Mountain Flying Checkout

flyingron said:
My wife's instructor was doing a stage check for another instructor. The club only has 172's so he figures it's time this guy sees what a 172 at gross weight feels like. Margy and I are in the back seat. The student seems to be doing well up until he rotates. We leave the ground and the pitch just keeps going up and up. I grab my wife for fear that we are going to not make it.

It was about this time that I heard the "CFI death scream" (which is the instructions given to a student when the CFI fears his life is in jeopardy). The instructor is pushing hard against the student and the words were something like "GET THE NOSE DOWN. IF YOU DROP THIS THING ON ITS TAIL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE."

Fortunately we got a more sane AOA and the rest of the flight was uneventful.
Click to expand...
Interesting....I've flown Young Eagles and Angel Flight in both a C172 & my cherokee 180 and I never put two adults in the back seat, just for this reason (adult and small child, yes). True, my ground is 5500 MSL and that is a major factor, but I'm surprised the CFI would do that even near sea level. Around here, the CFIs will only put one adult in the backseat to illustrate the problems (I've been that ballast more than once).
 
It got the plane to gross weight and was within CG limits so why not. This was at FDK (fairly close to sea level).
 
Dave Krall CFII said:
In addition to the above, most of what is called mountain, or bush flying, is covered in the private pilot rating, pilots just don't apply it, or forget what they learned.
Click to expand...

"Covered?" Well, if you mean talked about, yes. But you don't talk about stalls in private pilot training, you go do them. They talk about DA and soft fields and all that mainly so you at least kind of know what you don't know. The mountain flying courses exist to SHOW you what flying in those conditions is really like.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top