question on student taxi practice

"Jim Macklin" wrote in message
news:vfmZf.9862$t22.8921@dukeread08...
That was a long time ago, when the King Air lost its tail.
They did rebuild it, it is probably still flying. That was
back in the days when a Bonanza was about $40,000 and 90
King Air was about $400,000.

Lots of things that are legal are not safe, lots of safe
things are not legal and good judgment can be taught by
example. Some people will not learn, some instructor don't
teach, when those two types get together bad things happen.

We've all seen pilots do stupid tricks and get away with
most of them. I've also seen other things they didn't get
away with, the AeroCommander salesman, demo'd a Turbo 690
[?] to a university. He wanted to show the customer, not a
pilot, how safe the airplane was. He decided that putting
the gear lever UP while taxiing would be a good idea, to
show that the gear would not retract on the ground. He
didn't could on the struts being over-inflated. The gear
did retract but the plane just settled on the flat belly and
the props did not hit the ground. Actually sold that same
model to the customer. The damage was to the skin and
antennas.
Saw a Tulsa police officer and owner of a nice Citabra taxi
in after a few beers and a short flight at the Tulsa
Downtown Airpark. Everything would have been fine if he'd
stopped before the prop louvered the trunk lid on his car.
One winter, back in the 60s, I saw a Beech 18 mail plane
operated by an outfit called SEMO, land and take-off at SPI
with a 30 knot headwind on a sub-freezing night. They took
off on rwy 30 and used 3,000 feet to get the tail up and
about 4,000 feet to lift off. I don't know how many pounds
over gross the plane was, but I saw them load two trucks of
mail bags and boxes.
Too many CFIs are just trying to earn a living and get the
hours needed for a "real" job, too many students are
interested in the quickest time from first flight to the
license. JFK Jr. should be alive, so should John Denver, so
should Buddy Holly, so should a lot of people. As far as I
know all my students are alive and well.


--
James H. Macklin
ATP,CFI,A&P

So true! When it's all been said and done, all we can expect to leave with
is the knowledge we did the best we could with what we had to work with.
God only knows I've been given a second chance more than once by something a
lot more powerful than me :-)
I remember one day coming out of a loop as the trailer in a two ship P51
formation where the lead had taken us in way too fast at the high apex. On
the bottom, he had me pinned between the ground and his airplane. I was
cutting grass at 300 plus and looking up the butt crack of a cow. My prop
probably shaved his antlers a bit as I went over him and with no place to
go, I hollered "give me some room...NOW!!" Lead pitched up to the right and
I went between two buildings in knife edge, standing on the right rudder
with forward stick. Think I had about 4 feet of tip clearance, but I'm
here!!! :-)
Yup...we've ALL had our moments
:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )
Dudley Henriques