I preflight and get all the things set in the right place, POH and AFD on right, sectional, plotter, and E-6B on left. Go back and get DE and hood. He explains that he is a complete zero and I don't have to passenger brief him (I've read the post on CRM and using the DE, but looked at the text and it may be a little suspect, leave for another thread, I decided not to push it). Said he doesn't even log it as dual given. I go through start up checklist, no problem, get ATIS, call ground, and start taxi. Check my brakes, say "Your controls", he looks a little surprised and says "OK" and taps the brakes, I say "My controls" and continue. Not a very positive exchange but let's leave it at that. The wind is right down the runway, but swinging from left quarter to right quarter, I keep swinging the ailerons, probably look spastic.
Get to runup area, turn too far from edge, leave in the middle, gross. Set instruments and run it up, fails mag check, he perks up at this. Aside here: the ship was scheduled for maint Monday all the way through my ride, they were going to take cylinders off to look at a possible ring problem leading to fouling, mechanic said if anything happened to go full power, full rich, for three seconds. Never heard that one before. If it didn't work to come back and they would have me gone in ten minutes after cleaning it. So I try it and it works. Should probably go talk to mech and ask about it.
Hold short of 31R and announce to tower, get cleared and go. No problems with comms (yet) always flown from controlled field. He asks for a short field TO. So I do. Wind is all over the place and pitch control is difficult, obstacle cleared, transition to Vy, turn for noise abatement (that could be a bust according to PTS) and turn cross, then down wind, pitch and roll control still rough, but rudder is OK (took long enough to get THAT automatic!). Log time off and calculate TOC time. Do some shallow S turns for visibility. Planned to go to 5500MSL but before I get there he wants me to divert. I as for an altitude and he says my discretion, so I choose 3500MSL so have to set and trim to cruise, set power, AND divert. And were still getting bounced around, none of maintaining roll attitude with the rudder, I keep having to use pretty solid aileron thrusts. Somehow manage to measure 10nm distance and 20 east of south true so 160 true so 145 magnetic. Turn to and record time. So he asks when we get there. So I say roughly 5 min. He says how rough, so I spin madly on the E-6B and come up with 5.5 min.
He made very clear that I had all the radios so I dial in the field CTAF and announce. He asks for some clearing turns so I do 90 left 90 right. Now steep turns. Bump the throttle, trim nose up and go into right. Still bumpy but I keep the altitude within limits, roll out on heading but no chance of feeling my wake like I was doing during practice. He has me do another to the left, but no better (but no worse) than the first. So far so good.
Now he asks for slow flight, flaps 40, 55 KIAS. pull power, white arc, flaps, trim, power, but not enough to keep altitude, behind the power curve and the plane, pathetic. Maintain coordinated flight, and work to get to entry altitude under some semblance of non-panic. He asks fro turns to heading and I work them, still creeping to altitude. OK, now stall. So I power up and start to retract flaps and he asks me what I was doing. I say a stall like I was taught, can't stall from here?
Well, OK (Do or die now, stalls are one of my weakest areas, together with GR, landings, you name it). So flaps back out, GUMPCCUPS real fast, power idle and pull back, buffet, horn, stall, pitch, cram, clean, climb, lost about 100, one of my best stalls ever. So I'm cleaning flaps at Vy, and he pulls my engine. Glide, grass, gas. Set pitch, start lazy turn to the field 3 mi away and start my mental checklist, simulate nothing worked, get out my checklist and confirm. He asks where I'm going and I tell him about the airfield I chose. Still way high so I mosey over to see the windsock, announce the simulated engine failure, and do figure eights at the approach end getting down. I explain that I'll kill the master after flaps and before we TD. Decide to turn final, am high, so I slip, slip some more (before putting any flaps in, the checkride is NOT usenet, even though I have The Shirt and believe in it), hang out the boards, master off (simulated), and am STILL high, but the wind is honking, I still have to slip some, and I'll make midfield. Totally botch the flare and drop it in from two feet up. But we're down. He says "OK off we go", so I put in power, retract flaps, cut the power and explain that I landed too long for comfort, we'll taxi back.
No follow TO and landings and pattern, of which the details blur. Except for the constant fight to maintain attitude, the sloppiness of the crab on the legs of the pattern, and calling that I had turned a left cross wind when I had done right, so I had to correct myself. Several other planes out there and I did keep good SA throughout, and generally good comms. We do a straight out heading home and he tells me to don the hood (or is it hood the Don?) and we do climbing turns, straight and level, VOR nav, all OK. Turbulence is less and that helps. Unusual attitudes. The first one is a doozy. Recover. I'm nose high, so power up, pitch down and roll level, oops I'm also fast, so power back. Happened in less than a second, and I didn't exceed Vno so OK. Next one. I'm nose down, so power back, level, and pitch. We're done.
He tells me to get ATIS and tell tower we're inbound. He takes the plane and starts talking about how I can improve my flare, so I figure I've got it. He talks about the illusion changing from plane going to runway to runway going to plane as an indicator for flaring. Never hear that one either. Does a couple of patterns and tells me to do one. I do one fairly acceptable landing for the conditions (more wind than I had seen in moths). So he tells me to park and meet him in his office. Just now the heart rate is going down. 1.4 on the Hobbs.
In the office he asks how I think I did and I tell him that by regs if he hasn't told me already I've passed. He says that it was a very solid performance, but I point out the pitch problems, the flaring, the GR, the comms snafu. He says that smoothness will come, that the outcome of a maneuver was never in doubt. Great day. Many thanks to all that have contributed here and that have played no small part in this milestone. Thanks one and all.
PS. I see that I missed the discussion of alternator failures, and the one go round (which has to be demonstrated anyway, doesn't it).
Checkride #9
I've only posted here a few times in the last 6 months but I've been an avid reader and learned a great deal from all of you. I was hoping to get the checkride out of the way a month ago before I went on vacation for two weeks but it was raining on the day of the checkride. We got the oral out of the way that day anyhow. Then I went on vacation for a couple weeks, then practiced some more for a week, then played phone tag with the DE for a week. Friday night the examiner called me up at 9pm and said that if we can get a plane we can do the ride the next morning.
My flight school was of course all booked up for the weekend but the examiner owns a 152 that his local club uses which happened to be free available. I was rather concerned about flying an aircraft I had never seen before on my checkride. I whipped out the cross country planning that night (we had to change the route from the one I had planned a month ago due to marine layer conditions on the coast), reviewed some procedures, and tried to get some sleep.
We met at Montgomery Field the next morning at 10am. By 11 the marine layer overcast cleared to haze and we were off. Fortunately, his 152 was pretty much identical to the 152's I had flown before. Once we were in the air I completely forgot that it was a new aircraft to me. Everything went relatively well. My biggest problem was he used terminology slightly different than my instructor. I got a little confused in using VOR but got it figured out after a bit of thinking about what he was asking. He also asked me to slow it down to the no-flaps minimum controllable airspeed and turn to a heading. I had never heard MCA used in reference to a 152. It took me a second to realize he was asking me to do slow-flight.
The only other glitch I ran into was when he pulled the power on me. When my instructor and I usually do this we do it in the nearby practice area. But we were a couple thousand feet above pattern altitude over the runway of a busy uncontrolled airport (I hear rumors that they are trying to make it a controlled field). I did the 7 S's while coming up with a plan for what I was going to do. The other traffic made things kind of tricky. I spiraled down out away from the pattern and then entered on a close-in downwind with the appropriate announcements (I am rather proud I remembered how to do that because I've only flown into uncontrolled fields a couple of times before) for my first key point for a short approach which should have easily put us on the runway. Unfortunately there was another aircraft on final right where I wanted to turn in. I skipped flaps and tried to stretch downwind out behind him and then turn in close behind him which put things way off and left us without decent spacing and probably not enough glide distance to do an actual touchdown on the runway like he wanted. At that point I was screwed so I powered up and said we weren't going to make it. He agreed that I easily would have made it if that other aircraft had not been on final. Had it been an actual emergency I would have declared it to the other traffic and made them get the heck out of my way and made the landing. His only complaint was that I should have circled down right over the numbers instead of out past the downwind. Had there been no other traffic or in an actual emergency I would have done so but it didn't seem like a good idea at the time. We would have come down right on top of the guy on final. He was satisfied that I knew what I was doing and we went on to do the steep turns, s-turns, turns about a point, etc. which went perfectly. My steep turns have improved a whole lot since I started out!
I then navigated back to Montgomery and just for kicks he had me fly the ILS in. Once established I had two in the doughnut all the way down to where he told me to look at the runway. Sweet! Yes, this 152 was a full IFR airplane! I've never seen a 152 with so much equipment jammed in it. Overall my flying was smooth, landings were great, and I had a good time. First pax next weekend! :) IFR ticket and other great fun, here I come!
Tracy Reed http://
PP-ASEL
Checkride # 10
Took my checkride yesterday. In spite of all the work and studying, I was still a bit nervous. After the oral we went out to the plane to fly part of the cross-country that the D.E. had me plan. Got as far as 15 miles southeast of Livermore airport (My flight plan was to RBL - Red Bluff Airport, CA) and she had me divert to Byron Airport (C83). I demonstrated stalls, soft & short-field takeoffs and landings,,,, and more. Some maneuvers I knew that I normally do much better,,, still she didn't say a word (i.e., she had told me that if she didn't say anything, it meant the test was going well). At some point she told me to fly back to my home airport (RHV) on any heading, my choice.
I kept thinking all the way back that she hadn't said that I failed anything yet, but I still wasn't certain. Called tower, reporting over Calaveras Reservoir (which is northeast of the airport). The controller recognized my voice and thought I was calling from Coyote Lake,,,, since I often would practice maneuvers at some airports south of my home airport. Anyway, he cleared me to land, straight-in on runway 31R, which of course would only be possible if I were approaching from the south. I paused for a moment, trying to think if there was any other possible interpretation of the controller's instruction and couldn't think of one. I called position again and asked if the tower understood that I was reporting at a location North-North-East of the airport. The controller promptly corrected his clearance for a 45 into the downwind, #2 cleared landing. As I was on final the controller said a twin was gaining on me and asked me to do a go-round. Not a problem, back into the pattern again.
The D.E. wanted me to demonstrate a short-field landing, which I did and after receiving clearance from ground I taxied to the tie-down area. Once I shut down the plane the D.E. turned to me and shook my hand, congratulating me on passing my checkride. First word out of my mouth was "really????!!!", not that I thought I did badly, it was just almost dreamlike hearing her say those words.
She told me she would go into the FBO and fill out the paperwork while I tied-down the plane. Felt like I needed to pinch myself,,, I said the words to myself "I am a licensed pilot,,,," over and over to reassure myself that I was not just having a great dream.
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