Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Mean things that instructors do

Apparently it is perfectly OK for your instructor to phone the ATC tower while he is on his way to the airport to inform them that he intends to simulate an engine failure on takeoff, thus forcing you to land on runway remaining.

Hmm. I suppose I’ll forgive him J
Funny thing was that during our preflight we had a conversation about the importance of keeping your hand on the throttle during takeoff. Apparently I have a habit of pulling back with both hands. I hadn’t noticed this, so genuinely appreciate the feedback but when Bob tried to pull back the power I wouldn’t move my hand. We had a brief “battle of the throttle” before he won!

The actual simulated failure was fine. I did exactly what I was meant to and we landed quite happily on runway remaining (and then go to backtrack, yay!!) A lot went through my mind in a very short space of time. We were doing shortfield takeoffs, when I felt Bob going for the throttle I was thinking “what am I doing wrong that he needs to correct?” Then when he announced the failure I knew very quickly that I just needed to land the thing, so I did. Followed by shooting Bob a look of pure disgust that said “I can’t believe you just did that to me” Then I decided that the entire thing was actually quite funny, but it got my heart racing I can tell you.

Video is on YouTube. Check out my channel.

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