Flight School: Final Day
One word:
PASSED
As I write this entry, it's been six weeks since my FAA exam, and only now am I actually recounting the details of the exam.
My flight examiner was Mr. Faulkenstein, the ancient pilot who is scared of flying. People tell me because he's lived this long he's paranoid about a student finally taking him out in a crash after all these years of surviving.
We started off with paperwork. Had I been filling this paperwork out, it would have been done in 5 minutes. Because this guy actually brings in his own old-school typewriter like the one I practiced on at TSL (back when even that was old), it took much longer. Ordinarily, this would make my ADD get the best of me, but because both the oral and written exams are limited to one hour each, I was happy time was a'wastin'.
All my studying for the oral exam was practically wasted, except for the fact that it's the law that I have to know what I'm doing in the air. We spent about half the remaining time talking about Harry Truman holding the newspaper saying the other guy won the election, and another quarter of the time talking about something in Key West (since my pre-planned cross country was to EYW airport). So basically, I only "know" about 10% of what I need to according to my oral exam because the Ancient likes to talk about Ancient times.
Obviously, I passed the oral exam. However, the weather was pretty bad. I knew that as soon as I turned on the engine I'd fail the test if the weather conditions weren't within my student pilot minimums. I got the handheld radio and listened to Kissimmee's AWOS and waited until the visibility got better. To be honest, I was scared. The difficulty of the oral exam was inversely proportional to the difficulty of the flight exam with this guy from what I had heard. I wanted an excuse to postpone the flight so I could take the exam with the nice lady who gave a harder oral exam but an easier flight exam. I'm chicken.
After an hour of waiting, Faulkenstein started getting impatient and subliminally urged me to start the preflight despite visibility being 2 miles less than my minimums. I couldn't stall anymore. I knew he couldn't fail me because he was pushing me to start, but what if he was pushing me to test my judgement? Either way I bit the bullet and prepared for flight.
Engine start... and off we go. The bad thing about this guy is that he tests landings first, so if you mess up the landings the exam is over. Most examiners do landings last so that if you fail, you can try again later and stay in the pattern without doing the entire test over. Not my guy.
We took off normally. Now he starts getting scared. "Keep your airspeed around 74!" he yells during the part where I normally stay around 68 during takeoff. "I think you should make your crosswind turn now!" he suggests. I come in for my first landing, and there was bounce. Not bad, but I definitely got SCARED because of what I've heard about this guy and landings. "Let's not have another landing like that!" he says like it was partially his fault but stingingly implied I better not screw up again.
"Alright, give me a short field takeoff!" he shouted into the comm. I didn't hear "short field." I heard "soft field." Big difference. I acted smart and said "yeah, that's what I did," and I think he changed his mind about what he said. I say this now because I spent two weeks wondering why he went nuts when I did the wrong simulated takeoff, then I figured it out and thanked God he didn't fail me right there either.
On the way in for the second landing, the crosswind has picked up, but instead of fretting, I closed my eyes, took a breathe, and let my eyes and hands do the flying. "Tilt to the right with ailerons to correct for wind! Tilt!" was along the lines of what I heard on the way down. Airspeed 65 on final, 55 over the trees, 45 right above the ground. Altitude two feet... one foot... right wheel touchdown... one wheel roll... gentle touch on the left wheel... keep applying back pressure... front wheel still in the air... keep pulling back.... gentle front wheel touchdown... BEAUTIFUL!! PERFECT!! TRICK-SHOT LANDING GONE GREAT!! I had never pulled off a one wheel landing before (and that's how you're supposed to land with crosswind).
"Excellent!" he yelled in the comm like it was a mistake (for some reason this guy and the owner's compliments came off as backhanded ones, I can't figure out why). I hit the throttle again and we were off to perform the other maneuvers. At this point I knew my chances of passed went through the roof. I knew these maneuvers so well it didn't matter how much the crosswind blew me off-course; I knew I could fix it. I knew where I was, I knew where the 1100 foot tower was that he was scared to death of, I even knew where I was when the blinders were on. I kept my IRF flight on course and within flight standards. I didn't even have to do a rectangle or a 360 around a point. My first high bank turn was so good the wings shuddered at the end because I hit my own wingtip vortices.
Of course, this guy was scared the whole time, yelling and suggesting I fix this and that. It was within standards, he couldn't fail me. We came back to the airport, and the home stretch was upon me. Now I was scared, because he could still fail me on the final landing despite everything I'd already done. We entered the Delta airspace through the same place I almost wrecked Mike Kilo in on my second solo, turned into the downwind, then base, then final. My speed was high, the air was turbulent, and the thermals over the lake on the long final were acting up. "Oh no," I thought. "This is too easy to mess up."
Too fast to flair properly. I have to bleed off speed over the runway. Touchdown. Bounce. Front wheel hits. I'm porpoising. Oh God, I'm porpoising. Pull up. Don't lift off. Stop lifting off. DON'T PORPOISE! LAND AGAIN! PULL BACK! CORRECT FOR WIND! BRAKES! BRAKES! BRAKES! "Cessna 452MK, contact ground point 7." I hear from ATC. Because I have the controls tilted, I hit the wrong button on the yoke when repeating back the instructions.
Finish the post-landing checklist; taxi to Sunstate. Now I was on pins and needles. Sure, any other examiner would have said my landings were good enough, but this was The Ancient. He didn't take kindly to errors.
Once the plane was shut down and I started the post shutdown checklist (did I mention there's tons of checklists?) he stopped me and said "Congratulations, your performance was satisfactory. You passed."
At that moment, I kinda felt like I passed with a C-, but who cares!!! AAAHH!! PILOT! After more paperwork, my private flight training was over.
I haven't been flying since, and I'm getting stick itch. I haven't flown because of weather (it seemed to rain every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and recently the weather has been too variable), trips, and now I can't fly because I'm broke. I haven't been paid in 6 weeks, so I only have $26.23, not nearly enough to get off the ground. Once I start getting paid I'll have more to work with, but until then I'll keep my eye on the sky and my mind in the clouds (even though I can't legally fly through the clouds yet).
PASSED
As I write this entry, it's been six weeks since my FAA exam, and only now am I actually recounting the details of the exam.
My flight examiner was Mr. Faulkenstein, the ancient pilot who is scared of flying. People tell me because he's lived this long he's paranoid about a student finally taking him out in a crash after all these years of surviving.
We started off with paperwork. Had I been filling this paperwork out, it would have been done in 5 minutes. Because this guy actually brings in his own old-school typewriter like the one I practiced on at TSL (back when even that was old), it took much longer. Ordinarily, this would make my ADD get the best of me, but because both the oral and written exams are limited to one hour each, I was happy time was a'wastin'.
All my studying for the oral exam was practically wasted, except for the fact that it's the law that I have to know what I'm doing in the air. We spent about half the remaining time talking about Harry Truman holding the newspaper saying the other guy won the election, and another quarter of the time talking about something in Key West (since my pre-planned cross country was to EYW airport). So basically, I only "know" about 10% of what I need to according to my oral exam because the Ancient likes to talk about Ancient times.
Obviously, I passed the oral exam. However, the weather was pretty bad. I knew that as soon as I turned on the engine I'd fail the test if the weather conditions weren't within my student pilot minimums. I got the handheld radio and listened to Kissimmee's AWOS and waited until the visibility got better. To be honest, I was scared. The difficulty of the oral exam was inversely proportional to the difficulty of the flight exam with this guy from what I had heard. I wanted an excuse to postpone the flight so I could take the exam with the nice lady who gave a harder oral exam but an easier flight exam. I'm chicken.
After an hour of waiting, Faulkenstein started getting impatient and subliminally urged me to start the preflight despite visibility being 2 miles less than my minimums. I couldn't stall anymore. I knew he couldn't fail me because he was pushing me to start, but what if he was pushing me to test my judgement? Either way I bit the bullet and prepared for flight.
Engine start... and off we go. The bad thing about this guy is that he tests landings first, so if you mess up the landings the exam is over. Most examiners do landings last so that if you fail, you can try again later and stay in the pattern without doing the entire test over. Not my guy.
We took off normally. Now he starts getting scared. "Keep your airspeed around 74!" he yells during the part where I normally stay around 68 during takeoff. "I think you should make your crosswind turn now!" he suggests. I come in for my first landing, and there was bounce. Not bad, but I definitely got SCARED because of what I've heard about this guy and landings. "Let's not have another landing like that!" he says like it was partially his fault but stingingly implied I better not screw up again.
"Alright, give me a short field takeoff!" he shouted into the comm. I didn't hear "short field." I heard "soft field." Big difference. I acted smart and said "yeah, that's what I did," and I think he changed his mind about what he said. I say this now because I spent two weeks wondering why he went nuts when I did the wrong simulated takeoff, then I figured it out and thanked God he didn't fail me right there either.
On the way in for the second landing, the crosswind has picked up, but instead of fretting, I closed my eyes, took a breathe, and let my eyes and hands do the flying. "Tilt to the right with ailerons to correct for wind! Tilt!" was along the lines of what I heard on the way down. Airspeed 65 on final, 55 over the trees, 45 right above the ground. Altitude two feet... one foot... right wheel touchdown... one wheel roll... gentle touch on the left wheel... keep applying back pressure... front wheel still in the air... keep pulling back.... gentle front wheel touchdown... BEAUTIFUL!! PERFECT!! TRICK-SHOT LANDING GONE GREAT!! I had never pulled off a one wheel landing before (and that's how you're supposed to land with crosswind).
"Excellent!" he yelled in the comm like it was a mistake (for some reason this guy and the owner's compliments came off as backhanded ones, I can't figure out why). I hit the throttle again and we were off to perform the other maneuvers. At this point I knew my chances of passed went through the roof. I knew these maneuvers so well it didn't matter how much the crosswind blew me off-course; I knew I could fix it. I knew where I was, I knew where the 1100 foot tower was that he was scared to death of, I even knew where I was when the blinders were on. I kept my IRF flight on course and within flight standards. I didn't even have to do a rectangle or a 360 around a point. My first high bank turn was so good the wings shuddered at the end because I hit my own wingtip vortices.
Of course, this guy was scared the whole time, yelling and suggesting I fix this and that. It was within standards, he couldn't fail me. We came back to the airport, and the home stretch was upon me. Now I was scared, because he could still fail me on the final landing despite everything I'd already done. We entered the Delta airspace through the same place I almost wrecked Mike Kilo in on my second solo, turned into the downwind, then base, then final. My speed was high, the air was turbulent, and the thermals over the lake on the long final were acting up. "Oh no," I thought. "This is too easy to mess up."
Too fast to flair properly. I have to bleed off speed over the runway. Touchdown. Bounce. Front wheel hits. I'm porpoising. Oh God, I'm porpoising. Pull up. Don't lift off. Stop lifting off. DON'T PORPOISE! LAND AGAIN! PULL BACK! CORRECT FOR WIND! BRAKES! BRAKES! BRAKES! "Cessna 452MK, contact ground point 7." I hear from ATC. Because I have the controls tilted, I hit the wrong button on the yoke when repeating back the instructions.
Finish the post-landing checklist; taxi to Sunstate. Now I was on pins and needles. Sure, any other examiner would have said my landings were good enough, but this was The Ancient. He didn't take kindly to errors.
Once the plane was shut down and I started the post shutdown checklist (did I mention there's tons of checklists?) he stopped me and said "Congratulations, your performance was satisfactory. You passed."
At that moment, I kinda felt like I passed with a C-, but who cares!!! AAAHH!! PILOT! After more paperwork, my private flight training was over.
I haven't been flying since, and I'm getting stick itch. I haven't flown because of weather (it seemed to rain every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and recently the weather has been too variable), trips, and now I can't fly because I'm broke. I haven't been paid in 6 weeks, so I only have $26.23, not nearly enough to get off the ground. Once I start getting paid I'll have more to work with, but until then I'll keep my eye on the sky and my mind in the clouds (even though I can't legally fly through the clouds yet).
posted by Benacor at 11:54 PM
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