Things your instructor did

planeviz

planeviz

Pre-Flight
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Jan 19, 2012
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New Hampshire
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Dave G
I was reminiscing about flight training and some of the memorable things my instructors had done that caught me by surprise. Let's here yours.

#1 My student training: CFI distracted me then turned our 152s fuel selector to off. The engine quit and he patiently waited for me to reach for a check list. I did a mental checklist and forgot the fuel selector, of course. After a minute or so he turned it on.

#2 Instrument training. At night upon entering the pattern at home base (VFR, no hood, tower closed) the CFI turns off the master switch and says "land it." With no altimeter and no strobes bouncing of the deck to give depth this was much harder to do than expected despite having landed with no landing light several times before then.
 
My CFII was a mean, sadistic bastard and I love him for it -- probably saved my life more than once.

This was in the mid-70s at KDAL:

1. Takeoff under the hood in a Grumman (no nosewheel steering).

2. Doing a localizer back-course (do they still do those?), out would come Uncle Bob's Magic Power Pasties and half the panel would disappear.

3. Night landing under the hood, he asked the tower to turn the rabbit to full intensity -- worst case of vertigo I ever had, even after 2 bottles of cheap wine.

4. He constantly pounded into my head to FLY THE AIRPLANE -- everything else is secondary. I wonder if that is emphasized as much these days.
 
planeviz said:
sI guess the concept of providing distractions during training and checkrides came after I got my ratings as I can't recall a single such event. Of course it may be that I was just pretty good at creating my own distractions.

#2 Instrument training. At night upon entering the pattern at home base (VFR, no hood, tower closed) the CFI turns off the master switch and says "land it." With no altimeter and no strobes bouncing of the deck to give depth this was much harder to do than expected despite having landed with no landing light several times before then.
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Why no altimeter? And for that matter wouldn't the ASI have been of more concern?

Also I've never felt that "strobes bounding off the deck" provided any enhancement of depth perception.
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planeviz said:
#2 Instrument training. At night upon entering the pattern at home base (VFR, no hood, tower closed) the CFI turns off the master switch and says "land it." With no altimeter and no strobes bouncing of the deck to give depth this was much harder to do than expected despite having landed with no landing light several times before then.
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Clear violation of 91.209 and, arguably, 91.13.
 
My tw instructor put me in the left seat of the Luscombe on my first tailwheel ever lesson. Heel brakes which I had never seen before either. His comment "I have no brakes on my side. Don't f*ck up." We went off to do t&g's on asphalt in a crosswind.

Same instructor with the Luscombe's owner got frustrated with my friend's repeated mishandling of the rudder in a stall and the CFI's constant need to be on the rudder with him. CFI puts his feet up on the dash (he is a smallish guy) and tells my friend "There, now do it right." My friend promptly put the airplane into a spin and the CFI has to scramble to get his feet off the dash and recover.
 
gismo said:
Why no altimeter? And for that matter wouldn't the ASI have been of more concern?
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Because it was dark. Yes, a violation for operating without position lights but the landing should not have been a problem. I am assuming the runway was lit.
 
My CFI called one day and said he really wanted to fly, get the plane ready. We flew to Agua Dulce airport. We got out stretched our legs and back into the plane to fly home. I started my take off roll and noticed a lack of power. About half way down the runway I said I am aborting the take off, he said no and talked me through flying in the ground effect. I really thought I was going to die. After a bit I was at a good altitude and he tells me "I want to talk about Density Altitude and how it can kill you". When on the ground he said he calculated the performance of my airplane for the conditions and knew it was safe. Then he tells me "Just because it says it can do it you can see it does not add in your lack of experience, we could have talked about this but I think this was a better lesson".
I have since then flown out in density altitude and I will tell you I check the numbers at least twice before take off.
 
Night landings into an unlit airfield on a full moon night, we cleared the trees on approach and he turned off the position lights. He had already told me, no landing light.

With a full moon and a little snow on the ground you had enough light to read a newspaper.
 
Returning from a night lesson in a 172, the CFI wanted to freak out the office lady so he took control and taxied the plane so it was facing the big windows to the office area. Pretty close maybe 10-15 feet away. Runs the engine to full power turns the landing and taxi lights on so they are shining right in the window. Stays there for a minute or two, the shuts down. Thank goodness the breaks held! Says to me "don't you do that" as we are walking in. The office gal looks at us like 'what the heck was that' when we came in.
 
During private training:
Put me under the hood and said "your airplane" after getting straight and level... inverted. Did the same "your airplane" under the hood after putting it in a spin.
 
Inverted? Wow, what kind of plane were you flying?
 
Mine always put the radio to 121.5. Then listen and check that the ELT beckon wasn't going off during parking at shut down. Then put it back to ground freq and shut down.
 
There are some pretty dumb instructors out there who do things with no rational basis, no real return on investment, and a whole lot of risk. Y'all want to fly with these nut-jobs, be my guest, but make sure your life insurance is paid up and has no aviation exclusion. I'll stick with realistic training that has a reasonable level of risk and is aimed at improving skills rather than creating macho stories.
 
FORANE said:
During private training:
Put me under the hood and said "your airplane" after getting straight and level... inverted. Did the same "your airplane" under the hood after putting it in a spin.
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I would have procured a different instructor. That's just stupidity(if its even true).
 
I had an enjoyable experience where my instructor had me make a 0/0 landing. Not as intensive as some things out there, but it really was exciting for me. It was done during the day with an ILS approach to Hot Springs (KHOT). My instructor had used electrical tape to provide extra "blackout" effect (did that on lesson 1).

I finally flew an ILS inverted.... But it was in a 70 seat jet, at night, in the snow.





After the simulator crashed we had to leave, and hey I never said I flew it to a landing :rofl::goofy: when you do a LOFT you have free time at the end, and when your instructor is one of the really nice ones.... When they ask if there is anything we'd like to see or do then you just ask if you can try an inverted ILS. I will say though... We tried really hard to fly it to the runway, but even with full power (not just max power) there isn't enough elevator authority to do it
:hairraise::dunno::dunno::dunno::D
 
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I guess my instructor was a no nonsense SOP guy, back when they actually DID spins...

172P about 5k AGL right above the ol' Lewis & Clark lake above Gavins Point dam.

what a ride that was :D
 
Right from pre-solo, told me to fly it like there were 300 passengers in back who I wanted to keep calm, meaning be smooth.
 
gismo said:
He had to tell you that? :D
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There were two choices: land it as it should be landed, or wait and let the airplane land itself. The latter is much more painful.

Dan
 
I didn't rush multi; bought an Apache and spent about 40 hours with an instructor to really get to know the plane and all of its intricacies.

One day we were practicing OEI and he had me do a simulated go-around with the deck being an extra 1000ft AGL. It taught me a lot. Single-engine go-arounds must be made well in advance, if they're even going to happen; most likely deal with the situation you have and land it. At least in the piston world.

He had me slip to lose altitude on landing. It's pretty useful and has helped me pin-point my landings with the Apache at smaller/grass fields. Any time I do this with a new pilot (I offer free multi-building time to people in exchange for being my safety pilot) they invariably get uneasy when I intentionally slip her down. Fun times!
 
Threatened to hit me with her purse if I froze up while we were doing spins in a C-150...:D
 
Every time I'd forget to pull on the carb heat, he'd pull the throttle (after pulling on the carb heat) and tell me to pick a spot to land. It didn't take too long to remember!
 
DPE on my private checkride pulled the mixture far enough back that the engine was trying to declare independence from the rest of the airframe. "It appears our engine is running rough, your actions?" heh.

Instructor-mentor-friend pulled power on me at about 500ft, as I was overflying a runway intersection to talk me through an impossible turn. 250 degrees of turning and I had to drop full flaps and forward slip to have sufficient remaining runway to land. At night. He has a history of pulling power on me at random inopportune moments whenever he thinks I'm not paying enough attention.
Not half a year after that one time, he had to do an impossible turn of his own in San Diego after a flameout in an experimental on a climbout. Successfully, but claims it added him gray hair.

The other day was taxiing out for departure, punching in the flight plan etc when I heard this soft voice on the radio saying "Ceenteerliiine". I was a whooping 1-1.5 feet off. Corrected and replied with "Hey John", flew formation for a minute or so after departure. Put a big smile on my face :)
 
FORANE said:
During private training:
Put me under the hood and said "your airplane" after getting straight and level... inverted. Did the same "your airplane" under the hood after putting it in a spin.
Click to expand...
When I was getting transition training in a friend's CJ-6 the "instructor" (wasn't a CFI, just a very experienced CJ pilot IIRC) had me doing "unusual attitudes" with visual recoveries. The first one was kinda ho-hum but on the second when I opened my eyes and looked "up" we were upside down but pulling positive g's and picking up speed fast. That's the most "unusual" attitude I've had to recover from that wasn't caused by my own actions.
 
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Unusual attitudes: instructor said, "your airplane." I recovered, or thought I did. Instructor asked me what attitude I thought I was in. Nose high I thought. "No you weren't. I gave it back straight and level." Oops.
 
After some hood work and night flying, popped the door open in a PA28-181 to prove to me that nothing will happen with a door open and that you can land the plane.
 
Since my pre-solo private training was in 172's, my CFI would occasionally bring along a friend in the back seat so that I wouldn't get used to a particular weight configuration.

After my CFI noted that Plum Island was off to our right, she decided to pull a simulated engine out (Plum Island is an uncontrolled airport in Massachusetts). Apparently I didn't quite pay attention to her comment about Plum Island and picked a parking lot for the emergency landing. I did the whole setup perfectly and the parking lot was huge and empty. The only problem was that I missed using an actual runway for my "emergency" landing. After that, I paid attention to potential emergency landing spots over to the right.

During an instrument profiency check in perfectly calm smooth conditions, my instructor kept failing instrument after instrument, not just the usual but also the airspeed and VSI and something else ...
 
asgcpa said:
After some hood work and night flying, popped the door open in a PA28-181 to prove to me that nothing will happen with a door open and that you can land the plane.
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:rofl:

First logged flight ever, my instructor leaned *way* out of the 152 on climboff to close the door. And apparently test whether the plane would land without an instructor.:yikes:
 
I guess my instructors were pretty ho-hum. Engine outs were usually at 1000-2000 AGL, except once about 50' up after takeoff. Short final... "THERE'S A COW ON THE RUNWAY!!" "So what? That's why I have a throttle." Nothing life threatening.

Not like my first go-around in a Cherokee. Full throttle, carb heat off, and dropped the Johnson bar to the floor, thump. Oops. Those trees sure did get big in a hurry. Only made that mistake once!
 
Jeanie said:
Inverted? Wow, what kind of plane were you flying?
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152

fiveoboy01 said:
I would have procured a different instructor. That's just stupidity(if its even true).
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True is is. The plane was perfectly straight and level, just inverted. Strangely, I did not recognize it at first; all the 6 pack instruments looked normal. But, something was wrong about the attitude indicator... I pulled back on the yoke and started picking up speed and only then realized we were inverted.

I believe a large contributing factor for some of this was the program I went to. For me, I paid one price and was guaranteed a license regardless of hours it took. For my instructor, he was in the programs ATP track which guaranteed him a job after CFI or would hire him themselves. Many were hired by the school. One of the 2 weeks I was there, I was my instructors only student. He was paid by the hour so he fed me hours...
That program shut down years ago and was in West TN bases in Dyersburg I believe.
 
Awesome post ! great.. comments are really nice thanks for sharing the information
 
gismo said:
planeviz said:
sI guess the concept of providing distractions during training and checkrides came after I got my ratings as I can't recall a single such event. Of course it may be that I was just pretty good at creating my own distractions.

Why no altimeter? And for that matter wouldn't the ASI have been of more concern?

Also I've never felt that "strobes bounding off the deck" provided any enhancement of depth perception.
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No panel lights to see the gauges with. Strobes: without a landing light I've found they help.

alfadog said:
Because it was dark. Yes, a violation for operating without position lights but the landing should not have been a problem. I am assuming the runway was lit.
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Yes, runway was lighted and landed fine, if more firmly than usual. The main thing was that going dark on final was a new experience in a critical phase of flight.

Thanks for all the stories!
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FORANE said:
152



True is is. The plane was perfectly straight and level, just inverted. Strangely, I did not recognize it at first; all the 6 pack instruments looked normal. But, something was wrong about the attitude indicator... I pulled back on the yoke and started picking up speed and only then realized we were inverted.

I believe a large contributing factor for some of this was the program I went to. For me, I paid one price and was guaranteed a license regardless of hours it took. For my instructor, he was in the programs ATP track which guaranteed him a job after CFI or would hire him themselves. Many were hired by the school. One of the 2 weeks I was there, I was my instructors only student. He was paid by the hour so he fed me hours...
That program shut down years ago and was in West TN bases in Dyersburg I believe.
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You were inverted in a 152 and the engine was running fine?
 
There are times when a CFI must decide whether the use of "slightly unconventional" techniques will obtain the desired result without endangering the plane and occupants. One such instructor noticed that a particular pilot was sloppy about preflight inspections and also lax about callouts of "power set, airspeed alive" during takeoff roll, and no amount of reminding or check-list use seemed to have an impact. So . . .
 
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