The Longest Checkride

I didn't think that any ride could take longer that my private pilot practical. Today, I proved myself wrong. Last Friday (the 21st) was the original scheduling of my instrument ride. Even though I wasn't sure I did that great a job, the examiner seemed very pleased with the oral portion of the exam. Ok, vast improvement over the private ride where I got a letter of disapproval before climbing into the aircraft - the rest should be cake. After all, I was more worried about the oral than anything.

The weather last week was solidly overcast and we figured that because of heavy IFR traffic, we probably wouldn't be able to do practice approaches. This means sitting on the ground idling while we wait for our next clearance. That combined with an airshow at my home airport prompted the decision to discontinue and do the flight portion in a week.

Yesterday was the first flight. Again, I didn't think I did that great but the examiner had many kind words. I never got down to the minimum decent altitude on the VOR-A approach into Oceanside (KOKB) and I almost flew the holding pattern backwards. We did get stuck on the ground at Palomar (KCRQ), but only for 15 minutes. Being unable to carve out a section of VMC space to do unusual attitudes and a DME arc, the examiner opted to go back and do just one more flight to mop up the one goofy approach, the arc and unusual attitudes. I made quite a few mistakes, but caught most of them before the examiner had to say anything.

That supposedly final flight was today. One autopilot coupled approach into Brown (KSDM) and the other things and we would've been done. Except that I boneheaded just about every altitude I could have. On departure, the instruction from SoCal was to climb to 2600 feet, which I acknowledged and promptly levelled off at 1600. Of course, the examiner is sitting there waiting for me to realize what I'd done and I get the call from SoCal. "Cessna 290 verify you are climbing to 2600". I take another look at the altimiter and figure it out, acknowledge the call and resume climbing - oops.

The VOR-A approach to Brown has a stepdown fix from 2400 to the MDA of 1220 at FINLE intersection, 4.4 DME from Poggi VORTAC. We joined the approach course between HAILE and FINLE. After getting established on the approach course, what I should have done is decend to 2400 until reaching FINLE. What I did was cross FINLE at 2600. Ok, no real big deal there, I still have 4.4 miles to get to 1220 except that I don't realize yet what I've done wrong. I do catch that I should be going down so I level off at 2400 and cross the VOR (which on this approach is the missed approach point) at 2400 instead of the MDA - oops.

We do the arc and unusual attitudes to check them off the list and land at Gillespie. The debrief goes about as expected, I get my letter of disapproval and have to tell everyone who asks that no, I don't quite have that instrument rating yet. Of course, I'm working dispatch this afternoon so plenty of people are asking.

Now I have to go up one more time with the chief instructor so he can re-endorse me for the retake. And for those keeping score at home, yes this will be the 4th time I see the examiner. The good news is he's a real nice guy and a true professional. If I could just shake these checkride jitters and not make boneheaded mistakes, I might just survive getting this rating.

Some Photography

Cycle VI
Originally uploaded by InformationZulu.

It's been raining a little here and I came home to something that stirred my inner photographer. This one comes from a love of black and white, but there are some color shots too. Be sure to see the rest of the set on flickr.

FAA Wings

Wings level 1 is complete and the paperwork is now at the San Diego FSDO (flight standards district office, pronounced fizdo). I can't wait for my little bronze pin thingy. I did and plan to continue to participate in this program for three (3) reasons.

1. To be a safer pilot


2. To put it on my resume


3. To be a safer pilot

It's really only been a few months since passing my private pilot checkride and I was suprised how rusty some of those skills were. I also learned a couple of things that never got covered in my initial training thus reinforcing the opinion that you really should fly with a few different instructors.

If you are a US pilot, I highly recommend checking out the wings program. There is no such thing as too much training :)

Checkride Jitters

Tests make me nervous. Checkrides aren't any better. There's always the nagging thought that something got missed. What question is he going to ask me in the oral that I'm just not going to remember? Do I still remember how to do a DME arc? Holding pattern? Which approaches am I going to have to do? Will I remember to get all the right radios tuned on all the right frequencies? GPS? Autopilot? As you can see the question marks are not in short supply.

My IFR ride is scheduled for Friday the 21st and there's the optimistic part of me that knows I've been doing maneuvers and approaches over and over these past few months and the cheif pilot seems to think it's time to schedule the ride. Then of course there's the nervous side that is always wondering what pitfall I will catch. I made sure to get the afternoon slot instead of the morning one to avoid the embarrasing episode of waking up waay too late and showing up late for the test (not the best first impression on the examiner) and so that I'll have some time for last minute review before the actual oral exam begins (eek!).

Hopefully I'll be able to keep my confident foot forward.

Blog Switch Madness

Ok. I was gonna go with wordpress or movable type and host my own blog. But, it would seem that I just don't have the time to hack my own blog together. So here I be on blogger. I do wish blogger had tags, or categories, or something like that but at least this way mah peeps can comment if they wanna tell me not to kill myself (hi greybeard and bliv). Incidently, I did go to the California motorcycle safety class and got my class M1 license. The bike runs beautifully :)

Part of me wants to consolidate all the old posts (available at http://www.dailydrivel.net/blog) onto this blog, but I don't know if I'll have the time.

Yesterday, I completed flight 2 of the FAA Wings safety program. Did lots of emergency practice with an instructor with whom I've never flown before. It was good practice and I'm one more hour away from my wingies :)

I'm out, comment and let me know yer still here :D