What they teach you on Assistant Instructor courses

Look at that sky, and all the day spent on spinning down out of it! Here's Jane perfecting the lost art of glider washing by hosing Gransden airfield off a Puchacz. She has yet to finish off the course with CFI Andy and is still 'only' a BI.

The 9 day course was hard work but very enjoyable and interesting, being an excellent round up and consolidation of everything we'd learned (or skipped) during our flying careers to date. The flying-while-talking was challenging, but got easier with practice, and even the dreaded Bronze paper proved not to be such a hurdle with a bit of prep. The coaches were great, very encouraging even when rubbishing our latest efforts. We had to contend with some mega hailstorms. which meant yet more briefings, and the final weekend rained us off completely, leaving a bit of flying to complete with Andy. It's not a cheap way to spend a week but it's certainly well worthwhile if you want to improve your flying.