You do not want to see this in the aircraft...

When the first IqAF helicopter pilots came up here from Taji, they just wanted someone to show them how the sim worked -- I wasn't teaching a class that day and knew how to run the sim without flushing the database. One thing led to another, though, and I started showing them how to recognize when the situation was starting to hop into the handbasket and how to recover *fast* -- it didn't start out as an instrument flight training session, buuuuut, when the Boss asked me what we'd been working on and I told him, he took me aside and said,

"Look, I know you didn't hire on to do this (heh -- actually, I did -- the Company just pays me to do Other Things), and this certainly isn’t anywhere near being finalized in the contract (which means I’m free to observe what works best right off the bat rather than trying to fit something into a syllabus) and I can’t ask you to put in the extra time after the classes you’re already teaching (no problem -- we’ll just call it Professional Development During Personal Time or something -- I’ll do it!), but these guys really need…”

They really needed the training, even if if was nothing more than "How to Keep Right-Side-Up When the World Disappears" -- so I started teaching recovery from an unusual attitude and developed some scenarios to sharpen their straight-and-level instrument skills. Call it an aerial survival course, taught three days at a time to four pilots at a time.

“…something that will keep them alive when the weather turns to crap and all they can see through the windshield is orange-brown, or nothing at all…”

The first seven classes were a mix of fairly senior pilots with a decent amount of actual instrument time and some good tactical pilots with limited weather time, but good stick-wiggling skills. Five classes had Iraqi IPs in the mix, so I picked up on their phraseology for my use and taught them a couple of techniques for their use. They had the skills, but hadn't had much opportunity to *practice* them.

I was beginning to wonder if there were any Iraqi pilots who *didn't* have a lot of experience or a couple of dozen hours of actual weather time.

Ummmmm -- there are. A lot of them, in fact. I've just been working with pilots who either have 3,000 hours of MiG-21 (and -25) time and a dozen hours in an Mi-17 or 300 hours of MiG time and 1,000 hours in a Gazelle -- and just got back on flight status after ten years out of the cockpit. They're re-learning old skills while I'm teaching them new ones.

“…and I don’t want to read about another crash like the one they just had. Knowing we’re here and we can help them. Look, you’re not gonna get any extra money for doing this (I don’t care! I can do it! I want to do it! Throw me in the briar patch!)…”

And I’ve been crash-proofing them. It’s a quick, down ‘n’ dirty, learn-by-doing block of sim time, and the hardest part for *me* is to resist sticking the All-Fixing Instructor Hand into the cockpit and onto the controls to ease them out of a situation that’d kill them if this were for-real. They need to know that *they* can do it.

So, I talk instead, because my hand won’t be there when they get into the aircraft. But they’ll remember the voice.

The guy in the vid fell out of the clouds inverted and “crashed” that time -- and eight hours later, he was pulling it out within ten seconds.

 “…but, dammitt, it’s just the Right Thing to do.”

Word got back to the folks at both headsheds -- the IqAF put in a formal request for a full-fledged Inadvertent IMC Recovery Course. I just finished adding my comments and recommendations to the coordinating draft from the Company.

And in the meantime, until all the tees are crossed, the ayes are dotted, and the appropriate signatures are in place, we’re still doing the Right Thing -- four guys at a time…