AZ:

Because they are afraid to fully-flare the airplane. The T-38 buffets like crazy in the flare (and even on final) as it is a thin-wing airplane, so to max perform it, you have to fly in buffet (actually, downwash hitting the horizontal stabilizer). Wing root is about 5 inches thick; wingtips are about 0.95 inch.

It takes a lot more pull on the stick than the student expects, it buffets a lot (a buffet that in any other airplane you would instinctively think "Cripes!! I'm in a deep stall!!"), and the best part is, if you fully flare it, you can't see where you are going. Kind of like landing a tail-dragger--the nose blocks the view. So, they incomplete-flare it, and we touchdown fast. It is hard on the tires--they rarely last more than 25 landings, and that is going down to the 4th layer of exposed tire-cord. (It's colored red so the crew chiefs/pilots know when it is time to be changed).

Viz from the backseat is bad (but not as bad as the backseat in the F-4). I know when the student has a good aimpoint on final when I can't see the aimpoint (His helmet is in the way). You learn to use a lot of peripheral vision, but today's kids were raised on X-Box and Play Stations--to them, the world is always straight-ahead. And they won't look away from the HUD--the electronic God of wisdom.

Related: if I say: 'Traffic at 3:00 O'clock, 4 miles, 5 low," odds are he'll look the wrong way. It became common enough that I wondered why. Answer: starting about 5 years ago, all my students grew up with digital watches. They had never owned an analog watch, so clock-position means nothing to them--they have to learn it when they are 23 or 24.

Thanks for the great explanation UAL. I've heard before that the T-38 could be a pretty challenging aircraft to pilot and this only makes it sound more so.

So, are you saying that this normally occuring buffet is not actually the onset of a stall?

I've read that stall recovery in the T-38 can be very difficult, even with full reheat. If I were a student, I think I'd be a little nervous about it too!

Also, thats pretty shocking that anyone who has made it that far into flight training would not be able to correctly traffic direction callouts. Crazy.

Pinnacle baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, where I went we DID take an ATC class for a whole semester, 3 hours of credit, taught by a a controller from a nearby airport. We did use the .65 in class. I don't know how much we "studied" it, and I most definitely don't know much about their regs, but we did use it in class.

On a side note, keiundraj, when you ask questions like "is the stick shaker a practicable airspeed," even in jest, that doesn't do much for your "I'm as good as a 4000 hour pilot" or "I made the same mistakes that those high time guys made" arguments. Guarantee nobody else even considered (or joked about) slowing to the stick shaker, or even enough to get the PLI on the screen.

Lastly, with your "every flight I'VE made has arrived safely with the mission accomplished" attitude, you need to remember or realize, one of the two, that it's not a one man show out there. Granted the experienced guys could fly it single pilot without much of a problem in almost any situation (e.g., IOE checkairmen, high time captains, etc...) Low-time FO's are going to have more difficulty doing that in high-workload environements. Thankfully we're not even supposed to attempt to fly it single-pilot, so that's really a moot point. Just work on the attitude man.