[Rob P]

I took a friend flying on Saturday.

A sensible, level-headed thirty year old. One not given to panic or alarm, a rock climber in her spare time used to the odd scare.

As we were sitting at the side of the strip the most experienced of the LKI peasants made an interesting arrival, landing very long and very untidily in his taildragger.

It didn't surprise me. The wind was gusting at around 15 knots I'd guess and at 80 degrees of the runway heading. Any landing....

What did surprise me was that as soon as he'd taxied back to our hangar he climbed out and came over to talk.

"Christ" He said "That's as bad as I've ever known it here" That crosswind is evil over the trees, it's lumpy as hell, I thought if I lost it sods law I'd have collected the back of the Colt"

"Glad you didn't" I smiled back.

I reassured the passenger "Taildraggers are a bugger in a crosswind like this. Luckily we have a tricycle undercarriage on an aircraft which is ace at coping with this sort of thing"

I hope I sounded more confident than I actually felt. If the other peasant was having problems it was definitely trickier than it looked. But we have to reassure the passengers, don't we.

The flight went well. We ground up to about 6,000 feet, played hide and seek round some small cumulus. I taught her the rudiments of control and soon had her making passable rate one turns, holding height quite accurately.

Then, short of time we headed back to the strip with a final, positive "I have control"

When we returned the little aerobatic jobbie was on the strip so we did a pass across his nose so he was aware we were about and I set up a curving turn onto finals aiming to land beyond the treeline - still with about 600 metres of the strip remaining.

Larry was right. It was evil. There were lumps and bumps, lift and sink, gusts, rotor, the lot. It wasn't going to be pretty. Doable, but not pretty.

At about fifty feet it still hadn't stabilised. I was just debating a go around and approach from the treeless West when the picture started to look just a little better.

100% of my brain capacity was being used, such that when she instinctively reached forward for the yoke to 'help' I didn't have the spare brainpower to scream at her.

Luckily she was sensible and stopped herself. The landing was a greaser, we stopped with almost half the strip remaining.

No point in saying anything then to take the gloss off her flight, though I talked to her later about it. But it has frightened me in retrospect.

Always cautious of kids, we can get a bit blase when flying adults.

So.

1) Include the 'Touch nothing' stricture in the pre-flight briefing, even for adults.

2) If it's going to be a difficult one, repeat it as part of the downwind checks.

[Gerard Clarke]

A good tale, and well told, Rob. I quite often say "hands and feet clear please!" to the person in the other seat, at about three hundred feet.

[Morley]

Gerard. Thanks for the reminder! I have stopped saying that recently and I always used to.
Rob. Good post.

[eltonioni]

My Dad is a bugger for doing that, especially in the DA40 where he can subtly grab onto teh stick without me noticing right away. I now have a subtle reminder phrase... "there's only one thing immediately worse than grabbing hold of the controls and that's a smack in the chops"

[stealth]

Reminds me of when I had a spot of accidental assistance on my IMC test!!!!

I was established in a fairly steep climb in cloud and concentrating on getting it all right when there was a loud cracking noise and the examiner shot backwards as his seat adjuster catch slipped due to not being locked properly

Problem was he instinctively grabbed the bloody yoke as he went back and he was a big guy, luckily he let go almost immediately before it became too much of a problem.

When I enquired afterwards if he was just testing my recovery from unusual attitudes I was told not to take the P**s

[Morley]

He survived, you passed, job done. Result!!

[wsmempson]

A useful reminder about pre-flight briefings although, lately, my unpleasant surprises have come from habitual passengers who one might think should know better.

!. My father, who I give a regular lft to Cherbourg decided - on finals in a tricky cross-wind - without warning to whip out a video camera to video the approach and thereby obscure 1/2 the field of view out.

Not very amused, but this comes a distant second to

2, A low hours fellow pilot who I had taken for a jolly in the Arrow who decided, as I ran through my downwind checks, to start loudly spouting his own downwind check; akin to have someone shouting random numbers at you whilst you're doing mental arithmetic. Afterwards he was full of apologies "I don't know what I was thinking of" he said. Frankly, neither do I....

[grumpy old pilot]

[/quoteadeb[quoteit here"[/b:adeb0cc766] That crosswind is evil over the trees, it's lumpy as hell, I thought if I lost it sods law I'd have collected the back of the Colt"

[/quote]

...you still went flying with a newby passenger and are suprised at the result...

In recreational flying when somebody says that to me it's time for a beer... :)

[Rob P]

Fair point, well made.

At 1830 or thereabouts with about 40 minutes flying planned I assessed that it would improve rather than worsen.

Rob P