I aways find it interesting that this type of post is counter-balanced by the "I soloed on my first flight".

My suggestions (as a college instructor):

See if anyone can bring a laptop to the field with a flight sim on it. Since you are recovering the plane, there appear to be no negative consequence to mistakes made (and hence no learning).

Second, when I was (the learner) on a buddy box, I had no real way of knowing when the instructor had taken over. Mabybe that's the problem here.