Originally Posted by
Chronic Snoozer
RAAF Central Flying School used to have a poster in the hallway or kitchen, “The Rules of Muff” or something of that nature. I can’t recall its source. It was presented as a list of commandments for the new QFI. Amongst those I can remember vaguely, were these:
He will learn in spite of you.
Never fly the first circuit.
Always stuck with me, especially the first one.
Anybody remember the full list?
As an aside, the RAAF finally has a simulator in the ab initio phase. No more waiting for an accident to repurpose a cockpit for practicing checks. I imagine the quality of instruction has gone up by degrees through the application of this technology.
He will learn in spite of you.
Never fly the first circuit.
Try as a I may, I fail to see the sense in either of those statements. I will always remember with great regret one of my early students on Tiger Moths. His name was Trainee Pilot Jones and he was on No. 24 Post War Pilots Course at RAAF No.1 Basic Flying Training Course at Uranquinty in New South Wales in 1956. He was a quiet gentleman in every sense of the word. Despite my efforts at trying to train him to fly circuits he always misjudged the turn on to final. His landing were consistently hopeless and there was no way I could take the risk and send him on his first solo.
After about five sessions of circuits and with no success, I reluctantly called in my flight commander and asked if he could fly with the student as I had run out of ideas. The flight commander was a no-nonsense charaacter and in my heart I knew he would scrub my student after a few circuits. And that is exactly what happened. I watched the landings and they varied from huge bounces to impossibly long floats due excessive speed over the fence.
After twenty minutes the flight commander called it a day and taxied in. Leaving the forlorn student behind in the aircraft the flight commander said to me "That man is dangerous I've scrubbed him."
So that quickly put paid to the CFS assertion that
"he will learn in spite of you." As for the second statement,
Never fly the first circuit, I would counter that with " if the student is nervous, try flying the first circuit yourself to relax him."
70 years later, if Trainee Pilot Jones is still around, I would like to say sorry I couldn't help you, but I tried my best