A man gots to know his limitations

[Colonel]

I love this instructor. Not sure the student did.

It's awesome to see someone with stick & rudder skills, passing it on.

[Nark]

The value of this lesson is go put your toes in the water. Don’t fully commit.

You learn a lot by doing, and by not doing.

[Colonel]

Right. It goes without saying that choice of runway is terribly important, especially in a light, little airplane with hardly any wing loading. Sure, build some character by taking off and doing some pattern work with a strong, gusty crosswind, but when it comes time to do a full stop .... land into wind.

Before War Two, people just took off and landed on a literal square grass airfield, into wind. During War Two, the crafty BCATP people built equilateral triangle runways at airports all across Canada, so no one would ever have to land with more than a 30 degree crosswind, which is genius when you are teaching tailwheel.

And again, wing loading makes the difference. I've mentioned here before I took off one day in howling crosswind at my old airport in an L39 (only one paved runway, so suck it up) and hardly noticed it. Then jumped into the Maule, absent-mindedly took off with the same crosswind and almost got blown off the runway. Holy crap! Wake up!!

Dear Old Dad said that in the F-104 with it's stupid wing loading (150 lbs/sq ft) you really never noticed crosswinds or even bumps for that matter.

[Colonel]

There is some terribly popular social influencer, I forget his name (Taylor Swift?)
that tried to take off (1000x easier than land) in his very light wing loading STOL
aircraft in a strong, gusty crosswind not far from me .... and wrecked it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pJmtTNqXB64

Good job! You wrecked your very expensive, one-of-a-kind-airplane but kept the
FAA/Tower is happy.

I remember him saying afterwards that he didn't want to upset FAA/Tower and
not use a designated runway. That video was deleted shortly afterwards. At
least, I can't find it any more. Just some skinny woman in a blonde wig singing
off key?

See, that's the difference between me and Taylor Swift. I would have told Tower
that I was going to take off into wind, across the ramp or whatever. I would prefer
to have my aircraft undamaged even if I later received a letter in the mail.

People take off and land on taxiways at OSH all the time. What's the big deal?
When I ran the airport at CYSH I mowed a beautiful parallel grass landing strip
next to runway 24. I would teach kids to land the 172 at 70 mph on the pavement,
then 65, then 60 over the runway threshold. Then we would sidestep and land
in about 500 feet on the parallel grass with no braking.

I guess that's a horrible fucking thing to do, which is why I had to go to PNR to
renew my flight instructor ratings. A retired TC Inspector told me it would not
be productive for me to attempt a flight test in Ontario Region. And of course,
I did my medicals in Quebec Region because of ol' Jim Pfaff, who made no bones
that he was gunning for me. And of course, I had to renew my airshow pilot
card in the USA because TC had told the Canadian ICAS evaluators not to touch me.

Oh Canada. I do not miss you. This lefty says it all: