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Flight Instruction:\u00a0 Gawd, what an interesting process and vocation it is.\u00a0 I constantly plan my exit strategy from this occupation, but I remain drawn to it somehow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let me get something straight right now:\u00a0 I\u2019m not that good at it.\u00a0 I\u2019m a pretty decent pilot and I have an imagination which compels me to dream up things to teach people which will, I hope, make them better fliers.\u00a0 But I\u2019m no Wolfgang Langewiesche, no Barry Schiff, no Duane Cole.\u00a0 The \u201cFlight Instructor of the Year\u201d is usually in his twenties.\u00a0 I\u2019m a little older than that and there\u2019s no way I\u2019ll ever be named \u201cFlight Instructor of the Year\u201d!\u00a0 There\u2019s gin, tequila and whiskey in my pantry.\u00a0 No Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s the people who keep me doing this.\u00a0 They are all different.\u00a0 But they all have a couple of things in common.\u00a0 They all love to fly.\u00a0 They all want desperately to fly better.\u00a0 They all welcome a challenge.\u00a0 You see, I don\u2019t teach at Acme.\u00a0 No, I\u2019ve stumbled into a sweet little deal.\u00a0 And it\u2019s as sweet for my students as it is for me.\u00a0 I get to teach people like those I just described.\u00a0 They get to learn from someone who shares their passion and, although I may have a few other fish to fry and some ambitions of my own which might keep me from doing as much flight instruction in the future, I\u2019m not simply building time so I can get that airline job.\u00a0 I have no interest in that airline job.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s the writing that has kept me teaching.\u00a0 After all, every one of these people has a story.\u00a0 And because we share that love of flying and desire to do it better, I get to share in it.\u00a0 As a writer, I feed on stories.\u00a0 Hmmm, maybe that\u2019s it!<\/p>\n
As a flight instructor specializing in Tailwheel Endorsements and Stick and Rudder Master Classes, I get to fly with really fun people.\u00a0 Most are experienced pilots simply trying to get better.\u00a0 Some simply don\u2019t have any tailwheel time and want to get checked out.\u00a0 In the past year, I seem to have partially abandoned my policy of \u201cno primaries\u201d and have taken on some fliers who are working on their Private Pilot certificate.\u00a0 To teach someone through that process requires a lot of time, follow-through and involvement.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why I\u2019ve done so little of it\u2026 short attention span!\u00a0 But this last year I\u2019ve taken on a few and it\u2019s been very rewarding.\u00a0 Maybe all that time working with more advanced students somehow prepared me to better present more fundamental concepts.<\/p>\n
Julie told the \u201cBrian Story\u201d.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the \u201cJulie Story\u201d:\u00a0 While returning from a short cross country, she\u2019s blasting into the downwind for her home airport.\u00a0 But she\u2019s not concentrating on her pattern entry.\u00a0 No, she\u2019s in the middle of a story.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s about a horse trainer.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026so he got this offer to train exclusively for some people with a lot of money, but he turned it down\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n
As she relates her story, she is looking around the pattern for any conflicting traffic.\u00a0 Even with her head on a swivel, she continues to relate the story of the horse trainer.\u00a0 Then, without skipping a beat, she presses the transmit button.\u00a0 \u201cSisters Traffic, Cessna one-forty is left downwind for runway zero-two, Sisters\u201d. Then, \u201c\u2026y\u2019see, he was more interested in working with the people who really appreciate his horsemanship\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n
And all this while judging the right spot from which to make that power-off turn from base to final so as to clear the displaced threshold and to swoop to her planned three-point landing. \u00a0\u00a0As she swoops across the airport fence, I think, \u201cNo, she still isn\u2019t ready to solo and she needs a little backup sometime to keep from rolling the little airplane up in a ball.\u00a0 But she\u2019s getting there\u2026 and \u00a0\u201cMulti-Tasking\u201d is certainly not one of her weaknesses. \u201c<\/p>\n
A lot of Kool-Aid slurpers will criticize my program for failing to observe the now-popular \u201csterile cockpit\u201d while landing.\u00a0 I understand.\u00a0 The undertrained need to concentrate on that horribly difficult landing and takeoff and they need that sterile cockpit.\u00a0 But a long time ago, I was helped to the decision not to teach to \u201cminimum standards\u201d.\u00a0 Perhaps it was while piloting the Big Yellow Glider and functioning as Pilot, Instructor and Tour Guide that I realized there was no place for a Sterile Cockpit in my little flying world.\u00a0 Or maybe it was while flying for Wescam during Monday Night Football with ATC, my camera operator, and every other Yayhoo in Class B yakkin\u2019 as I maneuvered the ship around the Football Stadium in the dark while keeping an eye on my little panel-mounted monitor to keep the gear out of the shot, that I realized the following:\u00a0 A truly professional pilot has to be capable of doing a lot of things at the same time.\u00a0 No time there for a \u201csterile cockpit\u201d.<\/p>\n
So I try to load up my students when they are the busiest.\u00a0 Shades of Earnest Gann\u2019s crusty Captain tossing lighted matches in his lap while he\u2019s attempting to fly an instrument approach to minimums in a thunderstorm.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it\u2019s no surprise to me that Julie can tell a story while approaching this challenging little airport for a landing.<\/p>\n
(as a post-script, it should be noted that Julie has graduated to a couple more airplanes.\u00a0 She is now soloed and regularly flies her 182 without anyone to listen to her stories!)<\/strong><\/p>\n Happy SWOOPING!<\/p>\n Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “So I try to load up my students when they are the busiest. Shades of Earnest Gann\u2019s crusty Captain tossing lighted matches in his lap while he\u2019s attempting to fly an instrument approach to minimums in a thunderstorm.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,38,67,173],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}