To all CFI's: Stupidest student questions.

tomokc said:
Had a student ask if aerodynamic properties changed depending on whether it was night or day. Of course I said yes, and ran with a detailed explanation for about five minutes until I ran out of BS.
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Be careful about that. Otherwise you'll have students telling a DE about the deice monkey that lives next to the heater in the nose cone of PA44s and comes out on a little platform to knock ice off the wings using rubber mallets.
 
BobDDuck said:
Be careful about that. Otherwise you'll have students telling a DE about the deice monkey that lives next to the heater in the nose cone of PA44s and comes out on a little platform to knock ice off the wings using rubber mallets.
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Hahahaha! Awesome.
 
BobDDuck said:
Be careful about that. Otherwise you'll have students telling a DE about the deice monkey that lives next to the heater in the nose cone of PA44s and comes out on a little platform to knock ice off the wings using rubber mallets.
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Remember from the FOI: Sarcasm has no place in instruction!



(:sarcasm:)
 
I once had a student repeatedly confuse left and right both on the ground with a model in his hand and in the airplane. As in "alright turn left here" *airplane rolls towards the right*. This guy wanted to do aerobatics.

There's also a true tale at the club I trained about a student on the second leg of his first solo cross-country that missed his target destination by about 300nm, nearly running out of fuel in northern Canada.
 
I'm doing accuracy landings with a student and tell him to use the aiming point blocks as his touchdown point. After he lands I ask him why he decided to land 40 feet off centerline he tells me he thought I meant land ON the blocks. Good old FlightSafety.
 
I was sitting in the right seat today and had to remind the flying pilot that the speed limit below Class B was 200 and below 10,000 was 250. And that when you level off from a descent, you have to increase the thrust so you don't stall...and when you level off from a climb, you have to reduce thrust so you don't blow through airspace and structural speed limits.

Unfortunately, I'm not a CFI.
 
I had a student ask about the WOW switch on RG aircraft. He then proceded to ask why we don't place the gear handle in the up position on the ramp to ensure the switch is working.


We used to play a joke on the new line guys and send them down to the flight school mech looking for the following, the occassionally would send a student back.

Strobe Light Fluid
Red and Green Nav Light fluid
Compass Whiskey
Flight Line
Prop wash
 
true story, happened to a buddy of mine who was at the desk next to mine:

he was teaching his female student about weight and balance, cg calculation and the importance of CG location etc.

at the end he asked if she had questions.

she said yes, "how do I find the g spot?"

in her defence English wasn't her native language. still had me chuckling all day long!
 
BenZwebner said:
true story, happened to a buddy of mine who was at the desk next to mine:

he was teaching his female student about weight and balance, cg calculation and the importance of CG location etc.

at the end he asked if she had questions.

she said yes, "how do I find the g spot?"

in her defence English wasn't her native language. still had me chuckling all day long!
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:yup:
 
BenZwebner said:
true story, happened to a buddy of mine who was at the desk next to mine:

he was teaching his female student about weight and balance, cg calculation and the importance of CG location etc.

at the end he asked if she had questions.

she said yes, "how do I find the g spot?"

in her defence English wasn't her native language. still had me chuckling all day long!
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That is pretty funny.

I am not a CFI yet but I always get a kick out of it when I take friends up flying and they ask me how many seconds we would have before we would smash into the ground if the engine quit. It is pretty amazing how a lot of he general public think that if the engine goes out on a airplane then the airplane is basically going to stop flying and just start falling out of the sky straight to the ground. The concept of gliding is just nonexistent to most people.
 
Muff3n said:
They ask me how many seconds we would have before we would smash into the ground if the engine quit.
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I get that every now and then. My standard answer is to pull the power out, lean back and say "let's find out". It always make for a good story.
 
Muff3n said:
That is pretty funny.

I am not a CFI yet but I always get a kick out of it when I take friends up flying and they ask me how many seconds we would have before we would smash into the ground if the engine quit. It is pretty amazing how a lot of he general public think that if the engine goes out on a airplane then the airplane is basically going to stop flying and just start falling out of the sky straight to the ground. The concept of gliding is just nonexistent to most people.
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I can't fly passengers yet, but I hear that question all the time. I had a coworker tell me that an airliner would "fall out of the sky" if it lost its engine. I am quickly learning how little the general public knows about aviation.
 
This happened today:

Tower: Say altitude and ident

Student: "Altitude and ident"

Commercial student with 200hrs. Pretty Awesome.
 
I use to hear a lot that the reason hypoxia can occur at lower altitudes at night was due to the reduced oxygen in the atmosphere at night.
 
To be fair weve all done things that seem stupid to us now when we first started. First time I flew I asked my instructor what the hell a visual flight roof was.
 
Bandit_Driver said:
I had a student ask about the WOW switch on RG aircraft. He then proceded to ask why we don't place the gear handle in the up position on the ramp to ensure the switch is working.


We used to play a joke on the new line guys and send them down to the flight school mech looking for the following, the occassionally would send a student back.

Strobe Light Fluid
Red and Green Nav Light fluid
Compass Whiskey
Flight Line
Prop wash
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We used to tell the new tower controller how they were using that jet to push start a tug. Knew we had a winner when a couple days later the trainee told another newbie about the fuel being wasted when all they needed were jumper cables!

061212-F-7543R-012.jpg
 
Different instructor had a student on downwind...

"ok, do you see the other airplane yet?"
No response
" hey, do you see that other airplane on final yet?"

Student looks at him and responds
"Sir, my favorite color is blue"

Long pause
"ok, we're done for today"
 
Mike H said:
Does he know the difference between $40/hour and $400/hour? How long do you think it would take him to figure it out?
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Who the hell cares, its about how fast your jet goes, how many people it holds, and how shiny the paint is. Money is just something that's nice to have if it comes along with it. You better get your priorities straight if you wanna make it in the RJ big leagues and have a shot at the coveted E190.

I'm just a private pilot, but I've heard some interesting things from my passengers thus far. A few things that I remember:

Friend: How do you know which one is the runway?(landing at night, on final)
Me: White lights.
Friend: But how do you know that THAT is the runway?
Me: That's actually the freeway, can you hand me the checklist from that pocket and flip to the emergency section*flare*?(He was pretty pissed afterwords, but I thought it was funny).

Me: (make an initial call to the CTAF at HAF as I'm overflying the field finishing a baytour)
Friend: I thought you said they have no control tower.
Me: They don't, I'm just broadcasting that to other traffic.
Friend: Then why do you talk in a secret code?
Me: So that they don't fire the Surface to Air missiles at us.
Friend: ...

Me: (demonstrating a stall) The plane will actually pretty much recover itself.*stalls*(I go to shove the yoke forward)
Friend: (screaming)Wait, why are you touching things, I thought you have to let it recover itself?!
Me: Oh my god...(let go of yoke and let it come out on its own), I almost killed us both, nice catch.

Friend: Can we fly over the Golden Gate bridge?
Me: Yeah I do it all the time.
Friend: Are we allowed to talk to each other while you do it?
Me: No.
(I fly 2 360s around the bridge just to see if he'd talk, he didn't say a word. It was interesting)

Friend: Do you think we can see any naked people on Baker Beach?
Me: We aren't allowed to look at them, since you're looking out a window its considered peeping and park rangers might call in our tail number.
Friend: That's why I hate cops man.

And my favorite:
Friend: So...what if your radio were to go out.
Me: Then I wouldn't be able to use it.
Friend: No, but I mean, we'd get shot down right?
Me: Why would we get shot down?
Friend: Since they might think you're hijacked right?
Me: No, I'd just turn on the smoke system and write "NORDO" in the sky, and the F-16s would break off their attack run.
Other Friend: Yeah, my cousin(his cousin is actually an F-22 test pilot for Lockheed, former USAF F-16 pilot) told me about something like that.

They never remember what I tell them anyway when I try to explain, might as well have some fun with them. :)
 
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