Scudrunners

It's nice to hear from guys you taught



This is at

https://www.airnav.com/airport/3u2
Elevation 5000
Runway 3400 turf

Gotta get my ass to ID/UT. Looks like some great tailwheel flying there!!



After 50 years of flying, I tell people that if all you've ever done is fly tailwheel
off grass, you haven't missed much in aviation. Well, maybe floats. And ok,
surface acro. Maybe popping out on top of the layer into the blinding sunshine.

Anyways, post pictures from your former students. Here are a couple more to
get you started

awesome!

Soloed my kid when he was 14 in the Maule. Legally. One day Bob flies over to my hangar from his farm
in his Citabria and we are sitting there talking, and I tell my 16 year old student kid,

"Kid, take the Citabria up for a circuit".

Now, the kid had never flown a Citabria before, but that really didn't matter. He climbed in, I showed him
where the toggle switches were overhead and the chrome starter button switch on the dash and told him
he didn't need any flaps.

Off he goes. Took this picture, 14 years ago now I guess.



A couple years later I see him taxi out solo in Kenny's yellow RV-8 to check himself out and do acro. Big smile.

This is not one of my students. But I admire his style. One of yours?

Mikey from Ice Pilots. Not sure he entirely enjoyed flying with me.





Not really a student of mine, but I like his face when we're pulling +5G's in the L39.

Taught the one on the right to fly. The one without the big pink tongue.



Funny story. He goes to a bunch of assholes at the Ottawa Flying Club when
he is 30 and the bunch of assholes at the OFC tell him he is too old to learn to fly.

Comes to me when he's 40. I do his commercial and class 4 instructor rating
despite attacks from fuckhead bureaucrats from Toronto accusing me of running
a "Career College" when I am freelancing. I am not making this up. He gets his hours,
goes up north, gets his ATP and amazingly is still there. I told him when the blueberry
blondes started to look good, it was time to come home but nobody listens.



Life lesson: sometimes, despite the assholes from Ottawa and Toronto, you can
get stuff done. Don't forget that.

Next Gen.

Excellent. Use pillows underneath and behind him so he can see over the dash and reach the pedals.

Worked for me 50+ years ago and look at what a splendid fellow I turned out to be. Ahem.

No seriously, get them flying early and often so they are at home in the air. NASA did a study a few
years back about aviation accidents, and all they could really conclude is that the earlier someone
learned to fly, the less likely they were to be involved in accidents.

This is actually true of anything technique-intensive. Motorcycle riding is a good example of this.
When you first start riding a motorcycle, 95% of your brain is going to be required to operate the
vehicle, leaving 5% for traffic. You are road kill. But after enough years, the percentages reverse
and you can control the vehicle with 5% of your brain, leaving the other 95% of your brain to look
out for the left-turners who don't see you and will try to kill you at least twice a day on your way
to work.

This is exactly what NASA was talking about. This is why my kid had nearly 10 years of dirtbike
experience when he turned 16 and I took him to the DMV to get his car/motorcycle student paper.

See Malcom Gladwell & 10,000 hours. Get comfortable in the cockpit. It is your home.

This thread has had me scratching my head for days at what my past students are doing. I spent the vast majority of my Class 4/3/2 instructing at one of the big colleges so after getting their PPLs no one really had a singular instructor. Still, I do run into past students at big airports and most are doing well.

No pics but notably I’d been handed one student after he’d failed a flight test. The school rule was you only got limited remedial hours and one more shot to pass, then you’d be kicked out forever if unsuccessful. Most instructors wrote off these candidates or even took joy in their failing out and that’s probably how I ended up being handed a lot of these folks. To make a long story short he passed, and was successful to the end of the program too. I didn’t keep in touch, I never really do. A couple years later I’m at a traffic light on the highway through Thunder Bay and guess who pulls up beside me. The guy’s all excited to be on a long road trip to BC to start with Jazz and he credits my help getting him through that ride as the point that made it all possible. I was flattered but of course lost touch again, as one does. Fast forward a couple years and I’m coming out of a sim session to find him again in the interview waiting area for the big airline. I should look up what airplane he’s on, maybe I’ll fly with him sometime.

I didn’t always instruct in the most conventional ways. I was never specifically called out on it but there were certainly looks given. Sure, my record speaks for itself but this one particular guy’s case tells me I must have been doing it right.

Oh, and not students per se but I do have a flight selfie with everyone I’ve ever taken flying in a Champ.