Scudrunners

Chuck - I came after when White River bought them. I was hired when they expanded into NWO as a 748 captain in 78 stayed 8 years. Could not picture myself as a -8 driver so went north and hung my hat there for 28 years.

Ahh the good old days with the Duluce tribe.

He bought into Avalon Aviation when I was Moose Murdok's chief pilot and tried to intimidate me into doing things I was not willing to do.

Someday I might get the chance to tell you how I handled old Stan and his boys.

i know you will love it.

Chuck Ellsworth wrote: Flying can be unforgiving of mistakes to the point you can die in some instances....therefore the advice must come from people who are qualified to give it.

How do you determine that? I've flown with 16 instructors over the years (plus a number of examiners), and the only time I was put in danger was by a high time CFI who did most of my instrument training, although I didn't realise it at the time. He had us flying VFR at 600ft AGL over a built-up area with zero forward visibility, and he asked me to see if I could still see the houses below us while he flew a homebrew VOR radial back to the airport. At the time I didn't realise that we have broken a whole raft of regulations, I just thought it was a somewhat scary example of real-life IFR flying. I just had a look at the map, and we were less than 1nm away from terrain that was 570ft, assuming a direct course between the airports.


I've also seen a high-time instructor on avcanada say that he flew in the mountains with a student with zero forward visibility.


Problems with low-time instructors tend to be lack of knowledge, but that's not likely to kill you. A while ago I had to explain to an instructor what the RMT button on the DME does. Also, he told me it's not necessary to ident navaids. He said just listen to see if there is some morse code (but it doesn't matter what it is), and that is fine. We tried that later in the flight, and we were a little surprised that the DME showed us getting further away from the ILS we were heading towards until I realised it was the wrong DME.


Lack of CARS knowledge seems to be a common issue among instructors, although that won't kill you either. Every single instructor at one school, as well as the examiner, told me that all 40 hours of the instrument rating need to be done by an instructor (rather than with a safety pilot), which is incorrect. Other common ones include legality of straight-in approaches at uncontrolled airports (even TC seems a little confused about that), and which documents are required if you're landing at the same airport you took off from.


I think the best you can do is query anything that sounds dubious, and get second and third opinions from other instructors, or from TC if it's a CARS question.

I've flown with 16 instructors

It's not too late to ask for your money back  ;D
although don't be ashamed - some people
just learn a lot slower than others.

At the end of the day you and you alone are responsible for your decisions - including what information you 'believe'. Consider the source, cross-check with other sources and then decide for yourself what action you will take. For the Ab-Initio pilot - there is usually only 1 source - your instructor, but as you progress you will find out many more. High time people have a lot of experience - which weights the believability of what they say enormously - but they can still be wrong (in your opinion, or within your parameters).
I found it interesting to note on the AvCanada thread about this topic, one of the posters is taking a "when I used to teach IFR" standpoint - comes across as a very experience ex-instructor. But then I remember when he joined AvCanada as a PPL student, and watched him progress through PPL, CPL, Instructing and now flying for someone else. Didn't take that long! I'm not saying he is wrong, just that not all experience is the same.
The worst situation I got into in an airplane was because I trusted the very high time, lots of RW flying experience sitting next to me and did not just open the throttle and go around when my spidey-senses told me to. The decision was still my responsibility though.

Colonel wrote:

I've flown with 16 instructors

It's not too late to ask for your money back  ;D
although don't be ashamed - some people
just learn a lot slower than others.

I wondered if someone would make that comment, but I thought "Nah, not even the Colonel would say something as ridiculous as that". Obviously you've proved me wrong 


The reason I've had 16 instructors is due to various ratings/licenses/checkouts, etc over the years. For my PPL I had 3 different instructors, but that was just because of scheduling issues. I never had any issues at all with my PPL instructors -- all were very good instructors, and great people. I regularly had the throttle pulled at 500ft on the climbout, which I think is a useful teaching technique.

For sure you guys have every right to your opinions and that is the way it should be.

As to my opinions here I also have my position and opinions and am comfortable with expressing them, as to my quality of instruction well that is best confirmed by researching my record as an advanced flight instructor.

Like I have said many times the best indicator of ones qualifications can be checked by what he / she received for their time instructing.

When I retired my rate was 250 Euro / 250 USD per flight hour and I never lacked for clients.

In other words I can prove what I can make as a flight instructor and wonder how many here can prove they can charge and get that level of remuneration for their services.

By the way there were times that with the exchange rate I was making around $400.00 Canadian per flight hour, plus all expenses of course.

I'm not sure if rates are a good indicator either -- that has more to do with supply and demand. I'm not saying you're a bad instructor, just that there are a lot of very overpaid consultants and the like out there.