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My first solo - and the worst flight of my life



 
 
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Old November 22nd 06, 01:34 AM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Monarch Student[_1_]
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Default My first solo - and the worst flight of my life

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.
 




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