Incipient Instructor (or COVID Course Cock Up)

Sorry for the title, but I simply love alliteration and couldn’t decide which to go with!

I’ve wanted to become an instructor since before I learned to fly. So, it was inevitable that one day I would find myself beginning the Flight Instructor (Restricted) course.  In case you are unfamiliar with this term, this is the new name for the Microlight AFI course, and doesn’t it just roll easily off the tongue?

After much indecision I chose to do the course with Marcus Dalgetty at Pegasus France.  Partly because I’d heard good things about him as an instructor, and partly because of the more or less ‘guaranteed’ flying weather down at Gap-Tallard airfield in the south of France.

The scenery and the weather were simply stunning. Apart from the first few days that is, when I thought I might actually freeze to death at one point. Sunscreen was very much the order of the day for both me and my counterpart, Gary, who was flying the flex wing version of the course. And, in between training flights, there was no better place to be sat in the sunshine, revising ground school, occasionally disturbed by the whoosh-crack sound of someone failing to kill themselves having leapt from a perfectly serviceable aeroplane, and paid good money to do it!

Gap – Tallard Airfield (a composite name made up of the names of nearest town and village, imaginative huh?) is located in the foothills of the Alps at about 2000ft AMSL.  It is surrounded on all sides by high ground, some as high as 6-7000ft and benefits from a micro-climate courtesy of the Fohn effect.  It is also, as you may have gathered, the home of French parachuting and is something of a Mecca for free-fallers.

The airfield has two hard runways, the second of which we are on final for in the photo below  (small strip to the right of the main runway). RT can be in French or English and there is an excellent café, Maison de l’Air, serving, as you would expect of the French, mouth-wateringly good food.

My first concern was to pass the pre-entry ground exam and flight test.  It would’ve been a long way to come and then get the next Ryanair home if I wasn’t up to the entry standard!

Fortunately, I passed both in the first couple of days and then it was straight into 3 weeks of learning to teach all the flight exercises, along with ground briefings, ground school and copious amounts of practice teaching. All this was with the added pressure that ‘George’, the student alter ego of Marcus, was constantly trying to think up new ways to try and kill me. But as Marcus puts it best; “your student will try to kill you, try not to take it personally.”

It was all good practice though, as every flight you were practising teaching the exercise, remembering the patter, watching for mistakes from the student, looking out for dangerous mistakes and trying to let the student have enough time to correct it, without letting it get to the point where it is dangerous.

It is a difficult balancing act and one I suspect will take some time to perfect.  Circuits were the hardest part as because you are low and slow there is so much potential for things to go wrong very quickly if you let a mistake go unchecked, but the student still needs to learn.

Away from the flying and as I’m a bit of an outdoors person, the lure of the foothills of the Alps was too much for me and I spent a large part of my evenings and the odd day off (we had 2!) running and walking in the hills, exploring the scenery, and finding new “classrooms” to revise in, like the photo below which was directly under the approach for the main 20 runway.

So much happened on this course that I can’t possibly fit it all into a single blog post. Quite aside from the challenge of the course, there were adventures in the mountains and course socials in the evenings. I even ended up saving a mans life in the first week of  the course, which I really was not expecting! I kept a journal for the whole 3 weeks and will be using it as source material for my second book.

Yes, I know the first one hasn’t been published yet.

The book will focus on my journey from Pilot to Instructor, what was involved, some of the stories I have from the course, the personalities, experiences, and life and death situations (not in the sky though – you’ll be glad to know).

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although I successfully completed the course, I was unable to take the exam for the initial issue of my FI (R) rating.  But, as soon as I am able to take and (hopefully) pass that, I will be joining James at Attitude Airsports on a part-time basis as the North West’s newest fixed wing microlight instructor.

So don’t be shy, if you are passing Rossall Field, come on in and say hi!