Thanks for the view from the left side AerBabe and Whirlybird. Having never been female myself either it really does help having some actual feedback. And no the first one who left was a guy
, the second one I couldn't get in touch with (please excuse the terrible humour but I've been in moderate turbulence for 4 hours this afternoon) was female, short blonde and curvy
, and the second female who I sent solo after about 4 hours was just not in the race but good fun to fly with
.
Anyway, moving on....thankyou AerBabe for reminding me about the hypersensitivity early on in a student's training. And I can't stand it when people put their arm behind me! It always makes me flinch because my brother used to do that just before he whacked me on the back of the head on long car trips. One of the instructors who took me through my instructor's rating in a C152 used to do it and I told him to stop it so he put both of his arms in front. With him and me there neither of us could breathe properly or move the inside arm sideways! So sometimes it is necessary, but not with me thankfully unless there's a pretty big person in the seat next to me. And now I'm teaching in Tomahawks I realise the value of the extra few inches across the cockpit. It's just that bit where the ELBA and trim wheel are makes all the difference in the ambience in the cabin - there's room to spread a map out a bit more.
And Arm out the window, that gets a bit cold after a while!
And on the Cessnas or Grummans if the students hand completely covers the throttle button there's not many other ways of doing the same thing if you need a bit of power to prevent a heavy landing. On the Piper series agreed, you can move the lever to help out or simulate EFATO or FLWOP.