Instructors!
Back in 1991 or so I was converting from helos to a f/w licence affter a brief spell in the military and time on the N Sea and elsewhere - where Instructors were Gods and everything was done properly and punctiliously.
Out of Lydd in a Seneca to do the twin rating at Le Touquet over two days with a nightstop there. This avoided VAT which was quite significant.
We started the circuits on Saturday afternoon and the cloudbase got lower and lower. And lower. Eventually we were scudrunning at 300ft downwind barely in sight of the field and I was getting very uncomfortable indeed though the FI seemed quite happy. I certainly wasn't but as a Professional pilot I knew better (!) than to question an instructor. By the time we'd flown past the church steeple top I gathered the courage to announce that we were binning it on this one as it wasn't safe to continue. The instructor ridiculed me and asked how the hell I thought we were going to fly the remaining six hours off the following day if we stopped now. Feeling very hot behind the ears and cross that as a stude I'd been forced into such a position I dug my heels in and back to the hotel we went. The FI had a sulky evening.
Next morning we got to the airfield bright and early for a monumental day's flying in bright sunshine. I started the first engine and was about to start the second when I realised the scenery was passing by in the windscreen! We were pirouetting slowly and the instructor seemed unphased. I stomped on the brakes. Well, I didn't, I stomped on the pedals and the pedals stomped on the floor. Faaak! No brakes! I pumped them, they just held. Not to worry, said Mr Skygod FI, we're only doing touch and goes, we don't need brakes...! My mind slowly boggled. Is this really how civvy fixed wing operates? Mixture to cutoff, mags off. Pump brakes and try to trap a bit of pressure with the parking brake. FI went nuts. We haven't time for this! Orrocks we haven't said I. Lets check the fluid. (He'd 'done' the preflight) Natch the reservoir was empty and there was no evident spillage. He became too shy to describe the level when he'd done the preflight or explain where all the fluid had gone in the intervening five minutes. The brake fluid had been all but gone long long before I set foot in that scabby old Seneca, clearly no one ever checked brake fluid at that school.
After a very bad tempered hour we finally found someone to open the line shack and rummage out some hydraulic fluid but it was Mobil, not Shell. Where are the equivalence tables I asked the FI. He didn't have a scooby what I was talking about. I wasn't familiar with the documentation carried but soon found the correct table and explained to the disbelieving FI that such and such Mobil was a direct equivalent of the one in the flight manual. He had never heard of this facility apparently! We topped up but still next to no brakes - they evidently needed bleeding. Well, now that's all over we'd better get on with what's left of the day's flying he said, triumphantly. Correct, said I. But first call your office and thell them to have the other Seneca fueled and ready at Lydd in 45 minutes time. The look on his face was a picture. You! You! Er...You can't! Bloodywell can and bloodywell am I told him. And what's more I am not paying for the transit time. Mindful that his signature was in the tech log I told him that there's enough runway to stop on there if you tell me there's enough here so it must be OK. But I'm not doing more than one landing in this thing. He very crossly went and made the call.
Pumping the brakes as the engines started we set off for Lydd. I wasn't taking any chances and told Lydd we had a partial brake failure - partly to cover my own arse and partly to let this idiot and his boss's dirty laundry hang out in public. He was furious. "What the **** did you do that for?" he cried as the red wagons rolled out ahead of us. We did stop, a long way down the runway and took the spare a/c back to LFAT whre we completed the twin rating, but not before noticing that the AI on this aircraft was showing a flag though appaently working OK. The other one had had a u/s turn and bank.
.Why does one continue in such circumstances when it's clearly time to walk? The inconvenience of losing a booking and waiting 6 months before I had enough leave to do the IR somewhere else? Probably.
Monday morning, the CFI briefed me for a first Seneca IR training sortie and outside we went. To find a u/s T&B. I called foul. After some time they said they'd got someone to fix it at Headcorn where one of their singles was also waiting to be returned to Lydd, we'd do an hour's IR training en route to Headcorn and return in the single. Apparently the t&b wasn't really necessary for the early lessons.
I flew around Kent for an hour getting the hang of things (I wasn't used to T&Bs anyway, being ex helo so in reality it's absence wasn't important at the time). Time for a descnt through cloud to Headcorn. The CFI explained that they had a procedure using the VOR and DME to acheive this and talked me through it. I felt uncomfortable but again assumed the chief Instructor must be of a different metal from the weekend's boy-wonder and evidenty this was how the f/w world did things. Well, we broke cloud about 800ft agl over the hills quite close to Canterbury, nowhere near Headcorn. Even the CFI looked a bit shaken. Me, I was in a cold sweat. I don't recall if we did fly the single back, I've an idea it wasn't ready and we had to be fetched by car.
On return they insisted I wrote a cheque for the balance of the B rating (it was half in advance, half on completion, something like that) and the first hour's IR training and went off with the papework to the Belgrano to get the B rating established on my licence and had time to think in the car. They hadn't even credited me with the wasted transit time arguing it was still valid twin-training time! By the time I left Gatwick I had it clear in my mind. Clearly some fixed-wing operated to a completely different standard to what I was used to and I was going to have to find a proper training organisation no matter what the inconvenience.
In view of what had happened over those three days I wrote a letter to the CFI describing my experience and informed him that if I heard the least quibble from him I'd immediately post a copy to the CAA and by the way, don't bother to cash that cheque, it's been stopped.
Of course I did discover that not all f/w training worked like that, the next one (Bristol Flight Centre) was exemplary.
But I did wonder if my first (scheduled, G registered) airline wasn't run by the refugees from that dreadful outfit at Lydd which thankfully closed down soon after my time there. I had to walk from that job after 3 months.
But that's quite another story.
ILAFFT
Last edited by meleagertoo; 10th Mar 2019 at 12:57.