[AnAmericanMother]

My flight instructor was a bit of a joker.

He once opened the passenger side door in flight.

He would also pull the throttle back all the way and announce, "Engine failure! Whaddya do?" He also once sneaked a pencil eraser into the cigarette lighter and said, "Whoops! Electrical fire! Whaddya do?"

I could see him pulling something like this . . . but I think I would have called him on it a little sooner, and then radioed the tower to have the EMTs standing by on landing.

That would have been a VERY tense landing, though . . . especially in a crosswind!

[Myrddin]

My instructor was skilled at aerobatics. Very capable of positioning the aircraft at an odd angle in a stall without any sensory clue with respect to how it got that way. As he did each one, it was a stare at your knees until I say "go". On "go", a view of the instruments "hooded" and immediate assessment of how to recover. The left wing low, nose slightly up and complete stall was an interesting mix.

Early on, we did some exercises using the doors to generate enough drag to steer the aircraft. Simulating loss of specific flight control surfaces. In the end, I think that my instructor had to employ those techniques to prevent the aircraft where he was a passenger from crashing into homes around Ensenada. The end assessment was a locked up control surface due to improper maintenance. Since he is no longer with us, his name was Ralph Buck. He was an instructor at Flying J Aviation at Brown Field south of San Diego. Over 50,000 hours of flight time and dead over improper maintenance of the aircraft where he was passenger.