The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between

CHAPTER 4

The Enemy in the Mirror

Nearly every student pilot, at some point early in the training process, has the following experience: The instructor coaxes him down onto a short, grass landing strip bounded at either end by high trees. It is a little scary, but the student figures the instructor, who has flown thousands of hours, must know what he is doing.

After debriefing the approach and landing, it is time to take off again. The student knows the procedure—apply full power and pull back on the control yoke to get the fragile nose wheel off the rough ground. Soon, the student, instructor, and plane are bumping down the field, gaining speed, but far more slowly than normal on the soft, uneven turf.

As the seconds drag by, the trees at the end of the run-way loom closer and taller. At long last, the aircraft looses the bonds of earth, and the student yanks back even harder on the yoke to clear the firs and alders that threaten to consume the tin can that surrounds him and his instructor.

Calmly, the instructor tells him “My plane” and pushes the yoke forward, and the plane’s nose with it, down, and aims straight at the trees. Which, of course, is the correct thing to do; when the student pulled the struggling plane off the ground, it had not gained enough airspeed to climb. Only by flying level for a few more seconds could the plane accelerate to proper flying speed and successfully clear the trees.

The difference between the behavior of the student and of the instructor was ...