To all CFI's: Stupidest student questions.

TFaudree_ERAU said:
If he actually understood that the system wouldn't exceed max differential regardless of controller setting, then he had a good point.
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True but I prefer not to fly a 30+ year aircraft next to max differential. Especially when we had an explosive decompression a few years back.
 
It wasn't me personally, it was our company. But the windows apparently iced up and the cabin filled with vapor making it look like smoke.
 
hambone said:
Seriously, beat that.
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Well.. You asked for it..

I'm taking a student to a checkride and we're cruising along and I had brought my breakfast with me. A muffin and a lil' jug of milk. I eat them, and I was looking for somewhere to stash the leftovers when the student looked at me and said "Here give them to me, I'll throw them out the DV window.." and I looked at him and said "Nah man, we better not do that, we don't want to pollute the clouds.." and he was like "yeh, true. I've always wondered if really light weight stuff would get stuck on them."

Kid was 100% dead serious.
 
I was giving a flight review to a CFI in a piper archer, and she decided to show me how awesome she was at instructing by teaching about everything she was looking at during her preflight. She obviously had a wealth of knowledge that needed to be passed on to me. As she came to the nose she pointed out the "nose wheel brake," which I had never heard before. That little piece of black rubber on the scissor that rests on the strut when fully extended is what she thought was a brake. I asked her how it worked, and she said it rubs on the strut to slow it down. I asked her if the strut had anything to do with the rotation of the tire, and she said that the strut spins the tire. So I asked her where the brake line was, because obviously if it's a brake there must be fluid running to it from somewhere. She couldn't remember the routing for the brake fluid, but it got there some how. So I said "oh, interesting. It's actually just a rubber pad for the strut while it's fully extended in flight." There was no response. Awesome start to one of the worst flight reviews I've ever experienced. Took 3 flights over the course of two weeks, and 2 ground sessions.
 
nosehair said:
First day in the Army Aviator Fixed-Wing Course, doing a walk-around pre-flight with a student, on a Cessna L-19 Birddog.
(basic airframe of a Cessna 180)
After walking around the tail, I'm leading him up the side of the fuselage towards the cockpit door (under the wing), and he walks straight-up into the trailing edge of the flap. Smacked him straight across the forehead right between the hairline and eyebrows. Didn't cut, but made a sharp red line.
I stepped out, crouched down under the wing, and asked him, "Did you hurt it?" (looking intently at the possible cut)

He stepped back, looked intently at the trailing edge of the flap, reached up and squeezed it between his fingers, and said, "No, I don't think so, Sir."
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As a CFI with a student, I did that to myself. I was walking towards the aircraft looking in my (empty) wallet, looked up and "bam!" Still have the scar. If anybody want's to know how high the trailing edge of retracted traps are on a C-172, I just point to my nose.


sigh.

On a larger point, its not just students who make the gaffs. Maybe somebody could start a "stupid things my CFI said" thread .
 
Rumpel said:
The following is not really stupid, but it was hilarious. I was conducting the first brief with a PPL student from Europe. Her name was Titziana.
Me: "How do I pronounce your name?"
Her: "Teet-zee-ah-na. But you can call me Teets"
Me: I'm not calling you that.
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"Teets, I am Pepe, Your CFI! Lets consider monocoque...."
 
Pay2 said:
I was giving a flight review to a CFI in a piper archer, and she decided to show me how awesome she was at instructing by teaching about everything she was looking at during her preflight. She obviously had a wealth of knowledge that needed to be passed on to me. As she came to the nose she pointed out the "nose wheel brake," which I had never heard before. That little piece of black rubber on the scissor that rests on the strut when fully extended is what she thought was a brake. I asked her how it worked, and she said it rubs on the strut to slow it down. I asked her if the strut had anything to do with the rotation of the tire, and she said that the strut spins the tire. So I asked her where the brake line was, because obviously if it's a brake there must be fluid running to it from somewhere. She couldn't remember the routing for the brake fluid, but it got there some how. So I said "oh, interesting. It's actually just a rubber pad for the strut while it's fully extended in flight." There was no response. Awesome start to one of the worst flight reviews I've ever experienced. Took 3 flights over the course of two weeks, and 2 ground sessions.
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Where did she train? I don't ever want to set foot in that place.
 
Didn't someone have a story in which the student explained that VORs work using laser beams? I remember something like that from a thread a couple years ago. After I read that, I asked each of my students to explain how VORs work in the hopes that I could get something similar, but nothing ever topped laser beams.
 
beasly said:
As a CFI with a student, I did that to myself. I was walking towards the aircraft looking in my (empty) wallet, looked up and "bam!" Still have the scar. If anybody want's to know how high the trailing edge of retracted traps are on a C-172, I just point to my nose.


sigh.


On a larger point, its not just students who make the gaffs. Maybe somebody could start a "stupid things my CFI said" thread .
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I'm guilty of that too, had that happen during a preflight at around midnight. My friend started laughing, then showed his head where he had done it the night before. My other friend said "Yeah, it happens to me all the time" He was just a tad north of 5 ft, so the other guy looked at him and said "did you jump into it?"

Made him so angry that I didn't have an aft CG on that flight
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
Didn't someone have a story in which the student explained that VORs work using laser beams? I remember something like that from a thread a couple years ago. After I read that, I asked each of my students to explain how VORs work in the hopes that I could get something similar, but nothing ever topped laser beams.
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Yeah, I remember a student teaching me that we used infrared beams like on remote controls that go out on radials and that's how we know where we are. This was during a checkride, and I listened intently as he had a reason for cone of confusion and zone of ambiguity. Well thought out, just wrong. We paused, had him verify in the book and move on. NDB was spot on and so was ILS. So he read out of the book and we got by it. Nothing more than embarrassment and a reminder that studying makes you a better pilot, not just a busier one.

I don't really have any favorite stupid student questions. Most questions are out of left field but makes sense in the students mind. One that I remember was:

Why does gravity bring the gear up?

He was thinking that hydraulics bring the gear down, so therefore the flipside of it was that gravity brought them up. 5 minutes of him talking brought us to why gravity would bring the gear down if we were inverted. Yeah, that was a twix break moment and when we came back he seemed to have thought through it better.
 
I was flying the Challenger with an umpteen-thousand hour (as in at least 10,000...I think) type rated pilot a few days ago. We were cruising along in the vicinity of some storms. I had the radar tilted 2 degrees down. He started thinking out loud and said "so if we're 3 degrees nose up, and the radar is 2 down, that means the radar is looking a degree above the horizon."

I reminded him that the radar in this highly advanced space ship was stabilized. He spent the next 5 minutes in a state of confusion.
 
beasly said:
As a CFI with a student, I did that to myself. I was walking towards the aircraft looking in my (empty) wallet, looked up and "bam!" Still have the scar. If anybody want's to know how high the trailing edge of retracted traps are on a C-172, I just point to my nose.


sigh.

On a larger point, its not just students who make the gaffs. Maybe somebody could start a "stupid things my CFI said" thread .
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When I was getting ready for my commercial ride...I had an instructor tell me that "holding out" meant that you are not allowed to "hold out" for more money or better pay.
 
Had this conversation with another student:
Me: If lift is generated by greater pressure under the wing because of the shape of the wing, then how can planes fly upside down?
Student: (thinking hard) Uhhh... because when a plane is upside down the force of weight is inverted too and acts upward. Lift is inverted too, but since theres no lift being generated theres no downward force acting on the plane.
Me: ....Fascinating.

Gravity inversion was definitely not on the list of reasons I was thinking about. Im pretty sure he was 100% serious.
 
born2aviate said:
I had an instructor tell me that "holding out" meant that you are not allowed to "hold out" for more money or better pay.
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Well this totally explains the degradation of the airlines. Pilots believe it is illegal for them to be paid what they are worth.. I get it now..
 
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