OK, so now that I've finished the rest of the day's duties, let me elaborate on this clown. 'Tis a long story, but I'll keep it as short as possible.
First, we do the ground part. I give him a written quiz, and then we go over it and cover some other stuff. Guy takes the quiz, and makes it through, probably around 75% right the first time. So the ground goes OK, except one thing that he says: "Yeah, I took my CFI written a few years ago, but then decided not to persue my CFI because the FAA drug tests instructors." I was like, "whaaaat?!??!" Even the secretary (who overheard it) gave me a WTF glance. I didn't ask for an explanation, though I wish I had.
I give him the outline of what we're going to do for the flight. The usual stuff. When I get to stalls, he stops me by shaking his head and saying, "oooh, I don't like to do stalls in my airplane."
"Well, thats too bad. If you want your BFR, we're going to do them anyways. Its required," says I. I also give him my standard BFR briefing that if he doesn't perform to my satisfaction, I'm going to sign off the flight as a regular dual, and he'll have to get more training before getting the BFR endorsement.
So we go out to do the flight. I'd never seen the plane before because its on a different ramp. I walk out to the plane. Its a 1964 Cherokee 140. If you put it on a truck, took it to an aircraft scrap yard, and threw it in the weeds, it would look right at home. This thing was a TOTAL heap of junk. The paint was original (nearly gone), the interior was orginal (half of the side paneling and instrument panel trim was missing). The thing absolutely reeked inside (partly because the owner doesn't believe in deodorant). Try as I might on the walkaround and during the runup, I couldn't find anything that would render the airplane unairworthy (though I'm sure there was something).
So we take off. The thing sounds like a tractor, and shakes like crazy at first "because it has nylon tires" he says, "and they lose some of their roundness sitting, but get it back after rolling a bit." Whatever. Departing the pattern, UNICOM calls up and tells him that the radio is almost totally unreadable. Go figure.
We do some VOR stuff and I send him to a nearby airport for a landing or two. He's high on final, then gets slow and gets a hella sinkrate going. Slams it right onto the numbers. Strike one.
Off we go again, this time I tell him to depart and go to the practice area. He reduces power at pattern altitude, and climbs out for the next 1500' at 2200 RPM...wtf? After taking forever to climb to 3500, I tell him to give me two 45 deg. steep turns, one left and one right 360. Instead, he goes around 1.5 times to the left at nearly 60 deg. of bank, and then rolls out. I shrug and ask him for some slow flight. Lost 350' in about 1.5 min. I ask for a power off stall. Takes him forever to get it to stall, then when it does, takes him forever to recover...lost nearly 400' from initiation of recovery to positive rate of climb. Strike two.
Climb back up to 3000' and I tell him to head back to the airport. Upon reaching 3000', and overflying a small grass strip, I pull his power out to simulate an engine failure. He goes through a sketchy flow that takes seemingly forever, and then reaches down and says "not sure if I should add flaps or not...[5 seconds of pondering]...well....I guess I will," and proceeds to put in a notch of flaps. STRIKE THREE. I let him go, having to spoon feed him through the rest of the emergency procedures. Meanwhile, our sinkrate is high, and that nice grass strip we were right over is now unreachable behind us and we're over an old arsenal with NO good landings areas.
He would've flown all 20nm back to the airport (over congested areas) at 1800 MSL (800' AGL) if I had let him. Back at the airport, he flies a pattern that would make an examiner •! a brick and once again botches the landing.
As he was tying down, I practically RAN into my chief pilot's office and gave her my opinion. "I am NOT flying with that man, in that airplane, ever again." After explaining everything, she's behind me 110%.
After all this, the guy seems SHOCKED AND AWED when I tell him he needs some work. Tonight, the flight school manager is supposedly taking care of the "dirty work" of telling him that we don't want his business (he had scheduled for tomorrow with me). This wasn't even everything that was messed up about this whole thing, but you get the idea. We've got a base inspection with the FAA tomorrow and are considering getting them involved because of some comments he made (the drug one included), the fact that his logbook was very sketchy- all in pencil and way out of order as far as dates and years, and the fact that it appears he has been flying without a current BFR. Not to mention the plane being a complete $hitbox.
What a morning...Now for the beer, finally. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif
