Back Seat Flying

I was recently given the opportunity to "back seat" a couple of flights with the chief pilot of the Australian Civil Air Patrol. The first was a check out on a Piper Lance with another CPL student, this aircraft is often used for freight and charter as it has a decent useful load or alternatively 6 or even an optional 7 seats. Once again a fuel injected 6cyl engine, 300hp with retractable gear and this time a T Tail.
We did a standard basic handling lesson, a few stalls, circuits and turns. It is interesting to see the degradation in human performance once the stress builds up, it's something I notice in myself when learning a new skill or manoeuvre in the aircraft, but watching another person gives a new depth to it, and normalises it for me.
It was also good to see a different style of teaching than I am used to as well, words of encouragement and communicating the anticipated response of the aircraft is not something I usually get!
The next flight was really cool, it was the first flight of an initial twin endorsement in a Beechcraft Duchess! Finally my first taste of multi engines!
We took this out over towards Katoomba and played with the autopilot, another first for me, and that looks both exciting and a little scary trusting the aircraft as it finds its way. I'm sure it is something I will get used to pretty quickly. We didn't get any assymmetric work in but did a couple of circuits and some stalls.
As we were coming back in to the airport, it was quite a busy Bankstown Sunday and we had traffic to our left and to our right and preceding traffic on the runway. We were cleared for the left when I spotted a warrior on a wide inbound leg for the same runway, suddenly they turn towards us to cuts us off! We made a quick call to the tower for a clearance to runway Center to avoid the collision, not sure what the tower was doing during all this but landing 3 aircraft on parallel runways simultaneously with 3 student pilots was in my opinion a little unnecessary! Despite that we landed with a greaser and taxied back, I'm very much looking forward to getting my multi endo done in jan!
Thanks for reading.