Think you are talking about Mr Z (for anonymity's sake this being the internet, Meridian guys will know the name)……..and yeah, he was a big personality. Knew him once he was retired and a contract T-45 sim instructor. Big ole guy, big yeller/screamer, and once you got to know him, you realized 75% of the screaming was just an act and that he was a big time jokester too. I heard they cracked down on the "attitudes" of some of those old sim guys in recent years after student complaints, which is a shame if true. Those guys were old school Naval Air, in its most mythical form, most of whom had combat hours over North Vietnam in their logbooks. You learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence, working through problems with the artificial stress the screaming and yelling induced. Wasn't always fun, but it was a right of passage to have gone through that training to some extent. I remember one of them, after a less than stellar instrument sim doing GCA's, tell me something to the effect of "one night you are going to have to fly the best damn PAR of your life to get back on the boat". I also remember one night in the persian gulf, many years later, when the ship drove into nearly 0/0 conditions for the recovery. I didn't see the boat or the IFLOLS until inside of 1/4 mile. One power correction, one little wing dip, and I was in the wires stopping. He couldn't have been more right that night……….
