best person for the OP to talk to about it? Their CFI. Or another CFI.

Henning can crash whatever he likes, and have whatever opinions he likes. I don't care.

OP comes back in six months whining that four CFIs all have this same bad attitude, that might be a different story.

40 hours is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Lots of instructors out there.

The OP hasn't said anything that leads anywhere other than needing to go talk to their CFI or simply finding another one. Anything else is simply bad advice.
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Well, he can read the thread I posted on the subject, I posted it so people can learn from my errors, I don't try to hide them. Trust me, I am far more brutal on myself than I ever am on anyone else.

What I would hope he would take away from it that even in the middle of a ton of crap being dumped on me in weather, topping serious fatigue, and realizing I was bellying in just in time I could have hit the throttles and flown it out, but maintained a calm presence of mind to evaluate my action as I was reaching for the throttles and analyzing my situation and deciding that the safest course of action was to just continue a perfect landing that was not going to have wheels under it than to fly out of it and potentially have a catastrophic prop failure with amputation and other potential fatal consequences.

When you are in command, you cannot abandon rational thought under stress, ever, at least not until the plane comes to a stop. When the 310 came to a stop I put the leash on the dog and took him for a walk in the grass so he could pee. If I had given up rational thought that would not have been assured.

I am quite glad you brought it up actually, Newbie, search "How to have an incident" and read, this is the reality of what aviation throws at you in the real world.
 
thanks henning.

Thank you all for taking time to reply to my post.

I have decided to bring the issue up with my CFI.




Henning said:
Well, he can read the thread I posted on the subject, I posted it so people can learn from my errors, I don't try to hide them. Trust me, I am far more brutal on myself than I ever am on anyone else.

What I would hope he would take away from it that even in the middle of a ton of crap being dumped on me in weather, topping serious fatigue, and realizing I was bellying in just in time I could have hit the throttles and flown it out, but maintained a calm presence of mind to evaluate my action as I was reaching for the throttles and analyzing my situation and deciding that the safest course of action was to just continue a perfect landing that was not going to have wheels under it than to fly out of it and potentially have a catastrophic prop failure with amputation and other potential fatal consequences.

When you are in command, you cannot abandon rational thought under stress, ever, at least not until the plane comes to a stop. When the 310 came to a stop I put the leash on the dog and took him for a walk in the grass so he could pee. If I had given up rational thought that would not have been assured.

I am quite glad you brought it up actually, Newbie, search "How to have an incident" and read, this is the reality of what aviation throws at you in the real world.
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newbiepilot said:
Thanks Mike. You might be right. I have reached a point where I am going to say "if you want to control the plane, first ask for it and don't touch the controls till then"

I will talk to my CFI about your last point.
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Mikes right. My main CFI had a problem of touching the controls in flight and on landings. At first I understood because it helped give me queues to what I needed to be doing. But after hour 20 or so I felt like it was preventing me from learning. As long as we weren't at risk I asked him to stop touching them. I actually had to tell him multiple times. It sort of became an ongoing joke, post engine start I would ask him to do his brake check and then I would tell him not to touch them again.

He did the same inflight bit as the OP described on my first XC. Numerous time I had to tell him to hold on while I flew the plane. In the end though I got along with him and that helped managed my learning.
 
Henning said:
"What I would hope he would take away from it that even in the middle of a ton of crap being dumped on me in weather, topping serious fatigue, and ...."

I stand corrected. Clearly, when it comes to judging what makes a dangerous pilot Henning seems especially qualified.
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wby0nder said:
Henning said:
"What I would hope he would take away from it that even in the middle of a ton of crap being dumped on me in weather, topping serious fatigue, and ...."

I stand corrected. Clearly, when it comes to judging what makes a dangerous pilot Henning seems especially qualified.
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You bet, I have the same potential to put myself into a dangerous situation as anyone, we all have our failures. That is the point of all this. Things go wrong for everyone, in aviation what allows us to survive our failings is our reactions to them, because in aviation, when we **** up, we often have only seconds to save ourselves, and those seconds can't be wasted on a poor reaction.

The difference with me is I don't blow smoke up my own ass about how safe I am, I do though know exactly how I react under the stress of imminent death because I have been there before so I am confident in my ability to pull a safe conclusion out of my ass by staying in calm control through the crash. If not, at least I know my death will be peaceful, because those moments are always the calmest and most serene I have ever experienced.

If you think, "Oh, I can compensate for reaction issues by avoiding xxxx conditions." you are taking a serious gamble.
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