Douglas
Old School KSUX
Yeah, I am being lazy right now. Just had to get a bowl of cereal. I have no clue where I read it, but I will check my weather book.
Fake it till you can make it.
- Thread starter USMCmech
- Start date
Yeah, I am being lazy right now. Just had to get a bowl of cereal. I have no clue where I read it, but I will check my weather book.
jhugz
Well-Known Member
:yeahthat:
And for the cloud I am pretty sure it also under False Horizon I was just driving home did not get back till now. I have gotten the leans in IMC before but have never have been so disoriented in between layers with false horizons everywhere. It is just really unnerving for another low time IMC guy.
mhcasey
Well-Known Member
I'm not a mod, but I'm going to guess because it was marginally relevant at best, and most of us are tired of Jhugz's flame wars and self-proclaimed expertise.
So probably the same reason this thread will be deleted?
Douglas
Old School KSUX
"False Horizon
A sloping cloud formation, an obscured horizon, an aurora
borealis, a dark scene spread with ground lights and stars,
and certain geometric patterns of ground lights can provide
inaccurate visual information, or false horizon, for aligning
the aircraft correctly with the actual horizon. The disoriented
pilot may place the aircraft in a dangerous attitude. "
Chapter 1
Page 7
Instrument Flying Handbook.
It took for ever for that dang PDF to load.
jhugz
Well-Known Member
There is an ignore button hit it if you don't like me.
CoffeeIcePapers
Well-Hung Member
Thanks. I guess it was the verbage of "diagonal cloud" that threw me off.
R
Roger, Roger
Guest
Not if the rest of us continue to provide good war stories.
I was up flying with another CFI doing instrument proficiency and the ceilings (unforecast) dropped to reported OVC003. Not a problem with an ILS. However, our ILS was OTS at the time. We shot a GPS approach with a tailwind (the headwind runway had about a 600' MDA), and saw the runway right at mins. We were not looking forward to spending the rest of the morning at another airport (2 ILS airports within 40 NM of us).
Story #2: Up flying with another CFI (trouble right?) when I was working on my CFII. We went to a nearby airport to do approaches, and, being the novices we were, we thought the tstorms were done for the day. Well, the rain showers built into solid tstorms around our home airport, so after 2 approaches at the other field, we had to land and wait several hours for the thunderstorms to go away.
Story #3: (to remind myself that I still know nothing). Just a week or so ago, we had some IMC and I went up to do approaches. TAF had some showers, but I didn't check the radar. During my 1st approach, approach control warned me of "an area of weather" (their wx radar can't tell intensity). I acknowledged and kept flying. Just after crossing the marker inbound in solid IMC on the 2nd approach, the clouds LIT UP and I heard a crackling on the radio. OH CRAP, embedded thunderstorm. It wasn't raining yet, and I figured that if I started encountering rain I'd have time to turn around and get the eff out of there. I continued the approach and landed. When I next checked the radar, I could see that the storm was not at the airport yet, but it started pouring quite soon after I'd shut down. Learned from that one not to be too confident.
mhcasey
Well-Known Member
I continue to hold out hope that you'll reform your ways. Actually, you hadn't posted anything obnoxious in a while, so I guess I should cut you some slack.
Woops...shoulda said "post" instead of "thread." You reminded me of another great moment:
Enthusiastic middle aged man comes in near the end of the day. I'm supposed to be heading out early because I had an early start, but I wasn't maxed out on the day and needed cash so I offered to take him up for a disco flight. There was some junk to the south, but everything was green and pretty far away on radar.
The flight was uneventful, but as we approached the airport I noticed a pretty big storm moving towards the field really quickly. My meteorology prof had just discussed Delta Flight 191 that week, so of course I'm puckering up a bit. I kept an eye on the windsock on the way in and had no problems, but a bit of rain started as we taxied back. My student got out and was golf-carted away just in time for a torrential downpour as I struggled to tie down the effing traumahawk and attach its effing windshield cover. Luckily it was summer, so I had packed extra clothes - anticipating disgusting sweat-soaked shirts/undies after about 1pm.
Anyway...I still looked like a serious ######, the guy never came back, and I learned to not push the limit with airmass t-storms in Texas in the summer.
ClearedToTakeoff
Well-Known Member
I think this is a good thread, I hope to hear some more stories in the coming days. I'm starting in a week and a half at my first instructing job, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared to death right now. And learning from others has always been the way for me. So more stories please 
R
Roger, Roger
Guest
First time I had a student use aileron in a power-on stall recovery in the DA-42...
Why are we yawing? Use the rudder dangit...OH CRAP THATS ADVERSE YAW!!!! LET OFF THE AILERON!!!
Why are we yawing? Use the rudder dangit...OH CRAP THATS ADVERSE YAW!!!! LET OFF THE AILERON!!!
USMCmech
Well-Known Member
I think this is a good thread, I hope to hear some more stories in the coming days. I'm starting in a week and a half at my first instructing job, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared to death right now. And learning from others has always been the way for me. So more stories please
Some may consider it dishonest, but I would recomend not telling your students that you just started teaching.
One of your main jobs as a CFI is to build their confidence, which can be difficult if they see you as a raw beginer. Unless you have a LOT of experiance other flying besides instruction, you should just neglect to mention that you still have a temporary CFI cert. You must ballance your confidence as a pilot with your humility as a student still learning.
Confidence and fear are both contagious. Whichever one you feel will transfer to your students. Thus the title of this thread.
Douglas
Old School KSUX
Confidence: The engine misses/coughs but you keep talking them through something as if you never heard it, even though they are looking at you as if the worst is going to happen.
The rest of the lesson will be pointless if the student is scared of the engine.
Fake it till you make it back home.
Zero1Niner
Well-Known Member
Guys...really want to thank you all for this stuff. Really helpful for me. Keep it coming!
jrh
Well-Known Member
As I walked out to the plane to give my first lesson, all I could think was, "Wow. Holy crap. I can't believe they're actually letting me do this. I'm supposed to teach this girl how to fly. Ummm...ok. Gotta start somewhere I guess."
I tried hard, but looking back on it, I wish I could take those first 200 hours or so of instruction given and give everyone their money back. Like pretty much all instructors, I was fantastic on technical knowledge and mediocre on teaching skills. The longer I do this, the more I see how instructing has a little to do with technical knowledge and a lot to do with interpersonal skills--how to present information, gauge how well the student understands it, break everything down depending on the person's learning style, etc. All that stuff you learned while studying FOI material? Yeah, every single word of the FOI books matter. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, defense mechanisms, all of that stuff becomes apparent if a person looks for it.
As has been said, whatever you do as a new instructor, act confident. Don't lie or BS anyone, but don't fumble over yourself either.
For me, my weak area was always judging glide distances for emergency procedures. All through my own training, I don't know how I managed to pass checkrides. I simply never developed a feel for setting up to glide in to a field. I'd always either end up too short or too long.
When it came time to practice simulated engine failures with students, sometimes they would look over at me and ask, "Do you think I can make it to that field over there?" and I'd smugly reply, "I don't know, there's only one way to find out," and have them try to glide there.
It took about 30 or 40 tries of these, watching students do them, before I actually got to the level myself where I could always know exactly how to set up for landing on any field in an emergency. Up to that point, my guess was as good as theirs about if we would make it or not.
I also had less than ideal situations with thunderstorms, wake turbulence, getting "disoriented" on cross countries, and many others. That's why being a CFI teaches a person a lot!
I tried hard, but looking back on it, I wish I could take those first 200 hours or so of instruction given and give everyone their money back. Like pretty much all instructors, I was fantastic on technical knowledge and mediocre on teaching skills. The longer I do this, the more I see how instructing has a little to do with technical knowledge and a lot to do with interpersonal skills--how to present information, gauge how well the student understands it, break everything down depending on the person's learning style, etc. All that stuff you learned while studying FOI material? Yeah, every single word of the FOI books matter. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, defense mechanisms, all of that stuff becomes apparent if a person looks for it.
As has been said, whatever you do as a new instructor, act confident. Don't lie or BS anyone, but don't fumble over yourself either.
For me, my weak area was always judging glide distances for emergency procedures. All through my own training, I don't know how I managed to pass checkrides. I simply never developed a feel for setting up to glide in to a field. I'd always either end up too short or too long.
When it came time to practice simulated engine failures with students, sometimes they would look over at me and ask, "Do you think I can make it to that field over there?" and I'd smugly reply, "I don't know, there's only one way to find out," and have them try to glide there.
It took about 30 or 40 tries of these, watching students do them, before I actually got to the level myself where I could always know exactly how to set up for landing on any field in an emergency. Up to that point, my guess was as good as theirs about if we would make it or not.
I also had less than ideal situations with thunderstorms, wake turbulence, getting "disoriented" on cross countries, and many others. That's why being a CFI teaches a person a lot!
Douglas
Old School KSUX
I had a steep learning curve early on, on when to take over the flight controls.
Student got wide on downwind-
I pulled the power and said "can you make the runway?"
Student did a great job gliding in (JRH I guess I am not a good judge either) but he land a few feet short of the runway and we popped one main gear tire when we hit the edge of the runway.
I gave verbal commands for power too long before taking over.
He went for carb heat, I went for the throttle but still could arrest the descent before the dirt.
Confessed to my boss what I did and how I let it go too long before I took over and he never said anything negative about it.
This is just how CFIs have to learn and learn to confess immediately.
The tower controller was great about it....speechless.
I will say that my student was dead on centerline, we missed all of the lights.
Man, if Cessna 150s could talk...
Student got wide on downwind-
I pulled the power and said "can you make the runway?"
Student did a great job gliding in (JRH I guess I am not a good judge either) but he land a few feet short of the runway and we popped one main gear tire when we hit the edge of the runway.
I gave verbal commands for power too long before taking over.
He went for carb heat, I went for the throttle but still could arrest the descent before the dirt.
Confessed to my boss what I did and how I let it go too long before I took over and he never said anything negative about it.
This is just how CFIs have to learn and learn to confess immediately.
The tower controller was great about it....speechless.
I will say that my student was dead on centerline, we missed all of the lights.
Man, if Cessna 150s could talk...
USMCmech
Well-Known Member
I think that the 150/152 has to be one of the toughest planes ever built.
killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
Has to be. I had about 15 landings logged before it occurred to me that you're supposed to GLIDE them in instead of try to land them like a Harrier.
moxiepilot
Well-Known Member
Maybe this should be a "You know you're a CFI when..." but Douglas' last post reminded me of an approach with a student that made me chuckle thinking about it.
I was working with some student in the pattern. The student was draggin it in on short final. I knew we were low. I waited for power to be applied. Nothing.
I waited. Still nothing.
I can remember thinking to myself, as we cleared the REILs by inches, that, "If we hit them, we hit them."
I wouldn't say it's a cavilear attitude, or resignation; but, there comes that point in instruction where if you're not going to die or significantly damage the a/c you don't really care as much. Hey, the student's insurance is going to pay for the damages anyway
Okay, there's a little sarcasm in the post, in case someone wants to flame me. The scenario is true though.
I was working with some student in the pattern. The student was draggin it in on short final. I knew we were low. I waited for power to be applied. Nothing.
I waited. Still nothing.
I can remember thinking to myself, as we cleared the REILs by inches, that, "If we hit them, we hit them."
I wouldn't say it's a cavilear attitude, or resignation; but, there comes that point in instruction where if you're not going to die or significantly damage the a/c you don't really care as much. Hey, the student's insurance is going to pay for the damages anyway
Okay, there's a little sarcasm in the post, in case someone wants to flame me. The scenario is true though.
jrh
Well-Known Member
I can remember thinking to myself, as we cleared the REILs by inches, that, "If we hit them, we hit them."
I wouldn't say it's a cavilear attitude, or resignation; but, there comes that point in instruction where if you're not going to die or significantly damage the a/c you don't really care as much. Hey, the student's insurance is going to pay for the damages anyway
Okay, there's a little sarcasm in the post, in case someone wants to flame me. The scenario is true though.
Moxie, I think you're a great guy, but in this case I'd say you just barely slid over a line that shouldn't be crossed.
An instructor should never *knowingly* put an aircraft or property on the ground in harm's way, insurance or no insurance, lesson or no lesson, however minor the damage might be.
I wouldn't criticize an instructor for a mishap because we all make them. While teaching, I've come closer to banging up a plane than I'd care to admit, but each of my occasions were honest mistakes of things simply happening too fast to keep up with.
I just don't want a new instructor to read these posts and think it's ok to bump something every now and then in the name of training. It's not. No matter how often or how badly a student keeps screwing up, it's our job as instructors to protect them and figure out a way to get the point across in non-destructive ways
