Interesting thread, as is day in life of- etc – shy’s story reminds me of one similar.
The scene is two company pilots are doing night rating in F/W twin. Nearest civilised airport is quite aways away. Whateryer you doing they say to me why don’tchya come for a run? Orright, I says, thinking these turkeys want me to get night rated too so I can work even longer hours, no way.
Check driver jumps in and away we go. They all take it in turns to have a go, turn the lights on by radio etc riveting stuff.
On the way home check driver is in the proper place and one bright spark says, “Why don’t you have a go, like me, fly home and land there with the flares?”
Bloody bored here so I says, ‘yep.’ Bright spark jumps out of driver’s seat, I jump in - a baron – and away we go.
Something twigged with check driver on descent he says, “You have flown these before eh?”
‘Yep’, I say. Didn’t ask solo did he.
Waffled just a bit on finals, he again says same thing, I says, ‘yep’.
Landed, smoothest one of the night if I do say so, which was surprising as just after touchdown, check man frightens hell out of me and everyone else as all the time I / we’ve been thinking he will take over if I stuff it, when he says, “**** my pedals are folded,” just as he goes to check the brakes.
Of course from the back everyone has been saying yep he’s right, no worries.
Then the penny drops, and check-man asks the right questions, night rated? Nup, baron endorsed? Nup, twin rated? Nup, but I’ll shout the first round if yer like.
A much more frightening scenario was one day when a R22 check pilot turned up with our first R22 and the idea was to check me out in autos. Yep no worries, what’s the drill, it’s bloody hot outside today, bugger all wind.
“Let’s see” says he as he looks at the flight manual, “52 knots all the way down, that’s how to do em.”
I says, ‘are you sure, sounds a bit slow to me?’
Third time down and I’m working overtime and not a happy chappy at all, he’s all talk no do, waving his bloody arms about talking about some bloody moll in kings cross, just then he decides to take over at about thirty feet, totally committed we are and he says, “bloody hell look at this,” at the top of his voice and waves around his collective stick that had just been hanging there, not hooked in properly.
Some time later after he had left I did just a tad more research and went somewhere quieter, cooler and windier by myself to try out some higher airspeeds, bastard.