The best trial lesson youve ever given?

[fudgy2000]

Im just interested do you instructors get bored of giving trial lessons to people??? What things do you do during them to make them interesting??? I remember mine was on the controls. I was alittle bored becuase it was a dry subject!!

[Send Clowns]

My best was for a lad (late teens/early 20s) with severe learning disabilities. He threw the aircraft around with a lot more confidence than most. Hard to remember not to say left and right though, as that got a random response :D . Afterwards his carer, who had been in the back, admitted she thought I had underestimated his level of disability when I had been briefing him to actually fly most of the trip. He had a great time.

Not bored yet, the scenery is wonderful around EGHH and the conditions are different every time I go up.

[Aileron Roll]

Trial lessons are usually fun !

We Instructors tend to forget what a big step someone has made just to walk through the door !

We also forget also what a huge event it is to take one's first flight in a small aircraft, and taking the controls for the first time.

Is nice to spend abit of time with the new student afterwards, just to listen to their enthusiasm !........, makes you feel sometimes this Instructing thing aint so bad !

My best Trial Lesson ?

The one in which I meet my wife !

[Whirlybird]

I've been instructing (on helicopters) very part time for less than a year, so haven't had time to get bored...but I don't think I ever will. I LOVE trial lessons. Just being able to put that ear to ear grin on someone's face is fantastic. It also brings back the Wow! factor for me, since you do get a bit jaded over the years, and forget just how great it is to be able to fly a helicopter.

What do I do to make them interesting? I use the briefing to find out a bit about the person. Do they want to know how a helicopter flies, or will talk of lift and yaw and so on just make them feel confused and intimidated? Are they nervous, even terrified, or can't wait to get flying?

When we actually go out to the helicopter, I let them follow me through on the controls from the start, unless they quite obviously don't want to. I talk through take-off, hovering, transition to forward flight and so on. This means that even though they may only get to attempt to fly straight and level - all you can fit in during a half hour trial in a highly unstable machine - they feel (hopefully!) like they've done more.

I think it works - ear to ear grins at the end are fairly universal! But like I said, I'm far from being an expert yet.

[Snigs]

Did one yesterday, once the canopy was down the lady admitted to being nervous about it, “but don’t tell hubby”.

Half hour later, after taking control for most of it, she was so delighted, she said she was definitely coming back for more. The nice thing for me was she said that she would ask for me again!
:D

[Dan Winterland]

I met my wife on a trial flight too. Seems they can be very dangerous!!!!!

[IRRenewal]

70+ year old lady, very nervous, got pushed into the club by her family for a trial lesson for a birthday or something. Never been in (or near) an aircraft in her life. Took a long time to brief and calm down enough to go fly.

Once airborne, at about 300', I look to my left to see how she is doing. I see a tear running down her face. I ask if she is okay. She responds: 'this is so beautiful'.

We stayed up a bit longer than the 20 minutes I was supposed to do.

[mad_jock]

Trial flights are great.

The most memorable was taking a bloke up with terminal cancer.

It was a real struggle getting him comfy and the chest strap was pushing on things I didn't really want to know about. So sod the manual I didn't make him wear the strap. As he said if he died in the plane we would be saving the NHS a fortune in morphine.

Had a brillant hour flight with him round Loch Ness, Glen Affric.

Towards the end he became very tired and said he want to just watch the landing. No probs.

4 weeks later his wife popped by the school with a heap of aviation books for me. The chap had died that week and had left the books to me and had written a card to go with them thanking me for the time and effort and lack of understanding shown about his condition.

He had had told me on the brief that he had terminal cancer, I didn't know what to say so came out with "ok well that won't get you out of doing the takeoff and landing" apperently that was a whole heap better than saying "sorry to hear that".

He had another booking that week she dropped in but unfotunatly he couldn't come. The MacMillian nurse did come though, all she had heard about for the last 4 weeks was flying around the Highlands :D

MJ

[GT]

Nobody ever told me you might end up married after a trial lesson! Thanks for the warning.

GT.

[mad_jock]

GT fecking brillant m8 :D

MJ

[BigEndBob]

Probably done 3-4000 or more trial flights, enjoyed everyone of them, well almost all!
One springs to mind, a chap was envolved in a near miss over Africa aboard airliner, shook him up, hadn't flown for 3-4 years, which was awkward because he worked for the UN.
Bought himself a trial lesson so that he could convince himself it was safe. Really enjoyed himself.
Came back 9 months later with a bottle of wine to say thank you as he done a few airline trips abroad.

This is just one example of what makes being a flying instructor so much fun.

I miss it.

[fireflybob]

Dont know whether I would call it the best trial lesson but certainly one of the most interesting.

The local commercial radio station rang me up to say they were doing research for a programme and did I remember doing a trial lesson with "Fred Bloggs" a couple of years ago. Got the logbook out and yes there he was on the date in question.

After some discussion I suddenly recalled that after the trial lesson I asked the "student" where he had flown before because he was the most natural pilot I had ever taken on a trial lesson. He swore blind that he had NEVER been airborne before much to my consternation.

The man from the radio station then came clean and said there were doing a programme on regressing subjects to previous lives under hypnosis and the student had been a World War II fighter ace in a previous life!!

[Aileron Roll]

FireFlyBob,

I think you win the prize for the best trial flight ! Iv had the odd punter turn up for an intro wearing more Nomex than Tom Cruise did in Top Gun, perhaps these guys were once fighter pilots also, but could never fault their enthuiasm !

[Loony_Pilot]

Have two that were equal..

Young Eagles out of Oxford in 2003... fantastic time taking the kids up

and once doing a trial lesson with an 86yr old lady who had never flown anything before and politely enquired "young man, would u stop tipping the plane over when we go round corners" (this with 5-10degrees of bank in a PA-28...).

LP