Instructors - any favourite "bon mots" ?
 

Doesn't have to be a QFI of course, any old salt with words of wisdom to trainees will do.

A couple of my favourites:

"Why are you rushing your landing, the ground isn't going anywhere".
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Trainee - "I see we are on a weather hold sir, perhaps I could take you to lunch"

Instructor - "You don't know enough to take me to lunch"
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Instructor in tower to student pilot on first solo - "there is an aircraft on the runway, go around."

Student - "Roger" (continues approach)

Instructor - "Repeat, there is an aircraft on the runway GO AROUND"

Student - "Roger" (student lands, taxis up to a big twin sitting on the runway, and goes around it)

Some of those may be apocryphal, but you get the idea.

(in hindsight maybe this should be in Jet Blast - apologies)

Student Cessna pilot stops at runway intersection after an especially bouncy
landing and requests permission to cross the runway; tower replies "Garn, you can jump it!"

Written in a student's report after circuits: "He stalks the centreline with all the skill and cunning of a Canadian fur-trapper."

RAF QFI reporting on his Jet Provost student: "By pressing the engine start button, Bloggs sets in motion a sequence of events over which he has little control".

I have two remarks that solved problems instantaneously .
1. After learning initially on American Yokes,being very ham fisted on a Chipmunk control column." Think of the stick as rigid Haraka,and just apply pressure to it".
2. Years later making a total "horlicks" slamming airbrakes in and out on a glider on approach . "FFS Haraka treat them like a throttle!"

And one I will never forget:
Doing a solo EFATO practice, with Ken Wallis generally offering suggestions and looking on, with an Autogiro which terminated from 100 ft with what can, euphemistically, perhaps be best described as a very heavy landing.
Whilst unstrapping, switching everything off ,checking that I hadn't broken my back and rapidly preparing to vacate the premises, I was aware of KHW standing alongside.

"Terribly sorry old boy, I do appear to have dropped you in at the deep end a bit there".

After repeated attempts by a Controller to get a student pilot away from CAS 'Exam 45 adopt the callsign Failed 45 now in Controlled Airspace'.

Bloggs, when we apply full forward on the Jet Provost control column, why are the brakes applied?
"No idea Sir."
Well Bloggs, your leg restraints should be behind the column not in front.:=

Instructor, "That is Don Bullock, don't ever fly with him".

Student, (Thinks, I never take any notice of people who bad mouth other people but...), "Yea, OK".

"OVERSHOOT" ... he said it so often it's lodged in my memory.

A Scottish QHI on the RAF Sea King Conversion Unit - 'Did we land......or were we shot down?'

Ex Jag mate QFI to me on flapless approach to Linton -

'Can you feel that vibration mate?'

Me - 'Yes'

QFI - 'Well put the f**king nose down, it's the stall'

Very good advice. At one air display I was put in fear for my life by someone of that name - even though we (myself, my wife and her parents) were on the ground at the time. :mad:

A harassed fellow instructor said his 'overseas' student showed all the smooth control of a copulating ferret.

From my ex hurribomber instructor who left a wing tip on a tree stump.
 

ACE if bull**** was a trombone you would be a full brass band

When I asked paddles how to improve my carrier landing grades:

LSO Answer: ‘Just fly a centred ball on speed on centreline all the way to touchdown.’

Not quite a QFI, but:

Leeming 1966.
JP at 9500ft - Leeming radar: Old pilot on ground tour.

JP: Leeming, JP FL950 request descent.
ATC: Roger JP, fire retro rockets now. Splashdown will be in Osmotherly reservoir.

Vale of York, late 80s in a JP3. Creamie QFI to me "Why can't you f£&@ing do that; are you some kind of spaz?" Hats off to your professionalism; you really earned your 'sir'.

Stude: "What's it like, Sir, this night flying ?

QFI: "Much like day, Bloggs, except that the air's smoother, and you'll find the controls a lot heavier"

Stude: "Why is that, Sir ?"

QFI: "Because I've damn well got hold of them !"

(no, I was never a QFI)

Gnat, Valley, turning finals, wind blowing me towards the runway so tighten turn. Aircraft descending like one of Messrs Otis's finest. Me fresh out of ideas when voice in my ears says through gritted teeth "I have control". Man in the boot rolls wings level and pulls out of descent fairly near the ground. As we climb away, "If you had been on your own you would be f***ing well dead". Lesson well and truly learned and thank you Vic W for the subsequent 51 years

When teaching a student to hover a helicopter and trying to relax on the cyclic - "imagine you're a Duchess holding a tramp's cock"

Look, I can do it, the aircraft can do it, why can't you do it?

Arab Cunning
 

It took us a long time to get a Prince solo. Afterwards: "Well R***d we finally made it". "Thank you sir; it would take you twice as long to solo on my camel!"

Good advice from drawling South Carolinan to get me to relax:

"Wiggle your piggies, son !"

Thanks, Bob Greer. - I'd never have made it but for you, if there's a bar on the Other Side, I owe you one.

"Can you see the airfield down on your left Bloggs"...pause..."No, the other Left Bloggs"

Saudi trainee pilot making a mess of short finals, lets go of the controls and wails 'all is in the hands Allah'. Voice from the back mutters ' no it's not, it's f***ng well in mine!

That's not the same prince who, having spread an aeroplane all over the airfield, was found sitting in the Ante Room denying that he was anywhere near it?

F.E.D. That incident happened on Provosts IIRC. ( N.B not J.P.s)
Around that time another middle-eastern country, which will be nameless, had pilots attending more advanced training during which an instructor was overheard advising a student that on first seeing enemy fighters it was a good idea to "fly straight and level for a bit" until he was sure of what was going on.
Taken aside quietly he then explained:

" Think about it. It's highly likely we will up against these b*ggers in a couple of years time"........

FED Happened at Little Rissington, I believe and might well have been the same student

And at Fenton.


Sounds like one of those apocryphal tales.

Trying to instill smoothness into instrument flying.

'Always imagine you have the Queen Mum down the back and you don't want to spill her G and T'

From when I was a student:

There'd been some hard landings over the previous two months in our training squadron. A few birds were sent to the depot to get unbent / skin patched. At the quarterly safety stand down, one of the students stood up and asked "What can we do to prevent these hard landings?"
From the back my night flying instructor (I recognized his voice) drawled out ...
"Flare!"
The room broke up, and even the XO was stifling the laughter.


One from my IP days:
Me to student: "Pulling the nose up on short final won't make you go higher, nor get back on profile. It will make you go slower and fall faster. When low, lead with power."
Student to me: "Won't that make me go faster?"
Me to student: "We'll live longer dealing with having more airspeed than with having too little."
Student: "But I've been having trouble with floating."
Me: "No approach is too bad, nor too good, to wave off. When you make a decision to wave off, it is not counted against you. I count it in your favor that you used your head, and we get to try again."
Student: "Oh, I thought a wave off meant I failed the landing."
My jaw about drops. (Where the hell did he hear that?)
Me: "You fail the landing if you hit the ground wrong, or you stall and we crash."
I pause.
"Let's go and do some high work, and we'll come back to the landing pattern in a bit."
We left the pattern.
-------------------------------------------------
I asked around the other IPs for the next few days trying to find out where he would have heard that about failing the landing, and which IP was putting that word out? Had a long talk with the Standardization Officer. I was both puzzled and worried.
Nobody was teaching this. Apparently, this was one of those rumors running around among some of the students, who were always trying to figure out how to get the best scores on each flight .... yikes! Memo went out from the Standardization Officer to all flight leaders to do a bit of rumor control.

Duty instructor (DI) at Linton, must have been 1975, sitting in the tower reading the porn, when an R/T call on tower says;

‘C33 (odd number call sign so a student) Calling DI stud 8 for flame out!’

I immediately inform the ATC assistant to call the powers that be, and pick up the headset.

‘Where are you C33, what is your position?’

‘C33 is taxing in. The engine went out doing aeros 20 mins ago. I did the standard relight and it started so I finished my sortie. What I want to know sir, is should I put the aeroplane U/S?’

At this point the Station Master and the C/I are just arriving at the tower ……

Lonewolf_50, I initiated a go-around from my first B-747 approach (base training; no pax).

The Base Training Captain, a bit of a hard case, was ecstatic. I think I got more Brownie points than if I'd achieved a half decent touchdown.

Instructor to colleagues in crew-room after trip and about to write report: "How do you spell congenital?"

There's not much new. I heard about the foreign student, on a previous Chivenor course, who was discovered in the OM ante room after he left his aircraft at the end of the runway, in 1960.

On my course, my air to air gunnery instructor told me that the secret to good pipper control was to hold the stick "like you held your c*ck". My final OCU air to air assessment was "above average". Didn't repeat it on the squadron, though.

ACW599 wrote:

Similar: "How many "b"s sin abysmal?" or "How many "t"s in atrocious?"

Herc' co-pilot training sortie at Fairford - instructor in LH seat is USAF exchange officer Major J J Smith ( RIP, sadly ).

J J is making notes as our hero in the RH seat flies downwind - co-pilot looks across at JJ with a worried look on his face.

" Don't worry G ****, I'm just writing a letter to my mother " says J J.

" Phew " says G.

" Dear Mother, what a dumb **** of a co-pilot I'm flying with ".

Even G managed to wet himself!

Written in a student's report after a circuit trip: "Bloggs is so far behind the aircraft; if it were to crash he would be totally unharmed"

"It ain't necessarily so"........
 

Excerpt from my Page 120, #2391 on "Gaining a RAF Pilots Brevet in WWII":
Danny42C (class of, in the US Army Air Corps Arnold Scheme).

Initial instrument flying sortie on the JP3. My Master Pilot instructor said "You've got a touch like a Scandinavian Midwife". Still don't know what he meant but I guess it must have been something like you are crap!

ACW