Inheritance

Taking over a student who has been working with a different instructor presents an additional set of challenges that aren't there when you're lucky enough to start with them from scratch.

Each instructor teaches things in their own way and the challenge as the new instructor is to understand that just because a student was taught to do something differently doesn't automatically mean it's a bad thing.

I've inherited three such students recently that represent, I hope, the full spectrum of how good, or bad, a flight instructor can be.

On the “good” end of the spectrum, I picked up an instrument student from an instructor who was leaving for the airlines. The student was almost ready to take his check ride when I took him on and my job was easy.

We flew once and I was impressed. My only advice was “get your written done and I'll sign you off for the ride.” We flew a few more times, I signed him off and he passed easily. His previous instructor had done a fantastic job, which made my job easy enough that I even felt a bit guilty about being able to credit the successful check ride.

Toward the middle was another instrument student who came to me after doing the bulk of his training with another instructor. I don't know the details but apparently the instructor wasn't totally up to speed with the current IFR environment, and I suppose the Practical Test Standards, and didn't feel comfortable signing the student off for a check ride.

I had mixed emotions about that case. On one hand, good for the instructor knowing his limitations. On the other, it's inexcusable to teach a student without being fully competent on the subject or at the very least being willing to put in the effort to get competent.

I teach instrument flying, if not every day, at least every other day and there's still plenty that I don't know and I study it obsessively.

I really don't know how a part-time instructor, who maybe takes on one or two students a year can do a proper job teaching instrument flying. There are exceptions, for certain, but unless they've spent 40 years flying IFR daily as an airline pilot or something I just don't get it.

Anyway, the student was actually in reasonably good shape when it came to basic instrument flying and it was just a matter of doing some polishing, filling some knowledge gaps and hammering on approaches.

I was a little disappointed that when the weather on our first flight dictated picking up a local IFR clearance my inherited student had never done so, much less flown inside of a cloud.

But, we got through it and long story short, he passed his check ride this week without difficulty.

Finally, on the “this guy shouldn't be teaching” end of the spectrum is one of my private students, who came from another flight school.

We spent some time talking when she first arrived and I was shocked by what I heard.

My student's previous instructor had, over the course of 20 or 25 hours, not taught my student how to land the airplane, spent a fair amount of time yelling at her and damaged her confidence to the point that she was thinking of quitting.

Fundamentally, her instructor had also allowed her to develop some bad habits so we spent the first 10 hours or so fixing those along with setting a relaxed, safe atmosphere in the cockpit.

Essentially, she was a good pilot despite her previous instructor and now just needed to believe that was so. It was tough going, but slowly we managed to get there.

There was no single turning point, but one of the more defining moments came when we went flying on an extremely windy day.

I'm loath to cancel lessons because of high winds. I hated flying on windy days as a student, but my instructor forced me to and as a result I was able to develop a decent crosswind landing technique. I thank him for it to this day.

Anyway, the winds were in the 25 knot range with gusts up to 40. Normally, even I would have stayed on the ground but it was too good a learning opportunity.

After a few wild landings at the nearby Anoka County Airport we headed back to our St. Paul base. The winds were still 25 knots but at least they were more or less in line with the runway.

At about a hundred feet my student looked over and said “I'm going to need some help.”

I looked back, smiled and crossed my arms. “Nope. I know you can do this.”

It wasn't the prettiest landing ever, but it was good enough and better than most pilots would have managed under the circumstances.

When she soloed for the first time this week it was a pretty emotional event all around.

Spring has sprung

The dog days of winter are over, replaced by the spring flying frenzy and soon to be replaced by the more traditional dog days of summer.

After four solid months of truly awful weather it has stopped snowing, the slow moving low pressure systems that hung over Minnesota for what seemed like weeks on end bringing with them days of rain, snow, low clouds and general malaise have, for the most part, been replaced by a string of steady highs and fine flying weather.

It never ceases to amaze me how long winter lingers in Minnesota and how quickly spring comes. It seems that over the course of only a few days the state goes from brown and dead to green and lush.

The flying energy that has built up over the long winter has been released in synchronization with the plants that have shot back to life.

This is all reflected on my flying schedule, which has been packed. Last week saw 26 hours added to my woefully out of date logbook. This week will bring less flying but still enough that 12-hour duty days are typical.

The accelerated pace will keep up until July, when vacations draw people away from airplanes and flight instructors. July and August are slow times. The pilots looking to brush off the rust of a winter with little flying have done so by midsummer, students working on ratings pack their bags and families into the car and head for parts unknown.

Perversely, I'm looking forward to the summer slowdown, even though it comes with a slowdown in my income as well.

Leading up to the Memorial Day weekend I'd flown 19-days in a row and was pretty much a walking bag of goo.

On Wednesday I left the house at 7:30 in the morning and didn't pull back into the driveway until after midnight. I wish I could say I flew the entire time, but the reality is an absurd amount of my day is spent waiting around between lessons, driving to different airports or repositioning airplanes. Then there is ground with students before and after lessons, paperwork and, if I'm lucky, a break to eat.

It might sound too good to be true, flying every day is a dream for most folks and I am admittedly fortunate. But with it comes an aching back, ears that ring after a long day in the cockpit, dinners sourced from vending machines and an overall hourly wage that can best be described as laughable.

And behind it all looms the reality that my career, not to mention my life, could be over given a moment's inattention at the wrong time.

On Tuesday, I set the altimeter incorrectly and flew a customer who had dropped his airplane off for maintenance back to his home airport with the altimeter reading nearly 1,000 feet low.

Luckily, I was also reading the altimeter incorrectly so I flew along 1,000 feet lower than I thought I was. All of which turned out to be a good thing, as another 1,000 feet of altitude would have placed me squarely in the middle of Minneapolis' Class B airspace and led to an almost certain violation.

Stupid things happen when you fly exhausted.