Flaender,
Yes - sorry - tendancy to ramble. especially when there is a chance to talk about ourselves. The flying is ok but not exactly inspirational. PC9 is a nice enough aircraft and as it only seems to have about 4 moving parts, so not that difficult to maintain. The job is basically pilots course to the Saudi Airforce, shamelessly plagerized from from the RAF, RAAF, CAF and RNZAF. They can't and won't do it themselves so they pay hired guns. I say not inspirational because all the QFI's here have generally come from jobs in their respective airforces around the world, were experienced and reasonably high up in the pecking order. As such, the flying was challenging, exiting and quite at the cutting edge of the instructional world. The freedom and respect was generally commensurate with experience. In this outfit, it is quite the opposite. The flying is completely procedural, repetitive, strickly within the rules (at the cost of your job) and there is no rewards for initiative or lateral thought. In fact, it's positively discouraged - makes the Saudi officers face their own inadequacies. Theoretically we teach visual flying (Aero's, circuits, spins, stalls, etc) Instrument (probably to about commercial level), some reasonably advanced formation, navigation and night flying. That is not to say you don't get glimmers of exitement on a formation mission or a low nav through the desert, but generally it is trying to teach cripples who sometimes have the retention of pond slime. I think it's fair to say that the job and the flying do not rate as a motivation to come here. The positives are great money, lots of family time, time off and travel. The negatives are working for third world control freaks, a halt in your professional development and, as you may have gathered, possible death via a crazed muslim. Most guys seem to last about 5 years before the 'there has got to be more to life than this' aspect of work wears them down. If they have been careful and not followed the investment advice of eachother, you walk away well set up.