An foreign student pilot classmate of mine, whose English skills left a bit to be desired, was having trouble recognizing the onset of a stall in a T-37. The T-37 will stall quite noticeably, and easily enters any one of a number of nasty types of spins. His instructor repeatedly had the student set up for stall entry, and then would say "See the buffet?" as the stall was about to occur. Invariably the student failed to recognize the condition, and seemed to be more interested in looking at the ground than flying the airplane. Since the aircraft was usually nose high at this time, he had to strain to see the ground, and occasionally added enough rudder and/or stick input to induce a spin.

Totally exasperated, the instructor finally lost it one day and screamed at the student, "What the hell are you looking at? The aircraft is stalling, and you are more interested in looking at the ground."
The student replied, "Iím just trying to see the buffet.". The instructor then explained, "Seeing the buffet is sort of a figure of speech. Maybe I should have said "Can you feel the buffet?" What exactly did you think you would see on the ground, anyway?"
To which the student responded, "You know, some of those big brown animals, sort of like cows, but with big humps."

-- Doug Brandes, dbrandes@juno.com

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