ATC

I know this post is could be taken as a touchy subject. I am very cautious about writing this because I respect and admire the work that an air traffic controller does when controlling multiple aircraft in a relatively very small area. They are almost always at the top of their game and provide a confidence to the pilots of both large and small aircraft.

However, the reason I'm writing this is because I recently had a situation where a controller was either having a bad day or just not happy to be there. Because of this it caused my aircraft to be put in a dangerous near miss situation and the controller to belittle and yell at other aircraft throughout the flight.

We were practicing night landings for the first time with my student. After going to the practice area and working some maneuvers we headed back to a busy controlled airport for landings. Entering the pattern I initially noticed that we were a following an aircraft who is on a wider than normal downwind. Which is fine by me especially since we don't want to cut off an aircraft at night.

This continued for about two trips around the pattern before ATC started to get upset with all aircraft over, well, basically everything. "All aircraft your downwind is Way to wide" "N***** it sounds like you still don't understand what I said" "N***** this is going to be a full stop landing for you." etc. etc. etc.

In the middle of all this I'm trying to teach my student how to do night landings. Which on about the 5th attempt as we turned to base I look back on downwind and notice an aircraft inside of us and closing fast at our altitude. I glance at my ADS-B and see that he is almost 1/2 mile and at our altitude closing. This is where I take over and push the nose forward and loose about 500' and put us extremely low to avoid this near miss.

Now again please don't get me wrong. I sincerely respect and admire the work of all ATC. But sometimes we all have bad days, in the world of aviation we need to leave our troubles and feelings at home. Lives are at stake, we are required to be the most professional of professionals. This goes for both pilots, large and small, atc, FBO employees, line operations, security, and everyone associated with aviation. Don't risk your, mine, or other peoples lives because you are upset.