If being an arsehole works for you, I guess that's fine. But it didn't help this student. Could this student have gone on to be a Naval Aviator if you spent your effort instructing as opposed to getting frustrated and angry. We will never know.
Why was it the students fault. Was he/she not trying? That, and showing up not prepared are the only things you can fault the student for. Everything after that is your job.
Did you ever ask the student during the debrief why he/she tried to break the wrong direction? That would have been useful.
Of course, some students show up prepared and still can't can't learn. The student did all they can. That's no reason to get mad at them. Its sad. I remember one student who DORed the day after flying with me. I still wish I could have instructed that flight differently.
As a flight instructor, your job is to instruct. You also have a side job of being a safety pilot to be able to recover from mistakes. And yes, some responsibility to evaluate. But your first job is to instruct. Unfortunately, I don't think the Navy did a great job of of teaching instructors to instruct. They just assume that if you can fly the plane you can instruct to. I know this first had as an instructor at the HITU. We spent all our time getting the IUTs up to speed flying the helo. Some briefing items on flights were common student errors, but how to instruct a specific maneuver was never a thing.
I learned much of this in my off time from a friend who I met there. He spent a few years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and went through their Central Flying School where they actually teach instructional techniques. I learned all sorts of things from him. For example, don't ask yes/no questions. You will always get a yes regardless. If you are demoing adverse yaw, don't ask a student if they saw the nose move left. Instead, before the maneuver, tell them you want them to watch what direction the nose moves. Ask them afterwards what direction they saw the nose move. Maybe next time you can have them follow along on the controls as you put in rudder to counteract it. Ask them was it a lot or a little. Here's the thing, it doesn't matter what the answer is. What ever they say is the right answer for that person.
It's attitudes like yours that I wish I could have attrited out of the HITU, but that was not our mandate. The most we could do was give the Squadron Stan O a heads up. And yes, I did.
Or maybe you just wanted to complain about the next generation to your friends on facebook.
Being an IP requires both instructing AND evaluating. I taught my ass off every flight (even the ones with the fucking Saudis) and made every student better. There is a standard we hold them to, and when they don’t meet that standard, they don’t get to fly. Reread my post. I never showed Ensign Fucktard I was frustrated with him (thus the FB post venting to my friends, many of which are/were IP’s).
I taught his non-flying ass to the very end, until he put us both in enough danger I had to take the controls. I then landed the plane, used some properly applied nicotine, and gave the student a thorough debrief and signaled his inability to progress properly through the program via a Marginal gradesheet.
I’m sure paying attention to detail is important, even in the HITU, but maybe you should try harder.
I’m admittedly an asshole. I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed of it, it’s just who I am. I don’t sugarcoat the truth for someone because they have feelings. My students got honest, direct feedback and it made them better.
I had 21 on-wings through my tenure as an IP. Some were rockstars, most were average, a few were untalented and slow to learn. I taught them all, and made them better. They all are winged aviators in the Fleet now. Statistically 2-3 of them should have attrited or DOR’d. That’s the number I’m most proud of: 21/21.
I don’t understand where you think you have some magical guide on what the “right” personality is for instructing. You say you want to attrite someone from the HITU because they had a bad “attitude” according to you? What is the goal? Some sort of homogeneous mass of nice guys running around being a friend to the student?
Every student learns differently. That was the great thing about having a group of IP’s with different personalities. Some needed a nice guy. Some needed a kick in the ass. They all needed a preparation for flying later in their career with different kinds of people.
More importantly the ones who SHOULDN’T be flying in the military needed identified early on when the flight hours are plentiful and cheap and the aircraft forgiving, not later in the pipeline when there are less assets and it costs more.
Passing the trash is/was the largest complaint I got from your side of Langley Road (where low NSS’s go to languish) and from the rest of the Advanced pipelines.
I identified a student who shouldn’t be flying with us, two other IP’s, a Stan X pilot, and the Skipper all agreed in the course of two Unsats, an 88 and an 89 ride, as well as the Commodore when he signed the paperwork attrition said student.
But I’m sure my being frustrated I couldn’t get through to the future SWO was somehow the reason he failed out...
