Flight Lesson: Teaching Moments

I was a young pilot and had just earned my commercial certificate. Morris was in his 60s and had a lengthy, storied flying career. Feeling mischievous, I thought I would play a little joke on the old man. When he wasn’t looking, I reached up and turned on the panel lights to the lowest setting. In the early Arrows, the panel light switch would dim the panel and gear indicator lights so they weren’t visible in the daylight. Just before turning to the base leg, Morris put the gear down. It didn’t take long to realize we had a no-gear indication. Morris had a strange habit of singing a little melody when something went wrong in the flight. He would sing, “oops, oops, oops, oops.” After a short song, he called the tower for a visual check on the gear. We flew by and the tower reported the gear was in the down position—but still no gear lights.

We turned out of the pattern and cycled the gear several times while pulling out of modest dives. Still no lights. By this time I was getting a little nervous and thought I had better say something. I asked, “Morris what does the owner’s manual say?”

“Owner’s manual, owner’s manual, I don’t need the darn owner’s manual!”

I thought Oh boy, this isn’t going well. I got the owner’s manual and quickly went to the section on no-gear indication. I said, “Morris, number one in the manual says make sure the panel lights are off in daylight.” He gave a very stern look and said, “I didn’t turn the panel light on!”

I reached up and turned the panel light off, and up came nice bright gear lights.

The rest of the flight was very quiet. We landed, taxied to parking, and went into the flight shack. Morris didn’t say a thing about our little adventure. I decided the best thing to do was not to mention it ever again.

We had great fun that summer; I spent a lot of time with Morris. He taught me how to tow gliders with the L–19 Bird Dog, and he was my instructor for a Civil Air Patrol mountain flying course.

Later that year I was getting used to flying from the right seat during training for my flight instructor certificate, and Morris was teaching me the proper techniques of dealing with student pilots. One morning he said, “Let’s go to Geraldine and shoot some landings.” The theme of the lesson was letting the student make mistakes without risking serious consequences. He said, “The student will never learn if you constantly take the airplane away from him.”

He herded us some 50 miles toward Geraldine on no specific heading, and our altitude was more like that of a roller-coaster ride. I gave him verbal instruction as we went along and his flying improved accordingly.

Geraldine is nontowered, and has a 2,900-foot-long, 75-foot-wide paved runway with power lines on the approach to Runway 25. Morris performed touch and goes that were exciting to say the least. He always just managed to get the Piper Warrior down after each wobbling approach.

On our third downwind I noticed we were high in the pattern and the airspeed was above normal. I didn’t say anything, thinking high airspeed and altitude is a good thing. As we turned base to final, he kept banking the aircraft. When we passed 50 some degrees of bank I took control. I swear I bruised the palm of my hand grabbing the yoke. I kept the nose down and got us level. I did a low go over the runway, trying to catch my breath, while my heart rate was soaring. I looked over at Morris and he was looking at me with a very sober expression. He said, “That’s where a student will kill you, is on base to final. They will get mesmerized on the runway and not roll out. This will result in a stall and will be your final flight. The other thing I want to tell you is, ‘Don’t you ever screw with my panel lights.’”