Irritant

It was a good flying day. I had Izzy at 9 am, and we did all the maneuvers for Private pilot checkride prep, and she did a good job.  After lunch I went up with Eric and we did instrument approaches. He did a perfect ILS 23 for the first time, so I had him do an RNAV, and then an RNAV circle to land, which pushed him.  Also a good flight.  I came home and did Ann's dinner, and then went to a Flying Squirrels meeting. There's a new student interested in learning to fly, she's 14 and will be joining the Squirrels for the summer camp program, and Steve thought it would be a good idea if Isabel and I went to the meeting tonight so she'd see some representation. It ended up being a good thing, because other than me and her, the only other people there were two current squirrel guys and one former squirrel who 'graduated', plus the instructors Greg and Steve.  It was a very quiet meeting, which would not have been impressive, and probably still wasn't, but at least was better with us two there too.

The irritant is with the CAF. I went down to Terre Haute to fly the BT with Dennis, as I said.  We flew almost two hours, after which time I determined he is safe to fly the plane.  I send in his form, and get back an email from the new guy in charge of ops that says basically he hasn't had ground school and we need to log our flights because none were logged since Nov and he doesn't meet the requirements (number of landings), which we had requested a waiver for.  Backing up.  When the rest of us got a checkout, we each had about one flight.  I had two, because I had one from the front and one from the back seat.  In total I flew 1.5 hours, and was signed off to fly it and to instruct in it.  We did one-on-one groundschool with Mark N., the check pilot.  Five of us got a similar checkout, including one guy who needed a waiver for not having enough tailwheel landings, like Dennis here.  So I respond to this first email and clarify that we did one-on-one ground school using the manual, physical walk-around and discussion at the aircraft, and TCDS info, just like Mark did with us, as we wait to get in our first annual groundschool for the BT.  I informed him that our flights are logged current and up to date, and basically answered all his concerns, including that Dennis had demonstrated proficiency in the tailwheel.  So he writes back tonight and says that he wants Dennis to get 10 hours in the BT before he'll sign him off and that maybe we could do more stalls and that he doesn't want to diminish my capabilities as an instructor but that he doesn't think Dennis has enough time.  NOBODY has 10 hours in that airplane, including me.  They all had 1-2 hour checkouts, and Dennis gets stuck with 10 hours?  And he is telling me how to be an instructor, and doubting my recommendation. It's insulting and irritating.  Dennis just wants to go along with it, and I want to fire back.  I'm going to say *something*, because it feels a little like my 'honor' has been insulted, but I'll try not to burn the bridge with the new guy while I do it.  So irritating.

Kaylee's coming home tomorrow afternoon, and I think Spring Break starts for her after that. :)