Old Habits Die Hard
This thread is bringing back many happy memories to me and it really shows that we wing flingers end up as brotherhood because of these experiences and challenges that many of us shared when learning to fly.
Throughout my time flying, I always returned to my ab initio instructor to do my annual check ride, in the Enstrom, despite the fact that our company had our own DE where I could have used a variety of machines that we owned to do the renewal. It just felt good to me to be back flying with him and I always looked forward to it.
He and I would go out and do advanced safety training with the Enstrom which many know is built like a sherman tank and it can absorb quite a bit of abuse because of the ruggedness of its skids. He had thousands of hours on the machine and he would teach me several ways of doing emergency procedures tin ways that were not described in the manual. Many of the maneuvers required the ability to wind the throttle on and off, sometimes quite abruptly, in order to put the machine down under control.
The Enstrom also ,mainly because of its sluggishness and stability ,was also a fantastic machine on which to learn how to learn vertical referencing and slinging. Even when flying turbines I preferred to add a bit of friction to the cyclic to try and emulate the stick feel of the Enstrom.