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Best and worst experiences with flight instructors

Had a stud try to ORM out of a flight because he cut his lip and it wouldn't stop bleeding.

I wish I was kidding.
 
It's not a flight school related event, but we had a student call and say he was going to miss class because he ran over the family cat and had to deal with that issue first.
 
I have got a ton of these but I'll say this. This thread has value. Every good and bad story you hear about an IP is something that person took away and will either try to emulate or avoid. Every person you fly with adds to you. I have stuff I do now because the IP was a good teacher and I want(ed) to be like him/her. I also don't want to be like some of the assholes I have flown with...so I avoid what they did wrong in my eyes.

Back to the IP/SNA sea stories...
 
Great IP's: The ones that nobody wanted to fly with- either they were assholes, nitpicky or just plain smart and dug deep with questions. Or the IP that was hands off and let me make my own mistakes. Usually I didn't make them again. Either way, those were the guys that I learned the most from.

Bad IP's: One comes to mind-a particularly pissed off all the time E-3 pilot at Vance. He gave me my only failure during primary for something very minuscule. Either he didn't like me because I was the only Marine in the class, or he was still pissed that he was an E-3 pilot.
 
As a brand spanking new instructor my very first student froze on the controls during a spin. Big guy, ex-football player and his knee was locked. After what seemed an eternity and much fire and brimstone from the rear cockpit (i.e. me) his knee finally buckled enough to allow me kicking with all my might to gain control of the rudders.

I had a student pull the mixture control aft thereby securing the engine at about 350 feet on takeoff. He was an experienced student with whom I had flown with a while and I made the stupid mistake of removing my left hand from the throttle quadrant to yawn and stretch. He picked that very moment to make his move. He had no idea why, he wasn't supposed to be doing anything but climbing straight ahead.

After a very long day of flying my last student of the day was taxiing back to the line. As we got close to parked aircraft the nose of the aircraft swerved suddenly and violently toward the parked aircraft, then before I could react he straightened back to the taxiway. He told me then that he had seen a lizard crossing the taxiway and he tried to run over it with the nose wheel.

I am 68 next month and my hair is almost all white. No wonder. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
 
The worst? Probably that time I almost killed my poor AF primary instructor. Good dude too, but he said since I made him almost poop his pants I was going to have to redo the ride. Oops. I'll accept that.

Best? Going on the road with a very chill instructor out through the mountains on a 3 day XC out to Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. I remember learning a ton once I got outside the protective bubble of Vance AFB. The guy was an AF reservist with beaucoup Airline time, so taking a T-6 into busy class B (blew my mind) wasn't no thang. He let me rip it through the rockies on a mostly VFR leg from Grand Junction to Salt Lake. Still my all time favorite flight.
 
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