Civilian Time

[jumppilot]

Any civilian pilots who turned military ever have any funny experiences regarding flight time?

A buddy called me a couple days ago who used to fly for an airline, and he had an instructor try to scare him (he is in UPT), but had no idea my buddy had over 4000 hours...

 

[weekendwarrior]

Similary story. Starting primary, I kept putting pedal into my turns. After about 5 minutes, the IP said, "You are a fixed wing pilot". Got on the ground, he said, "Let me see your ticket".

He just kind of laughed when he saw comm/multi/inst. Needless to stay, it still took me 10 hours to hover the darn thing.

Instruments came around. I told myself I wanted to learn the Army way. The new IP said, "you seem to get this pretty well, do you have some experience?" Crap, he found me out.

It really wasn't a source for problems. I had great IP's in flight school. They still taught me as if I had no flight experience (which is how I wanted it anyway)

 

[pilotyip]

I had soloed and had about 20 hrs of flight time in 1966, prior to starting Navy flight training in the T-34B. I fly my first landing, I thought I made a great landing, on-speed approach, nice flare, soft touchdown. My IP proceeded to give me holy hell. "You GD civilians pilots FU landings every time you touch the airplane, you every land like that again I will wrap my knee board around your head, make Navy landings, no pxssy flares, just drive it on to the deck". I never made another flare in a landing until I started flying the P-3 in 1968.

 

[Purpledog]

After instructing in the training command for 4 years I can tell you that our worst students were ones that had prior time. Trying to untrain someone is harder than intitially training them. That said, my best student had about 1000hrs and my very worst, had the same. One of them was allowed to transition from the Marines (since he didn't make the Marine min) to the Nav to fly P-3s or 130s.
Kinder gentler Nav I guess.

 

[ChichiAV8B]

I was also an IP in the training command and a prior civilian pilot before joining the Marines. Flight time is an asset to those who are flexible and trainable. Some students with prior flight time do better until they get to intermidiate phase (jet). In the advanced phase, everyone seemed to catch up quickly and even some of the prior flight time guys don't end up at the top. A lot of tactical flying at the later stages seem to level things out.


Some prior flight time students get in trouble arguing with IPs on how to do stuff..Got to play the game I guess.

 

[AlbieF15]

Most AF types will tell you in helps in Tweets, but by the time you get to 38s its anyones game.

That was my story, anyway...

 

[Fury220]

Yeah, I don't see how prior time could possibly help you in the '38. First, it moves faster than probably anything flown in the civilian world (particularly during instrument flying, when you're barrelling at the FAF at 200+KIAS). Second, the real meat (sts) of the '38 phase is all formation. Pretty much NO ONE has seen that before. You can't practice tac turns in a C-172...



...well, I guess you could. You'd also have to refer to the dork aviation thread, though.

 

[dustydog]

I'm a USN primary IP who came from helos. From my experience the best SNA's that I've had only had 150-300hrs total. C172 time doesn't equate to squat in military flight training. The more time they had only means that it will take longer to fix their landing pattern. Trying to "scare" a stud screams of unprofessionalism in my opinion. They do more to scare me than I can ever do to them. They think a skidded turn stall is a cool maneuver.

 

[dustydog]

Thats because I'm married and have nothing better to do but drink and post on a Saturday night. Meridian must be really slow. Good to see nothing has changed in the past 8 years.

Dusty Dog

 

[dustydog]

Oh the price we pay to fly something with a pointy nose. We actually had a mock pointy nose so that the handler would give us priority on respots. It didn't work.