Me fly lots
If there were a LeTourneau graveyard shift for flight instructors, i'm definitely top on that list.
Tonight I had my fourth late flight in five days (er, last night since it's 1:30Am now) and it was quite an experience for my student and myself. I sympathize for him because it was his first x-C and for it to develop and climax as it did probably shut off for awhile his fun-senses about flying. It was a real throw-out-the-books cross-country for him. We started off late because of some issues i could have controlled better, and i discovered that he hadn't completely planned for the route so we spent time on the ground at our first airport figuring out the rest of the planning. Then on the way back we encountered unrelenting, unexpected and fierce headwinds and were getting groundspeeds of 90-95 knots all the way home despite just sub-redarc power setting. Curfew for LeTourneau flight ops is 11:30p, which means that all airplanes need to be landed by that time. I knew we'd be arriving uncomfortably close to that time and tardiness was the most likely outcome, so i tried to find an altitude that would provide the fastest groundspeed and found, albeit too late, that 1,100' MSL, about 700' AGL was the place to be. My poor student was over there wondering what in the world was going on, and why is this crazy instructor so picky about holding heading and not climbing and querying constantly "are we gonna hit anything at this altitude?". He did get himself a very rich experience, however, because it was necessary to utilize all resources to accomplish a goal of getting home on time. That's flight management that cannot be planned for.
WE landed at 11:34 and 40 seconds, so once inside the office I wrote a letter to Mr. Burnett confessing my sin and explaining why i did it. My prayer is that he will forgive me and, most importantly, that i will learn from tonight.
Now if you'll excuse me, i need to get my four hours of sleep before my 7AM multi flight.
Tonight I had my fourth late flight in five days (er, last night since it's 1:30Am now) and it was quite an experience for my student and myself. I sympathize for him because it was his first x-C and for it to develop and climax as it did probably shut off for awhile his fun-senses about flying. It was a real throw-out-the-books cross-country for him. We started off late because of some issues i could have controlled better, and i discovered that he hadn't completely planned for the route so we spent time on the ground at our first airport figuring out the rest of the planning. Then on the way back we encountered unrelenting, unexpected and fierce headwinds and were getting groundspeeds of 90-95 knots all the way home despite just sub-redarc power setting. Curfew for LeTourneau flight ops is 11:30p, which means that all airplanes need to be landed by that time. I knew we'd be arriving uncomfortably close to that time and tardiness was the most likely outcome, so i tried to find an altitude that would provide the fastest groundspeed and found, albeit too late, that 1,100' MSL, about 700' AGL was the place to be. My poor student was over there wondering what in the world was going on, and why is this crazy instructor so picky about holding heading and not climbing and querying constantly "are we gonna hit anything at this altitude?". He did get himself a very rich experience, however, because it was necessary to utilize all resources to accomplish a goal of getting home on time. That's flight management that cannot be planned for.
WE landed at 11:34 and 40 seconds, so once inside the office I wrote a letter to Mr. Burnett confessing my sin and explaining why i did it. My prayer is that he will forgive me and, most importantly, that i will learn from tonight.
Now if you'll excuse me, i need to get my four hours of sleep before my 7AM multi flight.
posted by Radar | 11:33 PM
1 Comments:
Whoa there, buddy.
Four hours isn't sufficient.
Not safe.
Take care of yourself.
But, on a lighter note, glad you made it back safely. Where had the flight gone?
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