{"id":4907,"date":"2018-07-12T17:06:26","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T00:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=4907"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","slug":"209-one-of-a-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/209-one-of-a-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"#209 One of a Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019d had a great flying session. We\u2019d done landings in a turn, slaloms up on one wheel and multiple landings.\u00a0 We\u2019d finished up with a series of spins, then swooped into our home airport at Sisters, Oregon and were sitting at the picnic table in the hangar debriefing the flight and the course.<\/h3>\n

Keith, who\u2019d come halfway across the country to fly at Tailwheel Town, turned to me and said, \u201cLet me ask you something\u2026 Do you know of anyone else who teaches the things you teach in this course?\u201d<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Keith McFarland in the Irrigation Pivot. Keith comes a long way to fly here and I’m glad he does. He’s a good stick and I always enjoy our flights… and our discussions!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a time when no one asked me that question.\u00a0 This year, several fliers who have taken one of the courses here at Tailwheel Town have asked me the same question.<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s my answer:\u00a0 I really don\u2019t know of anyone else who is teaching what I\u2019m teaching. \u00a0They may very well be out there, but I just don\u2019t know of them.\u00a0 Lately I\u2019ve received some correspondence from an instructor or two who are using some of my maneuvers, but I\u2019m sure that they have their own style which makes up most of theircourses.And it should probably be said that this is virtually all I do.\u00a0 It will come to an end as I turn more to writing and to the production of videos, but for now I seem to be the only guy from whom you can get this type of instruction.\u00a0Why do you suppose that is?<\/h3>\n

First of all, let\u2019s jettison any idea that I am an above average teacher of flying.\u00a0 I firmly believe that even a blind squirrel occasionally gets a nut.\u00a0 The nut I\u2019ve stumbled on is a result of the fact that I witnessed some superb flying and then simply asked a question.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Bill Warren inverted over the Rogue Valley in his Stearman (photo by Brian Lansburgh \u00a9 The Lansburgh Collection)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The flying I saw was by Bill Warren.\u00a0 I really believe that the very moment was when I happened to see Bill goofing off at the Bremerton, Washington, airshow.\u00a0 He was simply heading from one end of the runway to the other.\u00a0 He chose to put the J-3 Cub up on one wheel and run the length of the runway like that.\u00a0 I\u2019d never seen that before.\u00a0 Then I wondered why everyone couldn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 That was the question.<\/h3>\n

I questioned why it seemed that virtually all pilots were pretty helpless when it came to landing their airplane.\u00a0 What followed closely on the heels of that observation was my own feeling that the modern flight school was mainly responsible.\u00a0 Young pilots were trained in these schools, then retained by them as instructors.\u00a0 They used this opportunity to build their time until they had sufficient experience to move on to an airline job.\u00a0 It was then and remains a horrible, self-degrading system.\u00a0 I began to call such schools, \u201cAcme Flying School\u201d.\u00a0 That moniker has occupied a prominent place in my vocabulary and I guess I\u2019ve passed it on to those who\u2019ve come to me for primary instruction.<\/h3>\n

So I guess I\u2019m like the Drug Enforcement Administration.\u00a0 Their job is to put an end to drug trafficking, but if they should ever succeed, they will eliminate their own jobs.\u00a0 If I succeed, which is highly doubtful, there will no longer be any need for a place like Tailwheel Town, where pilots learn to become the pilots they should have become in their primary training.<\/h3>\n

One of my former primary students was at Oshkosh.\u00a0 She sat through a presentation by a large and highly successful aviation school.\u00a0 At the end of the presentation, her friend said that she thought she\u2019d investigate that school a bit more.\u00a0 She asked what my student thought of the presentation.\u00a0She responded, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just like the Acme Flying School on steroids\u201d.<\/h3>\n

I couldn\u2019t have said it better myself.<\/h3>\n

Happy Swooping!<\/h3>\n

Brian<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“He chose to put the J-3 Cub up on one wheel and run the length of the runway like that.\u00a0 I\u2019d never seen that before.\u00a0 Then I wondered why everyone couldn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 That was the question.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4910,"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":[30,35,67,153,171,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907"}],"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=4907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}