Published: July 23, 2016
Okay, I don’t usually post or even write this stuff at 12:45 when I get home (and this may not get posted at that hour, but it’s still being written) but tonight was an interesting night and I wanted to write it with some emotion left in me, and I’m WAY too fired up to go to bed and actually fall asleep right now anyhow.
Here goes: Tonight was problem 2 in the TSS labs. Since yesterday was departure heavy, tonight was arrival heavy instead. Lots and lots of VFR arrivals from every direction. I got three local runs tonight, and I’m thankful for that, because I got a lot of good practice.
First run went pretty well. I don’t remember any issues standing out with this one, and my instructor was pretty quiet most of the time, despite saying he was going to talk and “walk me through the problem.” While I didn’t think I needed to have the problem “walked through” I was going to let him do his thing, he’s the instructor, after all. Like I mentioned, he didn’t talk much, so I’m going to take this as a good thing (but I guess you could interpret that a lot of different ways).
Next I monitored a local run which went alright (I find them kind of boring) and then ran a ground run which I didn’t have any major issues with. We started having to deal with an airport vehicle who wants to go out to the VOR, which is on the far side of all the runways, of course, which means you have to coordinate with the local controller to cross all the runways. It’s probably good practice because this is what we will have in our PA, and it’s “the most difficult thing you’ll have to do.” (Most have said that it’s not actually difficult, just relatively speaking, the most difficult thing.)
Second local run (*takes a deep breath…*)… I was really ready to hit the problem hard when I saw the instructor walk in and plug in next to me. I immediately recognized him as an instructor who does have a reputation in the program as someone who is very strict and can come off as very abrupt. I was actually a little happy about it – because I figured he could give me some good pointers and would be a little critical which I feel I sometimes need to do well.
A little background: I had already watched this instructor during a run earlier in the day, and the student working the problem is one of the better students in the class. To put it lightly, he called for a “pause” in the problem (the RPO- remote pilot operator literally hits pause) and gives the instructor an opportunity to teach or explain something. The mistake was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things (didn’t issue some traffic to a departure and one other minor thing). He was shouting pretty loudly and seemed very displeased with the student, who undoubtedly felt totally dejected for the rest of the problem (which he later confirmed to me, later).
Back to real time: the first half of the problem went very well, I was really feeling it, kinda killing the problem. Then, it all turned suddenly. I had moved a plane over to the left side parallel runway (which in hindsight was a bad choice…) to avoid some wake turbulence delays, and eventually cleared it for takeoff on that runway. The computer wasn’t taking the callsign correctly but the RPOs had shouted out the correct readback, which is SOP for the RPOs to do. A few seconds later, I looked back down the runway, and noticed the airplane I had cleared (or thought I had) wasn’t moving anymore. I stated aloud, “what’s that mountain (callsign) doing?”
Andddddd that was it… instructor short-temper lost it, called pause, and started shouting. First, he chewed me out for “barking at the RPO.” When I explained that wasn’t my intent, he yelled at me again and demanded I, “look him in the eye when he’s talking to me.” Left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth and ran the rest of the problem with minimal calls and with a pretty straight tone. I later caught up with said RPO and “apologized” – but he made it clear an apology wasn’t necessary.
The debrief was brief, and I promptly left the cab. I was pissed. While I may have been in the wrong (and surely learned my lesson), I didn’t feel the reprimand from the instructor was appropriate, professional, or warranted (especially after he made a comment about me running a good problem seconds before he lost his marbles).
Fortunately, my last local run was redemption hour. I had a really good instructor who I hadn’t worked with before. I also had to work with an instructor on the ground run (this is because we are minus one student from the normal 18, so every so often you get paired with an instructor). Working with the instructor is fun, because they will do things correctly and efficiently, but also intimidating at the same time. I felt like I ran an excellent run, which felt really good since I was looking for some serious redemption after the previous run.
During the run, the ground instructor made several comments to me, things like, “man, you’re doing a great job” and, “I’ll work with you any day, great job!” That made me smile, but I kept pressing forward. When I got into jams, I worked out the problems and did what I had to do, keeping it legal. I had a few voice rec issues, but I learned from my previous run not to bank on the RPO (or even say anything, apparently!) to fix the problem and some of them I worked out before the RPO said anything.
Despite thinking I ran a pretty good run, when there was about 10 minutes left in the run, I happened to turn around and saw my instructor writing a novel on my grading sheet (which doesn’t count for anything). WHAT? I thought I was doing great!
At the end of the run, before the debrief, the ground instructor who was running as a student who had previously given me the compliments leaned over towards me, patted me on the back, and said, “great run kid.” That made me smile.
Then, the debrief started. The instructor, who hadn’t said much during the run, came to life. He said I ran an excellent run, but wanted to give me some pointers about things I can do to clean up my runs and help things run more efficiently. His advice and critiques were things beyond the scope of any of the advice any other instructor had given me, and I really appreciated that. We talked for a good five minutes debriefing on all the calls I made that I could have combined, and different ways I could have solved my “problems” within the problems. He had literally written down every call that I made (in shorthand) and went through almost the whole problem with me during debrief! I hope I get to work with Glen more often as my instructor, because he was excellent!
Of course, I totally forgot it was fridge cleaning day on campus…so I left my lunchbox in the fridge and it all got thrown out (they were nice enough to leave the cooler, though…). Sigh…guess I’ll have to go buy more stuff tomorrow.
Now, time for the weekend! Not sure what I have planned. If I get bored, I’ll post some pictures tomorrow!