Instructor pranks

[dingducky]

have you ever played any pranks on your students?
i had an instructor who sent another student to do a solo flight
the student was in the aircraft getting ready to go when he noticed that the control column was moving
he wondered what he had done wrong
until he looked out and saw his instructor out playing with the aileron

[BEagle]

Many years ago, on our UAS we had a QFI who was rather small. Downstairs, the AEF sausage-machine was in full swing flying various space cadets in the back seats of Chipmunks; the pilots were either quite senior RAF officers on ground tours, or airliner drivers seeking temporary escape from boredom. This was too good an opportunity to miss, so our QFI friend borrowed a space cadet uniform, put on the too-big helmet and did the well-known duck waddle out for his back seat ride. When asked "What do you want to do, kid?", he replied "Can I have a go sir, please sir, please??" So the unsuspecting pilot invited him to 'follow me through', whereupon our friend moved the control column just sufficiently forward to start a sure but steady dive towards the ground and then froze the control column using all his strength. The speed went up, the pilot's voice became higher and higher in pitch until he finally came out with "JUST MOVE THE STICK BACK WILL YOU, YOU LITTLE $OD!!". Whereupon there followed an immaculate Porteous loop followed by a stall turn left. All went deathly quiet, the pilot somehow loosened his straps and looked behind to see a happily grinning little face!

[ 07 October 2001: Message edited by: BEagle ]

[DB6]

Not really on students but at the last place I worked the instructors taught the bosses wife to fly in secret. The first thing he knew about it was when she spoke on the radio during her first solo.

[Charlie Foxtrot India]

You go out to the aircraft when they've just done the pre-flight on their own for the first time, and ask them if they checked the water in the radiator.

Or you can give them a fright by REALLY meeting them at the aircraft in ten minutes, instead of the usual thirty...

And ask them to go into the hangar and ask the engineers for a long weight, left handed screwdrivers, half a pound of mag drops etc etc etc

[Cardinal Puff]

Heard a somewhat apocryphal story.

In the dim and distant past when the SAAF still used Harvard (T-6) trainers the instructors used to unscrew the stick and drop it over the side when they considered a student ready for solo. One bloke had a spare stick hidden in the cockpit around the time he thought he might go solo and when the instructor jettisoned his stick the student quickly threw his spare over the side as well. Apparently he had quite a job talking the instructor out of bailing out.

(Edited because this fershlugginer machine which is soon to end up against a wall with a blindfold and a cigarette is stuffing me around.)

[ 08 October 2001: Message edited by: Cardinal Puff ]