My first solo - and the worst flight of my life

Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a first
solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've ever seen in
print.
Secondly, if I were you, I'd never fly with this outfit again and find
another CFI immediately.
This assumes of course that what you have related here is true word for
word. If YOU on the other hand, are part of this problem I'd do a serious
self evaluation on the entire situation before flying again. Either way,
what I've read here describes a VERY dangerous situation that needs
correcting immediately, as I see it as a serious flight safety issue.
Dudley Henriques

"Monarch Student" wrote in message
...
I left this morning for my first supervised solo. My flight
instructor is a new guy, about 25 who's never taught students before a
month ago. But he seems to know his stuff, so I've put up with him
for this long.

Until today.

We take off from Addison to McKinney TX airport, arrive at McKinney
and begin pattern work. Apparently my pattern wasn't tight enough so
my instructor who I guess is having a bad morning starts yelling at
the top of his lungs, "90 KEEP IT AT ****ING 90 ON DOWNWIND!!". I
look down at the airspeed, which is at 87. He slaps my hand away from
the throttle, and mashes it in. The nose comes up and he hammers the
yoke with his hands so the plane pitches down suddenly. "Watch your
altitude", he says.

We come in for a landing, on a regular runway with no displaced
threshold. He's yelling to keep it at 70 and pitches the yoke down.
We're headed directly for the grass in front of the runway. I ask if
we can land about fifty feet farther in because at this angle we'll be
right on the grass/lights. McKinney is over 6k long, so we have room.
And it's 2 days before Thanksgiving so hardly any traffic is present.

He says no (seemed like a reasonable request), yells, yells more and
my landing which is now low because of our airspeed and him not
allowing me to slightly power it to make it farther in, sucks. We
stop on the runway, and next pattern he simulates an engine failure. I
pitch for about 70, and get, "SIXTY-EIGHT. WHAT'S YOUR ****ING BEST
GLIDE? SIXTY-EIGHT!!". There's no way to make it to the runway, at
all even with 68. I get yelled at for being too far away, but the
tower asked us to be because of incoming traffic.

Jake smashes in the throttle and yells "GO AROUND!", forcing the yoke
forward because the nose pitched up (thanks to him hammering the
throttle in) then yelling at me for that.

At this point, I'm ready just to go home. But I consider it wasted
money, and probably better to let him scream for 10 more minutes and
I'll probably get to solo.

Sure enough, after two more landings I solo. "DON'T RUN ME OVER WHEN
YOU ****ING COME BACK", he says.

90 downwind, tight pattern, smooth landings. The McKinney tower guy
even told my instructor after he got back in that my pattern and
landings looked great, but I forgot to announce my callsign once, I
didn't center line all the landings, etc etc all announced on the
tower frequency. Thanks McKinney ATC guy! *sigh*

We return to Monarch Air, he says tie up the plane and hurry up.
Coming into the "office", there's 4 instructors standing there, all
not talking, avoiding eye contact and Jake in a chair looking down
with his hand outstretched for the key. No good solo (which is was),
congrats, nadda from anyone. And thus I left, no happy Thanksgiving,
see ya when I get back, almost like Jake just wanted me to get the
hell out of his face.

So should I get a new instructor? Mine seems like a miserable human
being. If I was a bad student, maybe I could understand. But the
senior instructor that's flown with me on progress flights called me
"significantly better than average".

How much of a hit would I take changing instructors this far in? Does
asking for a new one (preferrably with some experience) label me as a
problem student with the school?

Is it too much to ask, to be allowed a few feet into the runway if I'm
more comfortable with it?

Any advice would be appreciated. I'm beginning to hate flying, which
is sad because I began learning thinking it would be fun.

Dudley Henriques wrote:
Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a first
solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've ever seen in
print.



You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were being
trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote:

Dudley Henriques wrote:
Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a
first solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've
ever seen in print.

You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were
being trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.

I had the same thought - almost too outrageous to believe it really happened as described.

If it did, I agree with everyone else - he should run, not walk, to a new instructor or flight school if
necessary.

Mike

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
Dudley Henriques wrote:
Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a
first
solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've ever seen
in
print.



You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were being
trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.

Could be Mort.
What I usually do with posts like this one is answer it anyway, handling it
seriously initially. If its legit, the OP gets a useful answer. If its a
troll, the answer simply uses the OP as a bounce to inform the rest of the
group on how to handle such a situation (from my point of view anyway
:-).
In other words, for the purpose of useful signal transfer, its a win/ win
situation for the first response.
Dudley Henriques

"Dudley Henriques" wrote:
"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
Dudley Henriques wrote:
Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a
first
solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've ever
seen in
print.

You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were
being trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.

Could be Mort.

Keep in mind that the OP mentioned the name of a real flight school:

"We return to Monarch Air...." and the handle he chose, "Monarch
Student," suggests to me, at least, that the story is real. I think it
unlikely that a troll would have mentioned or implied any real flight
school name that could be checked out.

Also, there is at least one Monarch Air flight school based out of
Dallas Texas:

http://www.monarchair.com/

Jim Logajan wrote:

Keep in mind that the OP mentioned the name of a real flight school:

"We return to Monarch Air...." and the handle he chose, "Monarch
Student," suggests to me, at least, that the story is real. I think it
unlikely that a troll would have mentioned or implied any real flight
school name that could be checked out.


Maybe a competitor, or someone with a grudge against 'Jake'?

Jim Logajan wrote:
Keep in mind that the OP mentioned the name of a real flight school:

"We return to Monarch Air...." and the handle he chose, "Monarch
Student," suggests to me, at least, that the story is real. I think it
unlikely that a troll would have mentioned or implied any real flight
school name that could be checked out.


Or he's got some axe to grind.

Monarch Air has schools at both Addison, from whence they took off, and at
McKinney, where he soloed. I have taken training at the latter from a very
competent instructor. I think it's this particular instructor, not the
school.

Rod
"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
"Dudley Henriques" wrote:
"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
Dudley Henriques wrote:
Well, first of all, congratulations for not killing yourself under a
first
solo condition I would consider possibly one of the worst I've ever
seen in
print.

You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were
being trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.

Could be Mort.

Keep in mind that the OP mentioned the name of a real flight school:

"We return to Monarch Air...." and the handle he chose, "Monarch
Student," suggests to me, at least, that the story is real. I think it
unlikely that a troll would have mentioned or implied any real flight
school name that could be checked out.

Also, there is at least one Monarch Air flight school based out of
Dallas Texas:

http://www.monarchair.com/

Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:


You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were being
trolled (again).

So did I.

Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:

You know, Dudley, when I read his story my first thought was we were being
trolled (again). There's been a lot of that here lately.
--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

I see where you're coming from, but remember those defense mechanisms
we were taught during CFI training? I am 100% certain the OP is
displaying a defense mechanism by exaggerating the situation here.

I know, because I had an instructor back in the day who was pretty
horrible. I talked to people about what I should do, and in almost all
of those cases, I exaggerated the situation a little to make my point
seem more obvious. I would say, "THEN HE SCREAMED AT ME AT THE TOP OF
HIS LUNGS BECAUSE I WAS ONE FOOT ABOVE MY ALTITUDE"; when in actuality,
he would just alert me in an annoyingly-rude manner for being slightly
more than 100 feet above my altitude.

Regardless, just by the fact that the OP feels the need to ask the
question, says to me he should get a new instructor whether he is
exaggerating or not.

Also, I am glad no one caught on to the remark in the OP where he
explains that the CFI in question is 25 years old. This newsgroup likes
to go off on anti-white-haired CFI tirades often, and I'm glad to not
see it here. Bad instructors come in all ages and hair colors.

As a matter of fact the worst instructor I ever had was this 55 year
old guy who was even ex-airlines. He had that attitude that since he
has been around for so long that he could do anything he wanted. _HE_
understood how to do holds (since he had been doing them for decades),
but _I_ wasn't so sharp on them. He just couldn't understand what was
so hard about holds because they just came so easy to him. I could go
on all day about this guy, but I'll stop there.