"Jay Honeck" wrote in

It seems he had just soloed a week earlier, and was out practicing touch
and goes on his own. There was a bit of a cross wind -- nothing bad --
which apparently increased while he was working the pattern. On his last
take-off, when he rotated the cross wind kicked up and carried him out
over the adjacent bean field, and in his confusion he found himself
sinking toward the beans.

In a panic, he luckily overcame the urge to simply pull the yoke back
into his belly, and pushed the nose over. Doing so gained some speed,
and he climbed out normally. He then came around and landed with some
difficulty, but without incident.

This seemingly innocent incident scared him so badly that he walked into
the FBO, sat down with his instructor, and told him he was through.

Pussy. That's not even an interesting scare.

His instructor asked him what happened, told him that what he had
experienced was easily countered with good technique, told him he had done
well and acted properly, and immediately booked him for a few more dual
lessons.

To no avail. This guy was so taken aback by his brush with disaster that
he just couldn't get into flying anymore. He did fly a couple of more
times with his instructor, but he could never get back in the saddle. He
quit altogether.

That was over ten years ago. When I encouraged him to try again, and told
him that it was never too late to get back into flying, he wistfully but
firmly replied that it would never happen.

At last -- I've *finally* found someone who could explain what had
happened to foil their dreams of flight. I've never, ever been able to
understand this all-to-common occurrence -- and there are other good
reasons to quit flying, for sure -- but I have often wondered if this kind
of scare during training isn't happening more often than we know about?

Who knows? Did anything like that ever happen to you or anyone else you
know? Did you or they quit? Those are binary questions.

moo