I know it's been over a week since I updated, but as you'll see, there's good reason for that. But let me end the suspense by letting you all know that a week ago Saturday, I passed my private pilot practical exam and am now legal to fly when and where I want, with passengers or solo.
I'll describe my exam in this post, but then in a later post, I'll review the cross country Kyle and I did in the Diamond Star. In a different post, I'll describe the many hours of cross country flying that I added to the log book in the week after getting my license (which also explains why I'm still so exhausted (and late getting this info posted!!).
There was a glimmer of hope last Friday that we would be able to do the flight exam from 8am-12noon on Saturday, 8/26. It seems that one of the examinees for Saturday had a problem in which a big hangar door at Centennial airport was jammed and he couldn't get his airplane out! Sadly, they were able to fix the door, so my flight exam reverted to the ungodly 6am oral exam and 6pm flight exam! Arrrgh.
Friday afternoon, of course, I spent getting more and more stressed out over this exam. While I felt prepared for the oral (mostly), there was a lot of stuff to know. Additionally, I had a serious crisis with a case at work that reared up on Friday suddenly--just to add more stress/tension/ulcer to the day. On top of that, Michiko, Dan and Gloria, who were flying out to pick me up, were running into weather and other issues on their first leg of the trip. They were a few hours late leaving New Haven due to weather and then were delayed by some mechanical work being done in Pennsylvania--so I knew they were going to have a late night as well.....
The weather in Denver wasn't so hot on Friday afternoon as well, with ugly thunderstorms coming through the area, so I didn't get to fly with Brent for my final stage check. I had really been hoping to get back into a Cessna 172 for another hour--Thursday and Friday am had been spent flying the Diamond Star, so I felt out of training on the Cessna.
So I spent Friday night reworking my cross country flight that the examiner had asked me to prepare for Saturday. And I studied. And I tried to relax--unfortunately, that wasn't happening too much. The only movie I could find on tv was Goodfellas and that was hardly a lighthearted comedy to have on in the background.
Eventually, I got to bed about 11:30pm. My wife called about an hour or so later to say that they had just got in to Des Moines for the night. The next thing I knew, the alarm was going off at 4:30am---oral exam time!
The oral exam went fairly well. He had me stumped on a couple of points, but walked me through them as I had the right ideas about the concepts, but just wasn't conveying them well. I think he felt comfortable with my knowledge base, as he seemed to ask me one question in a section and then moved on if I answered confidently.
The examiner gave me a letter of discontinuance before he left. Essentially it was in case he got hit by a bus or something during the day--the letter would allow me to, within the next 60 days, go to another examiner and just have to do the flight portion of the exam.
We finished up in only about 90 minutes, and it was a very chilly day, so I ran back to the hotel to get my jacket and decided to get a haircut (which got butchered) before I returned back to the airport to study and review some more.
Michiko, Dan and Gloria arrived at about 1pm--I was able to track their flight on FlightAware and go out to watch them land. It was so great to see them, and especially my wife, who I helped down from Comanche's wing and then gave a huge hug and kiss to! After getting them settled in a bit, they went off to grab some lunch and then were gracious enough to hang out with me to keep me calmer as we waited for 6pm and the flight exam.
The weather didn't cooperate again, so I didn't get to do an additional training hop in the afternoon. In fact, the radar was looking very ugly for the afternoon and early evening and we were all fearful that the flight exam portion wouldn't be able to happen until Sunday. Two bands of weather were moving up from the mountains and Colorado Springs in a northeasterly direction. The only hope was that the flight exam could take place between the two bands.
The examiner showed up on time and after some quick additional quizzing and review of the aircraft maintenance log books, we headed out to the airplane where he watched me do the pre-flight. I gave a very thorough passenger briefing as we got set up in the airplane, but I also cautioned him that I had never flown in such gusty wind conditions before. I told him that I wasn't adverse to popping up over the airport to see what the weather was really like, but that if I didn't like it, we were coming right back down. He respected that.
I asked him to read the checklists to me (a cockpit resource management technique to use passengers or another pilot to do a call-and-response of the checklists) but he explained that he couldn't do that and that I had to treat the flight as though I was solo--but he liked that I had tried!
The wind calmed down a bit as we taxied out to the runway, which was a blessing. After doing our run-up, we taxied down to runway 17 and set up for a short-field takeoff. I had a little too much wind correction in (and was possibly riding the brakes a touch) as we lifted off and we crabbed significantly, but it wasn't too pathetic a takeoff. He had me stay in the pattern and had me do a soft field approach and landing and, while holding the nose off the runway, continue straight into a soft-field takeoff. Having never done it as one continuous maneuver before, it went surprisingly smoothly.
We then headed off on to our pre-planned cross country flight, hitting our first checkpoint at the town of Bennett. He then asked me how I would divert to Buckley Air Force Base and I gave him approximate heading and approximate time to Buckley, which he was satisfied with.
He then asked me to start some slow flight maneuvers and I asked him if we could instead do them south of I-70 as I didn't want to do those types of maneuvers directly overhead Bennett. Again, he seemed pleased with my logic and proceeded to do some slow flight, power on and power off stalls, one steep turn and a little bit of instrument work. He then had me head back towards the airport for a few more landing/touch and gos.
We did a crosswind approach and he had me do a go-around. When I called the tower to let them know, the tower called back, "N1312U, do you have a minute?" Surprised, I told them to go ahead. "When we clear you for the option, we expect that you're going to do anything you want on the runway and you don't have to tell us you're doing a go-around." Having always told the tower when I was doing a go around, I was more than a bit surprised by this, and even the examiner raised his eyebrows at that one! He said technically the tower was correct but that common practice was to assist the tower by letting them know whenever you executed a go-around.
As we taxied in from the last landing, the examiner asked a few more questions, testing different areas. On getting to the ramp and shutting down the airplane, he turned to me with a grin and said congratulations. What a huge relief!! Then he said he was going to tease Kyle and throw down his headset in disgust.....
It turned out that Kyle had driven out to the runway to watch my takeoffs and then had brought my wife out to watch the final landings. On top of that, Dan and Glora (and Ann at the terminal) were all listening on the radio as I was in the pattern.
Dan and Gloria had run out to Watkins while I was flying and got the best bottle of champagne that Watkins' Liquor could offer (about $8.00) and proceeded to shower me after all the paperwork and handshakes were done with the examiner! We toasted the private pilot license and then headed out, very tired but pleased, for dinner.
More on the cross country flight with Kyle and the return home in later posts today/tomorrow.