My main issue is when the ATO throws in multiple unrelated failures and system faults at unlikely times - although skill building, this concept hardly validates training in a logical sense.
I remember my initial instrument rating test for issue of a British ATPL in England which was in a 737. The check pilot was himself being observed by the head honcho of the UK CAA so that he could be approved to conduct instrument ratings in future.
We three sat in this gloomy room in the Gatwick area where the menacing sight of the horror box with 737 stencilled on its side was waiting like a huge white-tailed spider on long hydraulic legs. The pleasantries over, my trainee testing officer read from his prepared script which was:
Captain T.Emm. YOU WILL FAIL this test if you exceed the following tolerances for the ILS approach. Furthermore YOU WILL FAIL this test if you exceed the following tolerances for an NDB approach (reads a long list of tolerances exceedance figures for ILS and NDB.
And YOU WILL FAIL this test if you exceed the following tolerances for steep turns. And so the list of YOU WILL FAIL this test went on and bloody on until I was ready to slit my wrists or walk out of the room into the unemployment queue. Meanwhile the Grey Eminence (actually quite a nice bloke when you got to know him) sat impassively with arms folded listening to the trainee checker going through his official CAA spiel.
Sufficient to say I was lucky and managed to stay within tolerances in the simulator and walked out with the coveted Brit instrument rating (aeroplane). Give me an Aussie testing officer everytime and I feel sorry for those unfortunates that undergo the Gestapo treatment handed out by some Asian testing officers north of Australia.
Better the Devil you know rather than the Devil you don't know, comes to mind
