Taking my first flight lesson: results

Snaggletooth said:
What happened? if you don't mind me asking?
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Not at all. For my 16th flight, July 18, 1988 was a Monday morning, and we had LBX completely to ourselves, so the instructor decided to do a couple of things that he thought every student should experience. I shot a few touch and goes, and on one of them, the instructor called an emergency landing abeam the numbers on downwind - and pulled the red handle on the Warrior's engine quadrant, not the black one. As usually happens when the mixture is set to idle cutoff, it got real quiet. I was a thousand feet above the airport in position to land, so it was less unsafe than it might otherwise, and the resulting landing turned out quite well. The airplane really didn't fly any differently that I could tell with the engine stopped and the prop windmilling just a little.

We landed and rolled off the runway to the ramp, then got a Coke from the machine and debriefed a bit. That wasn't the end of the day.

We got back in, did another normal touch and go, and then the instructor had me try the impossible turn. He pulled the engine on me at 400 AGL after takeoff and had me turn back. I turned into the crosswind from the right and then back to the departure end of the runway, back to align with the runway when I was over the centerline, and land. The landing was successful. I did get a complaint out of him to be very careful when turning that close to the ground, though, lest I drag a wingtip and have Bad Things happen.

Between all that and 0.5 under the hood, that 2.0-hour lesson was an interesting time.
 
Wow.... sounds like he really put you on the spot in that lesson. Is it common for Instructors to do that?
 
I hope my Instructor does not do that! What Flight school where you flying with?
 
Snaggletooth said:
I hope my Instructor does not do that! What Flight school where you flying with?
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It is very rare for instructors to do this. Many instructors will even refuse to demonstrate it. On the other hand it is very common for them to simulate power failures by reducing the throttle to idle. The only reason for an instructor to even consider pulling the mixture instead of the throttle is to demonstrate how effective of a simulation pulling the throttle back to Idle is. In most airplanes there is no detectable difference. In a few the propeller will stop and perhaps increase the glide performance a bit.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
jmaynard said:
and then the instructor had me try the impossible turn. He pulled the engine on me at 400 AGL after takeoff and had me turn back.
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My DE did this on my Private checkride. It was at the very end after I thought it was pretty much over and I had nailed it. My instructor never did that to me before. Everything turned out OK and I even had to slip it a bit to get it down with a comfortable margin. He pulled the throttle back at 500 AGL.
 
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