Ever terrified your CFI?

Volitation said:
Vincent Carbonara’s 172 spin thread got me thinking..... Have you ever terrified your instructor?

My first, or second, or whatever it was lesson, and we’re gonna do my first stall. And I’m telling myself, “when it breaks, add power and lower the nose, add power and lower the nose....”

So here we go - power out, get a good death grip on the yoke, pull up to maintain altitude, a little more, a little more..... and there it goes.... Full power and immediately slam the yoke to the firewall!

Good times, and hilarity ensued.
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Yep, first lesson, after a week of ground school. He decides to demo stalls!

kath said:
Similar story: It's BFR time, and I was thinking about maybe getting my CFI one day, so I asked my BFR guy if I could try flying from the right seat. Had never done that before. We go up, it's time to do a stall. So when the stall breaks, muscle memory does exactly what I've done a hundred times before... "push the thing in my right hand full forward"...
Have never seen the windshield fill up with houses quite like that before...
CFI calmly says, "OK, let's not do that again."
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I did that on my first lesson in stalls/recovery, from the LEFT seat (pushed yoke & throttle simultaneously)...twice! LOL :D

Scared the crap out of myself, startled my CFI a little, I'm sure. Left the airport (sweating bullets) and swore I'd quit and never return...hahaha.

Hopefully, I'll never lose an engine on takeoff, but if I do, I hope I remember what I did during that first flight lessono_O
 
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None of mine have ever shown it, if I did. All had excellent poker faces.

I suspect the closest I came to getting us into a scenario the CFI couldn’t easily fix was during multi training when I was high on an approach and since it works so well in my 182...

I pulled both throttles to idle.

I seriously underestimated the sink rate and drag present at all times in a Turbo Seminole. I knew and had flown Piper bricks before but my brain locked solid for a couple of seconds at the sink rate a slow Seminole will instantly be at if you close both throttles completely.

About the time the approach light frames are starting to look like they’re going to visit us via the front plexiglass and as my hand is already moving the throttles forward way too gingerly, I hear this in my headset...

“GET IT UP!”

Never was a more succinct instruction from a CFI. :)

Throttles moved MUCH faster to just below overboost and we leveled and accelerated a bit on super short final.

Actually turned (somehow) into one of my best landings in that airplane. LOL. I still have no idea how. :)
 
Dave Theisen said:
Well, I’m not “your” CFI......................:)
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So you were scared? ;)

Explanation for those not in the know:

High density altitude.
High temperature
Taking off a little too close behind the Cherokee 180 (Walboy's ride) ahead of us.
Broom Hilda hit a little WT from Walt's plane and decided she wanted to go down and to the left.
Recovered.

Lesson learned - never take Dave up again. :)
 
Timbeck2 said:
So you were scared? ;)

Explanation for those not in the know:

High density altitude.
High temperature
Taking off a little too close behind the Cherokee 180 (Walboy's ride) ahead of us.
Broom Hilda hit a little WT from Walt's plane and decided she wanted to go down and to the left.
Recovered.

Lesson learned - never take Dave up again. :)
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Nah, just having fun with you. :). You have to try harder than that to scare me!
 
denverpilot said:
I pulled both throttles to idle.
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I did that in the Navajo one time just to see how it would react. No passengers. Let's just say it was a good thing that I was at cruise altitude when I did that. It just didn't start down, it instantly just lost altitude at a very much quicker rate than I thought it would.
 
Zeldman said:
I did that in the Navajo one time just to see how it would react. No passengers. Let's just say it was a good thing that I was at cruise altitude when I did that. It just didn't start down, it instantly just lost altitude at a very much quicker rate than I thought it would.
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Man. I bet a Navajo would just plummet. Totally stable but a freight elevator ride down. LOL.
 
Zeldman said:
I did that in the Navajo one time just to see how it would react. No passengers. Let's just say it was a good thing that I was at cruise altitude when I did that. It just didn't start down, it instantly just lost altitude at a very much quicker rate than I thought it would.
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As I moved into bigger aircraft, the Navajo was the first one I flew that you didn't pull the power to idle until just before the flare. Still one of my favorite airplanes to fly.
 
I got a reaction from my instructor after a passable (I think) landing with a 172, about my 4th hour, when the runway had quite a few icy spots. Seemed like he was worried whether I could steer and get us stopped in time. [Not sure if this qualifies as “terrified” though]
 
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