Flying Lessons

Check Ride

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
Take off BFI, Fly to Paine, Take oral exam and Check ride, return BFI
Cessna 150, 4 Landing, 2.4hours (1.2 on check ride and 1.2 getting there and back)

I'm nervous about my check ride. I'm sure I'm not the first to be nervous about a check ride. When I show up at Regal Air the receptionist tells me my examiner is busy and "go ahead and relax, if you can.". They know that everyone is nervous. But the fact that other people get nervous at this point in their flying career does nothing to lessen my own nervousness. I believe that physical skills like flying are something that I'm good at. I have the expectation that I will be good at this and want to impress the examiner with my skills. But the truth is that I'm not sure I'm particularly good. For that mater, I'm not even sure that I'll pass today. I'm always making mistakes in my flying. While I can often perform maneuvers correctly I sometimes miss. Today I have a lot of maneuvers to perform in flawless sequence while under the critical eye of a stranger. The odds of success seem small.

To make things worse I did not sleep well. I woke early with busy mind and spent the early morning hours rehearsing failure scenarios. This is not good. I tried to substitute positive visualization of maneuvers done well but the best I could do is to review possible test questions. Once I'm up there is no doubt about it: this is an off day for me.

I consider canceling the check ride. This is one of the hardest things I can remember doing in a long while. I've already given up on wowing them. I think that I may yet pass and know that if things are not going well I can always stop the check ride and return later to finish the rest.

As I get in the car to leave I think that this is how events unfold. One day I conceive of taking pilot lessons. In the abstract I know that my skills will be tested before my license is actually given to me. But that is far far away. Time passes. I take lessons. Now it is time for the exam and I am getting in my car to drive to the airport. Once at the airport I'll fly to Everett. Once at Everett. I'll taxi to Regal Air. At Regal I'll say that I'm here to take a check ride with Robert Roetcisoender and that will be the beginning.

Bob is a trim, older man. His appearance and his office scream efficiency. He is an excellent communicator and gently explains the whole testing process to me. I always know what we are doing and what we are going to do next. There is no intimidation.

[January 2005: Mark Arend writes, informing me that I have had the "honor of flying with one of he most decorated and celebrated officers in United States Air Force history." Apparently he was a navigator in the SR-71.]

The exam starts with an hour or more of oral questions. Some I know exactly but I find my knowledge to be fuzzy on an uncomfortably larger number of the questions. Bob said this is a practical test, not a knowledge test. He wants to see how well I can apply what I know, not how much I know. I take this as license to admit a gap in my knowledge and dig into reference material. Still, I'm uncomfortable when I find myself unsure about questions

Oral Questions

• Survival gear. How long can a person survive without water and how long with out food?
• True air speed vs. Indicated air speed. At sea level, standard day, any difference? What if we go up to 7,000 ft? I got out my flight computer. Bob suggested that 2% per 1000' elevation is a good estimate.
• Identify extents of different airspace in the area. Are the numbers MSL or AGL? I had trouble with the floors of class E in the north cascades. There are places where the floor is specified as 8,700 or such and a couple places out side the blue where the floor is not specified. Go to the AIM. Where not otherwise specified the floor is 14,500 MSL (AIM 3-2-6-c)
• Does your airplane have an MEL? What is an MEL? What instruments are required in your airplane?
• Here's a hard one: Visual inspection shows the fuel tanks to be full. In the airplane you find one gauge registers 3/4 full. Can you fly the airplane? I stumble on this because I know that fuel gauges are required AND that they are unreliable. What degree of unreliability is acceptable? FAR 91.205 says "(9) Fuel gauge indicating the quantity of fuel in each tank." I hedge but then decide I could not fly. Afterwards Bob admits it is a difficult question: fuel gauges are required and they are flaky. It would be best if every gauge was adjusted to read empty when empty with some degree of error tolerated in the range above empty. However most are probably adjusted to read full when full with the error being toward the other end.
• Is the attitude indicator required. I said yes. Correct answer is that it is not.
• Does the POH have to be in the airplane. I said yes. Correct answer is that it does not. For aircraft of that age operating limits needs to be on placards or manual and I think most had sufficient placards so most don't require the manual. Newer (like past 20 year) do have a specific manual which must be in the airplane.
• Explain some weather charts. 850 MB chart which he was not such a fan of. The weather depiction chart which he likes quite a bit.
• TAF and METAR interpretation
• What share of flight costs can my passengers pay? This question comes up in many places and it is important to get it right.
• Fire in engine compartment, what do I do first? Lean mixture will cut fuel fastest. Fire goes out, would I restart engine? "If I thought I could make a landing I would not restart that engine."
• Out at the airplane he asked me to identify which antenna were for what. I looked at them and realized that I had no idea what so ever. I noticed that my plane had only one white antenna over the cockpit while most other's had two and figured that was my one VOR as opposed to their two VOR. I also noticed that there was one more antenna than there were radio devices on board. This complicated my guessing. After the flight Bob told me what each was for - I hadn't guessed a single one correctly.

For the practical I knew that I had to break the mental habit of looking to the guy in the right seat to tell me what to do and to direct me out of error. I decided the way to do this was imagine Bob as a friend I'm taking flying for the first time. I told Bob this was how I intended to treat him so that he would understand why I may be saying some of the things I was. In the end, this didn't work all that well. He's still the authority he sometimes told me to head someplace specific and often made suggestions that were important for me to heed. He also told me what maneuvers to do when.

I felt the exam was not going well. ...

• Navigation. First thing after takeoff I was to establish us on the cross country route.
• Naming Things. Bob pointed to several things and asked me to identify them on the map or name them. I have sailed, paddled, and now flown over this terrain and water and am very good at identifying things so this went well.
• Estimating distances. He pointed out several landmarks and asked how far away I thought we were. Then asked if my estimate matched my reading of the chart. I've never felt I was any good at estimating distances so I just guessed away. I used my memory of how the 2 mile runway at boeing field looks as a reference. Apparently I did pretty well.
• Instrument Maneuvers Straight, a turn, a climb. What radial are we from Paine? To get to Paine would I fly that radial? Answer was that it would be easier to tune to the reciprocal and fly to.
• Steep turns. It took me a little while to choose a place I liked which did not have too many clouds at our level and which did have a good emergency landing site. When I did choose Bob said something that made me realize we were close to the Paine air space. I entered the turn, forgot to designate a heading, lost 200 ft, then rolled out half way through and said I was not satisfied with that. I thought that might be the end of the test right there. However, though Bob had not told me at the beginning I did have the option of re-doing any maneuver that I was not satisfied with. My next steep turn was done well. He asked for one to the right and that was near perfect.
• Slow flight. Turn left, turn right. He said I could use up to 30 deg bank, but I used more like 20.
• Power off stall. We had just done turns so I did not do additional clearing turns and Bob never complained about this. I stabilized on a descent then pulled the nose up until we stalled, then I recovered. On both stalls I recovered at the first clear wing drop.
• Emergency Landing. After the stall Bob told me to pull the power and execute an emergency landing. I chose a large field behind us. Plan was to fly the down wind then turn and land. There are several things to point out about this maneuver:
  • This was the one maneuver on which he requested that I narrate my actions.
  • Normally I do the emergency landing check list from memory but because I had been told many times to always use check lists on the check ride I made sure to work through the written emergency landing checklist. Later he suggested that it would be better if I memorized the emergency landing.
  • I used a slip to arrive at the downwind point 1000' AGL and later Bob said that was very well done. From here it was easy to gauge the turn to land in the field.
  • Bob also later said that many people arrive at the threshold too high, commence a huge slip, and end up in the far trees. He thought that S turns were a far better way to loose excess altitude.
  • Bob asked if I planned to land just past the ditch at the near end. I said no, hopefully past the fence 1/3 of the way down, but if we did end up going through the fence he and I would not be much worse for it. Later he said that planning to land right at the near end would have been a bad decision because miss-estimation could result in landing short in trees. Better to aim for some point further out.
  • He conveniently told me that I could go around when ever I felt it was time. I looked at the altimeter, saw 600' AGL, and decided it was time. This is a case where I was not paying attention to all the details and needed his prompting.

  This procedure showed two ways that Bob used questions. When he told me that I could go around when ever it was appropriate it was a hint that it was time to go around. When he ask if I intended to land near the ditch it was not a hint to land near the ditch, it was a check on my judgment. But it also may have been a subtle attempt to mislead me. A more neutral question would have been "Where do you plan to land?"

• Power on stalls. While climbing out from the emergency landing he asked for a power on stall. This went fine.
• Operation with out instruments. After the stall he asked me to demonstrate recovery at Vx. During that recovery he covered the airspeed indicator and asked to me establish Vx based on attitude and feel. I had the sense he thought I was referencing the instruments too much and wanted to make a point. I made my best estimate. It turned out to be 60mph, which was closer than he thought. (Vx is 51.)
• Turns around a point. I did two turns around a barn. After 1.5 he observed that I was further away on one side than the other. I agreed and worked to correct it, but then half a turn later he suggested that we leave. Again, I thought he disapproved of my performance. Later I discovered he liked the tight turns I was making. To many people to wide lazy turns. He asked how much of my visual attention was on the point. I thought 30% but he thought 80% which was why I was able to keep pretty well positioned on the point. However, he observed that there were houses near the barn suggested that a clearly unpopulated area would be a better choice.
• Recovery from unusual attitude. I asked to do this at the end because sometimes the maneuvering makes me sea sick. Turns out his maneuvering is fairly gentle. He did one nose up, power low and one nose down, power high. I did fine.
• Returning to Paine field I noticed that we were about to pass under clouds at less that 500 ft below and began a fairly quick descent. Bob said "as your passenger I'm wondering why we are descending so steeply." I explained the clouds and he looked around for them. I got the sense that he had not seen them and that I probably should not have descended. They were light and wispy enough that I could see through them and know that no airplane was going to pop out and hit me so under normal circumstances I would not have done any drastic maneuvers to keep clearance.
• Soft field landing. We returned to Paine where he asked me to demonstrate a soft field touchdown. I didn't use power at touch down. Better technique is to use power. Prop wash helps maintain elevator effectivness.As he described it: come in with power, enter ground effect, remove just enough power to touch down, keep nose wheel off ground as long as possible. This is assuming field length is not an issue, which he did tell me to assume.
• Short Field Takeoff. Vx on my airplane is 51mph, which is below the stall markings. During the climb Bob pulled out the POH and looked something up. I thought he wanted to know if I was out of my mind and we were about to do a power on stall at 30' above the runway. Later I asked and he said he was just surprised it was so low.
• Short field. He chose a marking midway on the landing strip and asked me to touch down right at it. I was a little low and dragged it in, though not really behind power curve. I think I had judged it just right when Bob said "Don't land short". I second guessed myself, added power, and floated past the marks some 50ft. But I think this is better than if I and been wrong the other way and did land short.

After shutting off the airplane he turned and congratulated me and said it was one of the better check rides he had seen for a while. I was shocked by this. I thought I had just squeaked through when in fact I did very well.

The Numbers

Here's how much I spent getting my flight training:

Equipment has been rounded to $1000 to exclude the second headset I bought (not necessary until you want to take passengers) and only part of the portable GPS (not necessary, but very useful). I bought a $400 Lightspeed headset with good ANR which I found very pleasant to have.

Total flight time: 65.5 hours .
Instruction: 31 hours.
Average cost of rental, including tax: $58.79/hour.
Taking Marie out for her first flight: $7214.35 + 58.15 = $7272.50.

Looking Back

August 5th, 2004

I've now had my license for 2.5 months. The standard line receiving your pilot's license is "Congratulations, now you have your license to learn." Possibly Bob even said this to me. At the time I was sure it was true but now I understand even better how that statement is true.

After holding my license for all of six weeks, after taking a few friends out flying, after a couple dinner runs to the San Juans, after researching insurance for Maules and finding out they want me to have 25 hours dual instruction, and after getting a little board with my horizons, I started taking lessons in a tail wheel Maule from George Kirkish. George has had some interesting new takes on things that I've learned, found some bad habits Deane let me get away with, and taught me some new things. I write about these in the continued journal of tail wheel lessons. I've learned a lot and know that even after completing the required 25 hours I will still have much to learn. They flying that I want to do is going to require a lot of skill and experience.

So now I think of the Private Pilot License not as the end of my training but just another milestone. My first solo was the milestone that indicated my qualification to fly an airplane by myself (loosely supervised by an instructor). The Private Pilot License indicates that I can now take passengers with me, with out any supervision

Actually, the Private Pilot License is a lot broader than that. It could be viewed as a License to get into serious trouble. I prefer to view it in the narrow, can carry passengers, version and that my training continues, slowly expanding the range of conditions I'm capable of flying in.

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