Day 26, Making the Best of a Sick Instructor

Well Bill was sick yesterday and never showed up. Lucky for me I had already set up with Pete, another instructor with other students, to sim with him at 8-10am (typically before Bill shows up). I simmed with Pete working on some new stuff like VOR DME Arcs. After two hours Pete asked if I wanted to go fly. I let him know Bill was supposed to be flying with me around 11am. Pete called Bill and everything checked out, I would be flying with Pete for two hours. Turns out, after we had landed from a pretty decent flight, that Bill was not going to be coming in because he was feeling sick. After my flight with Pete I went to another instructor and was able to log two more hours of sim time before the day was done.

My flight was pretty interesting. Pete definitely has a completely different way of teaching. It's very interesting to see how different instructors can teach the same subject matter. I learned a long time ago in military high school, the Academy, and the Navy, that when faced with the opportunity to be led/taught by more than one person, take the best attributes from each individually and incorporate them into your teaching methods... If these attributes and methods help you to learn more quickly they may very well do the same for your students. I'm definitely taking the good from all the instructors I've been working with and storing it, and discarding the bad attributes. Hopefully this will help to make me a better flight instructor come April.

As for the flight, it was smooth as glass yesterday in the air. Unlike the turbulent fiasco the other day. I handled all radio comms with approach control and flew 3 separate approaches a three separate airports within a 55nm radius... For my second IFR training flight this was alot to handle and VERY fast paced because ATP requires students to conduct approach briefings and call outs during the approach legs... I was busy from takeoff to landing for 2 hours exactly. Pete also simulated losing my engine on my second approach by idling the throttle. So I flew my first simulated single engine approach, followed by my first VOR DME Arc circle to land approach. Very cool stuff. There are definitely areas I need to work on, and I will. But for the most part my flight was as smooth as the air was today.