Got to the squadron around 8:15 – brief was at 8:45. Had to ask a couple people where all the stupid preflight planning stuff was, like a weight and balance form and the grade cards, which took up some of my extra time, but I still made it to the skipper’s office in time for the brief – at which time he said “Great, Herbie, go grab us a briefing space.” (usually you brief in the skipper’s office in my experience, but whatever, he’s the man.) I grabbed a space, put the discuss items up on the board and waited. He came in, I stood up and we shook hands and then got down to business. We didn’t cover much more than the ORM brief items (which were one of the discuss items) in the brief, but it was good anyway – lots of sea stories.
We met on the back porch, looked at the ADB, walked to the aircraft, started up and got going. It was a bit weird to be running the checklist vice actually doing it, but that’s what the skipper wants, so that’s what he gets! The weather was GORGEOUS – a few clouds way, way, up there, good winds of 8-10 knots, sunshine and about 65 degrees. You can’t ask for a better day to go flying.
We got out to the working area and began to go through simulated emergencies at altitude, including engine failures. I demo’d the first engine failure, talking all the way through it and then the skipper took the controls and acted like he was a typical dumb student flying the engine failure. (We simulate those by reducing the engine throttle control to flight idle and then using the kinetic energy stored in the rotating blades to autorotate downward.) I rolled off the twist grip (throttle) and he started going through the procedures, acting like a student and making typical student errors. I corrected him, took the controls and waved off the approach, and we set up to head into Pace (an outlying field or OLF).
At Pace we started easily with a normal approach to a a hover and a vertical landing with me talking my way all the way around the pattern and onto the deck, just as if I was with a student. The skipper then did the same thing, acting as a student and gauging my responses. I suppose I should add that this flight was my first time acting as an instructor, even though I was flying with the CO, so I don’t really have my techniques locked down just yet, but I’m told that this will come with time. Skipper did nothing terribly crazy – just some shady ball control and confusion over the appropriate altitudes, but with some prompting from me it ended up okay.
After that we did some maneuvers for my proficiency, then steep approaches to a no-hover landing for both me and the skipper-acting-as-student. That was a bit more squirrely, since the procedures are just different enough to confuse students – and when you don’t know what’s going on, you usually revert back to a previously learned yet similar behavior – in this case, a normal approach. But other than that and getting caught up in a low hover vice a no-hover landing, everything was reasonably good.
From there we went to power-off maneuvers. These are cut guns, taxi cut guns, and autos. Cut guns happen when the instructor (me) rolls the twist grip off while in a hover. I did one in order to gain proficiency for me and additionally to see how the aircraft is going to respond to the power off maneuver. After completing one, I transferred control to the skipper, who did one for his proficiency. We didn’t go “fight’s on” (skipper simulating a student) for cut guns and taxi cut guns due to their unforgiving nature, but did so for the autos. We finished up with some taxi cut guns, which are cut guns while taxiing forward, and proceeded to the auto pattern. After completing a couple of 90- and 180-degree autos, we went “fight’s on” and the skipper started simulating a student again, forgetting to roll off the twist grip for one auto and getting sloppy with ball and Nr control on the second. The second also saw him neglecting to bring the twist grip back to full open at the appropriate altitude, resulting in me taking the controls and rolling it on while executing a waveoff. Not quite a low Nr recovery, but kinda close to it.
After that I did one more 180 auto for my proficiency and NAILED it – it was probably the best auto I’ve shot in a Charlie – and then we departed and headed home via course rules. After the flight and post-flight the skipper walked me through TIMS (our flight recording and grading system) and simultaneously debriefed me on the flight. Everything went well and he especially liked my verbal procedures and explanations of all the maneuvers and encouraged me to keep up the effort. After turning in our radios I went to talk to another instructor about something while he said that he’d “see me around campus” and headed back to the squadron.
