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Their really is no substitution for good, dedicated instructors who pride themselves on teaching students the correct way to fly an aircraft. I really consider myself lucky to have had an instructor who did just that. The first words that came out of his mouth were, " I take flying serious, if you are not willing to do that then you need to find another instructor". My first flight with him he told me, "That you fly with your eyes outside of the cockpit, not looking at the controls!" And just so I would not make the mistake of looking at instruments that much he covered them up with a flat water stopper that had some suction. He would go over emergency procedures with me consistently, both on the ground and in flight. His way of saying hello was "Whats VNE on this plane" or "Tell me in sequence what to do if I have an engine out". It was constent drilling all the time. On my last dual cross country flight, I was comming back from Santa Barbara and heading to Brackett field in Pomona California. In the middle of my flight, I was over the coast of the Pacific Ocean, he put those suctions on all of my insturments and tells me that none of my instruments work. Then he pointed at the wet compass and said "That's the only instrument that works, take us home using your flight plan". I learned real quick that if I wanted to turn a certain degree, I had to turn in the opposite direction that I read on the wet compass. To make a long story short I flew all the way back to my home airport, using all my ground references. I called in about 5 miles out, was placed number 3 following a c152 and landed. When I got on the ground he quized me a couple of times about weather. It wasn't until I was pulling up to my driveway that I realized the only time he took any of the water stoppers off was when I got into slow flight and the only one he took off was the airspeed indicator. And to top it off we landed on 26R, which is not equipped with a VASI, so my landing was done with my eyes completly outside. I only looked at the airpeed indicator to add flaps.
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