In article
,
Michael wrote:

On Apr 29, 10:39*pm, wrote:
Once in a
gider he popped open the airbrakes and then said "hey, what does this
do"

Seriously?! I've only had two lessons, but I know those things stay
closed and locked until the PIC deems them appropriate in a landing
pattern!

Those pesky passengers can do all sorts of crazy things, and simulating
various failures and emergencies is certainly in the cards. He'll
definitely be fiddling with your release knob at an inconveniently (but
not dangerously!) low altitude, and spoilers are fair game too.

Actually, I've seen some reports on the web that when doing the
preflight one should consider the Examiner a "unfamiliar passenger"
and give her or him some form of "don't touch this...don't touch that"
talk. Is this good advice?

Definitely treat him as a passenger. He *is* a passenger, both legally
and in reality.

That doesn't mean you have to treat him like an idiot, though. He's an
experienced, knowledgeable pilot, and you can treat him as such. Make
sure he knows the basics, but you don't need the "this is the stick,
when you move it like this the plane does that" or the "these are the
spoilers, they'll make a bang when they're unlocked, don't be afraid,
it's normal" speeches that you might give to someone who never saw a
glider in the flesh before that day.

For my distraction, my examiner somehow managed to cause some rain to
disrupt the airfoil on the horizontal stabilizer of the Grob 103 we were
flying, making it so I couldn't hold anything under 55 knots during our
last flight of the exam. Clever fellow! Still don't know how he did it.


Asking for unsafe maneuvers seems to be a common theme. One of my fellow
club members had the examiner asking strange, complicated questions
until he was down to pattern altitude, at which point he asked the
examiner to please stay quiet until they were on the ground, and he'd be
happy to answer any further questions then.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon