...dumb it all down. No more terms like "elevators," or "ailerons." We'll just call them the flippy up and downy things on the ends of the wings.
I had a student years ago who actually used the term "pedal thingys" while having a friendly chat with our local DPE. Uggggggh.
Minor thread derailment that has very little to do with the topic at hand. I think I've already told this story, but what the heck:
This student's father, a USAir pilot, wanted her to get done "over the summer," because Embry Riddle's training department was backed up, and they wanted her to have the private ahead of time. I made it clear that I never make time promises, but we'd make as much progress as we could, and I recommended scheduling at least four times a week.
Oh, boy... She got lost on
both solo cross-country flights I sent her on (she
missed Lake Okeechobee in Florida!), forgot how the VOR worked at the end of every lesson (apparently), and numerous other things (like "pedal thingies") that just told me she wasn't nearly ready. I don't send people to checkrides if they're not ready. The fact that she missed several of our appointments didn't help the ambitious schedule her father had set up in his mind.
She was a good enough stick, but just couldn't divide her attention between flying and everything
else that goes along with being a pilot. (On one of our remedial cross-countries, I watched her keep waiting and waiting for a ground checkpoint that was only 5 miles past the previous one. After
10 minutes of total fixation, looking for a point that was now well behind us, I realized part of the problem.)
So daddy calls me up towards the end of the summer, wondering when the checkride would be scheduled. I was honest: at the rate we were progressing, she was at least another four to six weeks away. He went
ballistic, accused me of "milking her," and cussed me out saying "you promised she'd be done by the end of the summer!"
"Ah, no, I
specifically said I would not commit to a time frame, and for exactly this reason. Some people grasp it quicker than others, and she still has a lot of work to do before she'll be ready."
He hung up on me, and that was the last I heard from either one of them... or so I thought. The day before I'm about to leave for a week's vacation in December, I get a call from her out of the blue: "Hey, I'm in town for the week, and I want to finish up!"
Nothing like calling at the last minute,
right before a holiday, and trying to book a bunch of time. I told her I was going to see my family the next day and would be gone for a week. Obviously she wasn't going to be in town for two weeks, so she asked if there was anyone else available.
Why, yes there is... the jackass instructor in the cubicle next to me, who
never, ever took a single day off the whole time he was there, was more than happy to take her -- and anybody else whose instructor had the day off. :angryfire (I also overheard him telling one of his students, when I got hired at my airline job, that he "didn't consider flying a 1900 a real airline job," and that he was "holding out for a real opportunity." Karma being what she is, he ended up at Mesa -- flying a 1900! There is justice in the world.)
Anyway... he never asked for a briefing on this student or anything from me. He reviewed her logbook, flew with her three times and signed her off for the checkride.
She failed it with aplomb. :0
If there's only one thing in my life that I regret, it's not having a chance to say "I told ya so" to her father. He was like the grown-up version of a soccer dad, screaming at the coach! Kinda sad.
And thus ends my rant for the evening.
imp:
