The bolt that was meant to attach the right hand bottom engine-mount to the fuselage was mostly undone.
This particular student was a really nice guy but he didn’t look great – he had taxi-door ears, squiffy teeth and long floppy arms. He was a kind and decent human being, but that’s the way he had been kitted out. None of his previous instructors had encouraged him to take up a less intellectually demanding pursuit, but they had all avoided flying with him again. Poor man. So I am doing circuits and bumps with this guy, and they are not happy events. While his body is in the aircraft, his mind sits on a stone in the sun, chewing grass. We were doing a glide approach when all the Swiss cheese-holes align themselves with the planets. In the last few seconds he has done two things wrong. He has started the glide too early, and he has forgotten to use carb-heat. In those days, most training landings were from a glide approach that started at 1000 ft on base. Now, before I go on, I should tell you that the Cruiser has fore-and-aft seating – like a Cub. The instructor sits in the back and only has access to four controls – the stick, the rudder the throttle and the door handle. You can see little more than the back of the pupe’s head unless you loosen your seat-belt, stretch forward
to peer over his shoulder. So there we are in a glide with no carb-heat – and the engine is about to stop. This wouldn’t matter if we were going to make it to the field – but we weren’t. “Carb heat,” I say. Nothing happens, so I repeat my request, louder. We didn’t use head-sets – we just shouted. But the comparative silence of a glide approach made comms pretty easy. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hear me – it just wasn’t getting through. His mind was still sitting in the sun chewing grass. “Carb heat!” I shout and tap him on the shoulder. He is made of rubber. His head twists round 180 degrees, like a turkey, and he seems surprised to find someone else in his vicinity. I point at the panel and repeat my instruction slowly as if talking to a defiant infant. He faces ahead again and yanks out the mixture. The engine noise ceases completely and the prop slows to a very slow windmill. “Not that one,” I say cranking the voice to a greater volume. So he pulls another knob that works the cabin heat. But leaves the mixture out. I seldom shout at a pupe, but this calls for decisive action, June 2021
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