hah, I was after his SELRES years, but I have heard that he was actually awesome to go on the road with when he was flying. I'd tend to believe that. If you learned to just make him laugh, all those sims got a whole lot less painful. He was definitely there to teach, but you kind of had to prove to him that his aggressive pressure mindset wasn't getting to you first. Which was a teaching moment in of itself of course. In hindsight, as painful as it was, I'm glad I had that experience of him and some of the other "horsemen". I don't know if they are getting that anymore, which is a shame.
Agreed. I never got to fly with him, though he was a SELRES in my time. Everyone talked about how different he was in the jet than the sim, and the studentry of my time just assumed his sim persona was an act and a training aid that he deliberately put on when needed. But all that aside, in or out of the sim, he was definitely the type of larger-than-life loudmouth who could dominate a room.
I did run into him in my second trip through Meridian sims. They wouldn't let him teach NFO studs, but he had a student he was picking up in the sim building's student ready room while I was waiting on my instructor. He looked right at me, kind of smiled, and said "heard you were back!"
But the first time I rolled into the groove behind Mom, I realized why all the "horsemen" did what they did. They all wanted you to succeed IF you could hack it, and would teach you, but they didn't want to pass someone along who couldn't handle stress.