War Story No. 4 - Know Your Audience

Going through Pilot Instructor Training (PIT) at Randolph is quite an experience. The funny thing about it is that I went through PIT a second time which was nearly 15 years later to the day. I was amazed that the program had not changed one bit. Nothing was different and it was like experiencing the same nightmare all over again. Shows that the Air Force is pretty stuck in its ways and that change is hard to come by. When I went through the first time I was a rough and tumble fighter pilot who was basically pissed-off for having to go there. I was a shit hot F-15 pilot and one of only seven F-15 pilots in Air Training Command at the time. Our purpose was to bring a different perspective to pilot training so the guys were not just being trained to become future airline pilots. Going there was bad enough but I promise the fist time I went through; that I know training had not changed any little bit since they started training in jets. To add injury to insult we had to do a lot of stuff that any fighter pilot worth a shit was more than capable of doing without any problem. Likewise, those instructors at PIT considered themselves the cream-of-the-crop, especially the FAIPs (First Assignment IPs) who homesteaded at Randolph after their initial tours at an out base. Being a pilot with significant capabilities, I found myself often breaking in the new instructors so they could learn how to be good instructors teaching instructor going-to-be’s. In other words I was actually training them. Also, my job was to be an easy student so the weak sisters on the staff would think they were capable of doing the job. That is what happened to me one day when we were briefing up a two-ship formation ride.

When I say formation you need to understand that I probably had well over 600 hours of flying time at this point and most of it was definitely flying formation. I had more time on the wing than the guest IP who showed up had flying airplanes. I was surprised when he swaggered in to the briefing and began to brief me on basic formation. I started to say something but decided against it. When I say brief I really mean that he started back at the theory of manned flight and then continued on until our current period. After about 30 minutes of learning about the finer parts of flying as number two my eyes rolled back in the back of my head and I proceeded to pass out. Being the astute instructor this steely eyed instructor was he thought that I was not paying attention enough. So what does he do? He goes back and starts over again from the very beginning. I am thinking to myself “self - either this guy is trying really hard to make sure I know how to fly formation or he is the biggest prick I have ever seen.” After a long drawn out inner brain discussion with myself I came to the conclusion that he was just the biggest idiot I had ever met. Think about it. When you meet someone don’t you try and feel them out? Don’t you sniff around a little to see if this dog is more alpha than you? Not this guy. He was the guy they invented the name clueless for. By now I am steaming and I am praying that I can get that last smoke in before we step but that he thinks we need to brief right up to step time. Finally I can’t stand it anymore and say I got to take a piss before we step and that if we don’t knock it off we will surely be late. Something he said we don’t want to be as number two. So reluctantly he finished the briefing and we rushed to get to the jet.

Preflight, start, taxi, and the formation takeoff went OK but I could not get him to shut up for the life of me. Finally about one minute after my sterling formation takeoff the words I had be waiting for finally came out of his mouth. He said, “that was a pretty good takeoff, I guess my briefing was pretty good.” Then he said, “by the way, I meant to ask earlier, what have you flown before?” I just said with the most authoritative voice I could muster, “F-4s and F-15s Dickweed!” With that he was silent for the rest of the flight. No further instruction was given. The debrief was short and I could see that he was in a hurry to leave. At the conclusion he did the standard “what can I do better for you” student question. I just said that before you start going into great detail in your briefing you might find out your students background. It definitely would save a lot of heartbeats that they can’t get back. He did teach me one thing. That is that you need to be smart enough to figure out your audience. So I try and do that in my current job. I surely don’t want to brief how to do an ILS approach to a student who probably has his CFII (Certified Flight Instructor, Instruments) rating. He probably knows more than I ever will. So don’t waste their time and yours just trying to prove how great you are. Mr. Dickweed never flew with me again nor did I ever see his smiling face on the flightline again, thank God!

This entry was posted on 20. January 2010 at 22:33 and is filed under War Stories, Airplanes, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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