Stalls

I was scheduled to fly today with a new highly ranked instructor that had arrived at the school. I was concerned when I showed up for the pre flight and noticed I had been bumped to a different instructor whom I had never heard of.

As usual, everything was prepped and ready to go long before the lesson was scheduled to begin. Imagine my annoyance when 15 minutes after the start time "I99" comes out and introduces himself. After he says we're headed up to a briefing room I ask him "what materials do I need?". He quickly responds with "the same material you always need for a briefing". Umm OK then. Between the Flight Training Manual, From the Ground Up, Standard Operating Procedures, Pilot Operating Handbook, Maps, Fuel checkers, E6B, Kneeboard, Extra Package of Gum, and my Headset - there is barely any room for air in my flightbag. So there are some things which I regularly don't carry into the club because they don't ever seem to be required during the briefings. I didn't feel like explaining this to him, so I just grabbed my bag with what I had brought into the club from the car.

In the briefing room - he tells me to open my FTM to a certain page. Then takes it away from me and starts literally reading it word for word out loud to me. I am saved by this in three scenarios - all of which are equally annoying:

First, he asks me about a "number" and I answer it with confidence. "No!" he blurts at me, then follows up with "Where did you learn that?". Of course this was a number that had been relayed to me by my two favorite instructors at the school: I2 and I3.

Second, he stops every 5 minutes and reads his blackberry. Now I'll tell you what - I am a crackberry addict of the Nth degree myself. I check it like mad - however I make a point of NEVER checking it while engaged in a conversation with someone, and never in a meeting except in very special circumstances. Certainly NEVER in a meeting with a client, ESPECIALLY if they are actually paying me for my time.

Third, some other student knocks on the door frame (the doors themselves have all been taken off for painting, my assumption is they are travelling by life raft to the furthest point on the earth from Calgary - how long does it take to paint a door?) and asks if she can interrupt. My first thought is "I hope this is important, I'm paying $60 an hour for this". Turns out it wasn't. It's some other student of his who had a question about something for a lesson they were doing later that day. OMG. This couldn't wait? 5 minutes later - she knocks again and starts whining about the aircraft she was supposed to take had a maintenance issue and looks like it is grounded. So there are no other airplanes available. So what do I do? Then - she asks if she can use the aircraft that HE is scheduled to fly for my lesson. At this point I turn around, look at her and say "are you serious?". So I99 excuses himself and goes outside to speak with her. As there is no door I hear the entire thing. After he somehow manages to convince her she's better off finding the maintenance item on the ground than in the air she leaves. I can't help but wonder if I've just witnessed one of those little things that may have been the difference between life and death for someone.

Finally - I99 takes me out to the aircraft. I'm pretty annoyed at him already. In the aircraft during each phase of flight that he has absolutely no skill what so ever at instruction. He might be a great pilot (I have no clue) but as an instructor he's about as useless as looking up a dead horse's ass. I was very tentative displaying my ability to get the aircraft into slow flight mode. The stall lesson was actually quite brutal. It's obvious that I have some sort of a "fear" of certain attitudes, and he doesn't seem able to recognize that or help correct it. The demonstration of the stall is horrible and when I'm asked to do it I get next to no direction except for loud cuing which are generally useless.

Each time he took control from me he's yank and bank the aircraft all over the place. Then at one point he was trying to show me something about holding off the stall by "dancing on the pedals" which at the time made no sense to me (I told him I had no clue what he was talking about) and we eventually did some very weird roll over where the aircraft was inverted for a short time period. After that I didn't feel well at all. I wasn't sure if it was due to the Sake from the night before, the fact that I went inverted unexpectedly (first time for that), or the fact that his attitude was making me sick - I told him I wasn't feeling well. When he responded with "if you are just a bit sick we can continue" I came back with "I might puke, we should head back" (never a chance I would do that).

The flight back, approach, and landing were actually my best to date - it was almost as if my "non joy" in the aircraft - converted into me being pissed off, had actually raised my level of awareness and concentration above where it usually sits. All I wanted to do was get back on the ground and away from this guy. At the same time - all I wanted to do was show him how well I could fly this aircraft and shove it in his face.

Not the type of flight I was hoping for. I'll have to do stalls from the start again. Also note that there wasn't any sort of reduction on the briefing time. He literally rounded up from the time we spent in the room. I was so pissed off - I didn't feel like arguing over $15.

7.5 Hours and counting...