How Many Mates Have You Seen Chopped??
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Obvious
Age: 78
Posts: 301
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Patience and persistence
Flying Pencil
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Precisely my point. I never worried too much about studes demonstrating penultimate airmanship as long as that aspect was developing. I found almost without exception that as long as you persevered, eventually the penny would drop. I could count the number of natural pilots that I trained (or knew) during my career on the fingers of two hands. Most of them were strugglers just like me. I had no natural abilities and got through my Flight Training only because the country was in a war and needed some cannon fodder.... perhaps also because I had a good grounding in X-country competition soaring.
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I had exposure to everything from 18 y.o.'s to remustered navs and AEO's. As long as I could see that they were keen (and most were mustardly, otherwise they wouldn't have been on course), they had my support. Only ever took a dislike to one student and that was because he was a total prat. He ended up with the least patient QFI in my flight and inevitably paid the penalty for his prattitude. I don't hesitate to say that the avuncular big brotherly approach paid off well - and almost without exception. That doesn't mean that I often didn't have to tell it as it was and lay it on the line for the odd sod. Forgot to mention in the earlier post that the weenie who wrote the staff paper was successful in having it adopted as an official Training Command policy. I guess they figured that you can't argue with demonstrated success and high student morale.
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I've known numerous instructors and FTS execs who believed the exact opposite. They normally had little to celebrate, except for slapping each other on the back in congratulatory mode every time they managed to eliminate another potential choppee. That approach always came across to me as the quintessential negative attitude.
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Precisely my point. I never worried too much about studes demonstrating penultimate airmanship as long as that aspect was developing. I found almost without exception that as long as you persevered, eventually the penny would drop. I could count the number of natural pilots that I trained (or knew) during my career on the fingers of two hands. Most of them were strugglers just like me. I had no natural abilities and got through my Flight Training only because the country was in a war and needed some cannon fodder.... perhaps also because I had a good grounding in X-country competition soaring.
.
I had exposure to everything from 18 y.o.'s to remustered navs and AEO's. As long as I could see that they were keen (and most were mustardly, otherwise they wouldn't have been on course), they had my support. Only ever took a dislike to one student and that was because he was a total prat. He ended up with the least patient QFI in my flight and inevitably paid the penalty for his prattitude. I don't hesitate to say that the avuncular big brotherly approach paid off well - and almost without exception. That doesn't mean that I often didn't have to tell it as it was and lay it on the line for the odd sod. Forgot to mention in the earlier post that the weenie who wrote the staff paper was successful in having it adopted as an official Training Command policy. I guess they figured that you can't argue with demonstrated success and high student morale.
.
I've known numerous instructors and FTS execs who believed the exact opposite. They normally had little to celebrate, except for slapping each other on the back in congratulatory mode every time they managed to eliminate another potential choppee. That approach always came across to me as the quintessential negative attitude.
