Rob is cool

[cjsmith]

Rob showed me his logbook yesterday evening. It has entries in a brand new column: As Flight Instructor. Two point eight hours yesterday. He's a working flight instructor now!

One lesson was a very first lesson for a primary student. The other was a second opinion for a guy who wanted to know if he was ready for his own CFI checkride.

Rob was very tired. He says "Everything you hear is right: they all try to kill you."

I'm proud of him.

Comments

[yoak.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine recently had the opposite problem... the flight instructor tried to kill him. My friend is a Very Experienced pilot having done it in the military. He let all certifications and such pass after he quit that, but recently decided it would be fun to fly again. To do so, he had to go through classes in the normal fashion. On one flight over the Mojave, the engine quit. Thankfully he knew just what to do and brought it down safely, but instead of leaping to handle the situation or even providing sound advice, the instructor panicked, ironically not primarily about getting down safely, but instead about the impact this incident would have on his future ability to be an instructor. My friend had to quiet him down in addition to handling the emergency itself. Bad. This was a relatively "beginner" class, and could have been quite disasterous with a student that had no knowledge or experience beyond what is minimally required to have been there.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Yay! Please pass my congratulations on to Rob.

Just a note: I'm probably one of the more experienced non-pilots you'll ever meet. My dad was a pilot, and we had a partnership in a small plane when I was young. I've logged more hours in the air in a small plane than the vast majority of folks who don't actually fly themselves. I have flown a plane a couple of times (up in the air only, of course, with my dad right beside me!), both engine and glider, so I do have some understanding of how it feels. For some reason, the "bug" never bit me, though. But there really is something special about being up in the air, flying around where no human was really designed to go, watching the clouds and the birds, and the ground rush by below. Congratulations to you both for pursuing (and catching!) your dreams of flight.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Yay!! Please pass on conga-rats to Rob for me :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Will do, thanks! :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Yeah, other than pilots or family of pilots, most folk don't spend much time in small planes. And very few of those have handled the controls of both a light plane and a glider.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yikes. Sounds to me like that instructor had absolutely no business being an instructor. Heck, I'd say I'd rather not even be his passenger. That's pretty bad.

[harpwolf.livejournal.com]

Go Rob! That's very cool. What does he fly?
And how's your flying coming? Can Rob instruct you or is that like a bad plan? :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll forward the congrats! He flies single-engine aircraft, both land planes and seaplanes. He may look for his multi-engine license next.

I am licensed in airplanes and gliders (I joke that in FAA-speak that's "Airplane, Single Engine Land" and "Airplane, No Engine Land"). His involvement in flying is sorta kinda my fault. :-)

(To answer the other question, we wouldn't work well as instructor and student. He can be my boss at work; we can do a few other weird things; but instruction, no, we just don't do well with that one. So we'll stay away from attempting it in aircraft.)