My Instructor

[6643]

7306 » Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:17 pm

Thanks for posting this. I got my CFI at the tender age of 23. (I knew everything at that age...I'm still wondering what happened to all that knowledge, it seems like the older I get the less I know.)

One thing I wish I would have learned as part of getting my CFI is the difference between being an instructor and a mentor. I have been an instructor to quite a few students, but I haven't really been a mentor to very many. I think that's something I need to change.

[6643]

NC76220 » Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:29 am

There was an old crusty WWII pilot at New Bedford when I was taking flying lessons. His name was Dave He had been an instructor during WWII and pilots would come to him frequently for check rides in B-17's. B-25's Etc. This provided a great back drop to an afternoon, mixing it up in the pattern with them.

Dave was also the guy who gave us normal private pilot types our check ride. Tough as nails. Everyone feared a ride with him. He was always decent to me, as I was a tailwheel pilot. When It was my turn, I was really ready for him. Flying a series of turns, he reached out and tapped the altimeter. "thought (dirty word string)was broken. Since it has not moved at all in these turns" he never said much but that I passed, I heard later he told my instructor "That was the best check ride I have had this year" which meant a lot to me.

He used to come by my hanger and fondly pat my 140, that I had just finished restoring. He kept saying "if you ever want to sell that.. " He told how he instructed in them when they were new, and he wished he still had one.

I will never forget him making his B-17 check rides do power on stalls out over Buzzards Bay. His other trick was to wait until his latest check ride was on short final, and then shout at them as soon as they touched down " go around. there is a (bad words) deer on the runway. Most of us knew this was coming, and watching the B-17 stagger back into the air was always the best entertainment of the afternoon.

Dave is gone now too.

I want to be the last guy to fly across the USA with no radio

[6643]

Flynlow » Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:32 am

I know exactly how much that meant to you. Anyone else complimenting my flying, thank... Chuck saying something nice, it was so much more important!

I may have mentioned another thing Chuck said to me before. Anyone who's been around me at a fly-in has probably heard it (Vic has probably heard it several times!). He told me if I ever had the perfect flight, the one where I could do nothing better, nothing to improve, to give him back his keys to his hangar and never fly his plane again! The point was, you should learn from every flight and if you don't, you're dangerous. There's always something you could have done better.

"That was the best check ride I have had this year" which meant a lot to me.

Jack Fleetwood
1946 Cessna 140
http://flynlow.blogspot.com/
Round Rock, TX

[6643]

MBDiagMan » Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:22 am

Jack,

I do remember you posting that before, but I enjoyed every bit as much this time around. Please post it EVERY April, but probably not on the first.

Thanks!
Doc
Keepin' the nose out front!

N2414V
'48 C-140
O-200A
"Miss Piggy"

[5469]

Hello,

Thanks very much for sharing this wonderful and so well written story.
I have also been touched and my heart flew back to NDolo, Congo, where I did my first steps with Jacques Dorin.

Perhaps John Kliewer, that flew in Congo, remembers Jacques.

I will try to write and remember that time, and bring back at least a small souvenir for Jacques. Not easy with my little english...

I appreciated very much the reading and the contents of all subsequent comments.

Thanks a lot !!!
Horacio
C140 LV-NGL
La Criolla, Argentina

[V529]

There were/are some real gems back through the old posts I'm glad John resurrected this one. We all had a "Chuck"...........I had two........ "Norm" and an "Irv", they fly with me always..........

A classic Norm saying.........he asks..."So you're a mechanic?"
Me "yes............"
Norm, "you should remove the rudder peddles, because you're not using them".

A classic Irv saying..........

"If you try that stupid stunt again, I'm gonna open the door and leave you here(as we're flying) and then I'm gonna take you out of my will!"
(Irv was my uncle)

[1307]

John C, thanks for reposting Jack's story. First time I've seen it, and memories of my primary instructor came flooding back. I was taught to fly while in the USAF, at the RAF Woodbridge Aero Club, in England. As a Staff Sergeant making $425 a month, (before tax and SS deductions), with a wife and son to support, flying more than 3-4 times a month was difficult. Even with rental of $7 an hour for the C-150, and $3 for the CFI, plus the crappy English weather, it took 22 months before I passed the Private check ride. Mr. Colin Edwards was my instructor. He was definitely old school. He soloed in a Tiger Moth, and went to Spartan in Oklahoma to get his CFI. Had me fly with my shoes off so I could "feel the rudder pedal movement". He was a gruff, panel pounding, foul mouth CFI, but he knew his stuff. "You SOB Holzer, you're going to kill us both if you keep effin that up". But he soloed me with 7.0 hours at Ipswich Airport. (Gone now, it's a housing estate). Ipswich had two X shaped grass runways,with a control tower. Go figure, only the Brits would do that, lol. He liked to be called Edwards. Hated the name Colin. He taught me more about the basics of flying than all the CFIs I've had in the past 50 year. He owned a Piper PA-16 Clipper with a 150 hp Lycoming on it, G-BUGG registration. Soloed me in that, and I was the only one of his students that he let fly it. That was in 1970. He's in his 80s, and still flying, but the Aero Club is long gone, as is RAF Woodbridge. He keeps his J-3 Cub, and a T-6 Harvard at John Wright's farm strip, which is called Monewden, on the British sectional. He also maintains his CFI with visits to Miami, FL for refresher courses.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/monewdenair ... e_internal

https://www.facebook.com/monewdenairfie ... =2&theater