HT-2  FLYING 

            During my cadets days at EFS Bidar in 1980, a very temperamental instructor, was teaching Landing technique to a Sikh Cadet on HT-2, a tail-wheel aircraft...

 This aircraft is cool from the pupil's point of view, pupil friendly, as the instructor is sitting behind you, out of sight in the rear cockpit...He can only yell at you on intercom or shake the stick vigorously left/ right in frustration to hit your knees... Even if the pupil strains to look back he can only see only the top of his instructor's bondome. Although the pupil has a good view ahead, the instructor cannot see the runway ahead but only through left and right sides can he guess the alignment of aircraft  wrt the centerline....A very tricky aircraft that yaws to right / left unusually when you open / close throttle. This yaw has to be instantly corrected/ compensated by opposite rudder ...A number of pilots have swung it a couple of 360 degs during the landing roll...

 So, lets come to the topic...This cadet who had failed his solo check by CFI was given 2 sorties extn but couldn’t get the hang of the rudder control during landing and his landing touch downs were very harsh and heavy ...His instructor took him up, gave him enough landing practice. He used to take over on the take off roll do a short circuit and hand over controls on short finals, but decided to remain calm during these extension sorties, but still was unable to analyse and rectify his heavy landing flaw...at the end of the two sorties, during taxi back the instructor stopped the aircraft on exit taxi-track and asked him on intercom,"227, what does your Father do?"

 Pupil, : "Sir, he is a zamindar in Ludhiyana."

Instructor, : "Achha, fir toh bahut zameen aur khet bhi honge."

 Pupil, : "Han Sir, Sau acre zamin hai, khet hain"

Instructor, : "Achha, fir toh bahut se baill aur  hal bhi honge."

 Pupil, : "Nahi Sir, 5 tractors hain"

Now suddenly the instructor turned furious, gave a mouthful of explicits, : "MC, BC, toh  saale  apne  ghar  jake  apne  tractoron  ko  todd,  govt  of india  ke hawai jahaz  kyun  todd  raha  hai  yahan."...

Hahaha, this the Cadet had himself narrated to us...He somehow had

scrapped through and later become a good pilot.

Cadet Raj Dutta

HT-2

PS--  This write up has reminded me of an accident that happened in EFS Bidar in 1980. My instructor Sqn Ldr Ravindran had taken me up for a routine trg sortie and as we landed back...emgergency siren was sounded by the ATC and we were asked to line up and take off again as an HT2 had just crash landed...All the cadets were made airborne in all available aircraft...we took off and did low pass over the crash site....we could see the instructor of that aircraft sitting on his aircraft wings trying to pull out under-trainee Army Capt....unfortunately the poor soul succumbed to injuries......The instructor was injured with minor injuries and admitted in Hospital, we all cadets paid him a visit in the evening....Very sad Day it was for all of us...that was the only fatal accident of our course, 126 PC.....RIP