Recently in Aviation Category
My friend Scott and I flew up to Ada Municipal Airport in Ada, OK (KADH) for the $100 Hamburger. Why Ada? Well, it was the right distance away (about an hour) and was a place I had never landed before.
We took off from McKinney (KTKI) and were able to fly directly there. Once again, I had an interesting interface with regional approach when I called them up to ask for flight following. I asked for flight following and was never responded to again. Rather than bother with repeated contact with them and being stepped on by other pilots, I decided to fore go the request since I was on an active flight plan anyway. I wish I could say that the trip up was exciting, however, it's North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. It's pretty flat with a slight upslope in the terrain as you fly north.
Scott was interested to see Lake Texoma from the sky, he commented that he didn't realize how huge the lake is. I hadn't thought about it before, but I did note that on the way back, we could see Texoma from 5500 feet pretty quickly after taking off from KADH.
We ate at Bob's "world famous" BBQ. It always amazes me how many world famous eateries I've never heard of in these little tiny towns. Anyway, the BBQ place was walkable, but we decide to take the courtesy car from the FBO just to see what the courtesy car was like....
I'm getting ahead of myself. We landed the plane and entered the FBO and were greeted by an interior with low ceilings, wood paneled walls, and long shag carpet. We got the key to the courtesy car, which happened to be a Chevy Suburban with wood paneled interior and long shag carpet. It also came with a complimentary (plastic) can of Lay's Stax potato chips. We rolled up to Bob's, parked and enjoyed an above average lunch. During lunch, I got a call from the 1970's, the 70's were very angry, they wanted their decor back from the restaurant, the car, and the FBO. I told them I would see what I could do.
After a hardy meal, we headed back the 1/8 of a mile to the airport and returned the car and disembarked to the south. We made a landing at Sherman Airport (KSWI) for some cheap fuel from their self-serve pump, then returned to McKinney. I was a bit disturbed by the happenings at KSWI. I made my radio calls on their CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) and neither heard nor saw any other KSWI traffic, and I landed without incident. However, after re-fueling, I taxied to the end of the runway and did my pre-flight engine run up, the entire time with the Frequency set to the KSWI CTAF. I completed the run up, then turned the plane toward the approach end of the runway to watch for incoming traffic prior to entering the runway. I wasn't expecting to see anything since I had been monitoring the radio. So, I look up and much to my surprise, there's a Cessna 172 on short final for the runway I was about to enter. I waited until the Cessna exited the runway and looked up again and saw a Bonanza on short final. None had made any radio calls. I checked my radio, made sure I was on the correct Comm and made sure the Freq was correct... everything looked right. I was a little upset, not one, but two aircraft were not observing proper safety protocol while landing at a non-towered airport. What it did do was reinforce my paranoia about staying alert and checking and re-checking for traffic around a non-towered airport.
We were able to take off without any trouble and lined ourselves up for a straight in a approach to KTKI. Scott wanted to see what it looked like to intercept an ILS and what it looked like, so showed him how to capture the localizer and even punched up the RNAV approach on the GPS in the aircraft. We contacted KTKI tower at about 12 miles out and were told to come straight in. We landed and parked without any problems called it an end to our fun afternoon.
Friday was the big day for our trip to Austin. The weather was perfect as there wasn't a cloud in the entire state of Texas and the wind was pretty calm. The first leg was a short one to Mesquite Metro Airport (KHQZ) to pick up Tim, friend who was to join me on the trip. Shortly after takeoff from McKinney (KTKI) I opened my flight plan with Fort Worth Flight Service, and made my way to KHQZ, landing shortly after for a quick restroom stop and to pick up Tim. From there was set off direct to Georgetown Municipal Airport (KGTU) which I planned to overfly and use as a checkpoint before contacting Austin Approach and heading toward Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS).
All went well with the flight except for two things. First, after taking off from KHQZ, I asked for flight following from DFW Regional Approach, which was granted, however, after clearing the Class Bravo shelf to the south, I told them I was climbing to 6500 feet for the remainder of my flight. It was at that point that I was contacted by Approach and given the following instruction, "Three-November-Bravo, radar services terminated, squawk VFR, frequency change approved, have a good night." They just cut me off without handing me off to Fort Worth Center (ZFW). I was a little miffed, but no problem... I found the frequency for ZFW and switched over. Just as I was about to contact them, I heard one of the controllers over the radio say, "Any VFR flight asking for flight following, don't bother, we're too busy tonight." Well.... too busy.... well screw you too!!!! Ah well, at least I was on an active flight plan. So we continued our flight from KHQZ direct to KGTU.
We were having a nice, smooth flight enjoying the views of the various Friday Night Lights along the way when we came upon KGTU and it was time to call Austin Approach. I did so reporting the following, "Austin Approach, Cessna Seven-Three-Three-November-Bravo is a Cessna 172 Slant Golf, VFR at six thousand, five hundred, heading south, inbound for Austin-Bergstrom International, requesting traffic advisories". I was given a new transponder code to squawk and asked to turn to heading 120°. A short time later I was asked to descend to an altitude at or below 2000 feet. Basically, the routed me to the northeast of the airport, then turned me toward the airport until I made visual contact (i.e. located the beacon). They then turned me south, paralleling the runways, turning me to the base leg of the pattern before handing me off to Austin Tower.
This is where it got interesting. I was on about a 2 mile final when I was waived off and told to turn east and climb to an altitude at or below 2000. In fact, they closed the airport to all traffic because of an aircraft that rolled onto the grass when it was turning to a taxiway. Once I got a couple of miles away from the airport, I was asked to make a "racetrack pattern" to the east until further notice. They got the plane cleared and had some trucks roll down the runway in search of FOD (foreign object debris). After that, the tower controller asked me to contact approach again to get re-lined up for landing. They wanted to get a couple of planes down before us that were low on fuel. I did as they asked and got sequenced again behind a 737 and handed off to the tower again on the base leg of the pattern, then came in and landed on the big runway (35L) without incident and without, once again, a landing light, which seems to have a problem working on the plane I flew. Unfortunately, the flight was extended from about 2 hours to about 2 and a half hours.
From the airport we picked up our rental car, checked into our respective hotels (Tim and I), and then hit Sixth Street for some good music and food. This place was amazing. We had some dinner at the Iron Cactus and then found an Irish pub where a really cool band was playing some texas blues was playing. Then found very bluesy-R&B sounding band was playing at a place called the Dirty Dog. We stayed there for about an hour and then called it a night and returned to our respective hotels to get some rest for the big game against Baylor.
The game was interesting... I've been to college football games before, but none with the pageantry and presentation that this one had. The band was huge, the crowd was huge... and really into the game. We were in the upper deck, but I still felt like, from our seats, our view was pretty good. Below are a couple of photos from the iPhone. In the end, the good guys won, but most people in attendance agreed that the team wasn't playing up to its potential and were still critical... and for the most part, they were right. I also see why most of the players at UT end up staying for all four years of their eligibility. They are treated like absolute royalty in Austin, both as a team and as individuals. As big a city as it is, they are the only game in town and they are beloved... and most people followed the mantra, "Come Early. Be Loud. Stay Late. Wear Orange." We left the game when the team hit 49 about midway through the 4th quarter.... obviously we didn't stay late. But we did so to have time to enjoy another big Austin Institution, the original Chuy's Tex-Mex Restaurant on Barton Springs Road (where, incidentally, Jenna Bush was arrested for attempting to buy alcohol under age). We made it to Chuy's and had a great meal, then headed back to the airport, where I did some flight planning and we got under way.
This time, I skipped overflying KGTU in favor of a direct route to KHQZ and the flight was done entirely under flight following, so I had air traffic control eyes on me just about the entire way until I cancelled flight following within 10 miles of KHQZ. Since my flight was done under flight following, it was tracked by flight aware, just like all the big airlines. You can see my route by clicking here. The really nice thing about the trip was my fuel burn was really good. I was able to lean the mixture using the technique relayed to me by Robert, who learned it from our CFI, by paying attention to the EGT indicator (Exhaust Gas Temperature) and leaning the mixture to slightly below (on the rich side) the peak EGT. With this method I estimate my fuel flow was just under 9 gallons per hour, which is pretty good for a 180 horsepower engine.
We landed at KHQZ so that I could drop off Tim and refuel for $3.30/gallon before returning to KTKI and buttoning up the plane and going home. The weekend could not have gone better in terms of making a cross-country flight and having a good time at sixth street and a football game.
It has been awhile since my last entry. Since I lasted blogged I've flown a few times.
I took another night flight across to the west side of the area, landing at Fort Worth Meacham Airport (KFTW). Then On the return leg, I requested transition of Class B airspace, which was granted, and got to fly among the big boys. I was routed to the north end of Dallas-Ft. Worth International (KDFW) and overflew the approaches to 17 runways from east to west. After that I was routed to the southeast to get close to Dallas Love Field (KDAL) and overflew the approach end of runway 13 at KDAL. The entire time, American MD-80's and Southwest 737's and learjets and the like were passing underneath me. It also felt kinda cool to be in contact with Approach Control for that long of a time and get calls to change headings regularly. It made me feel like a real pilot.
A week or two later I went down to Mesquite Metro (KHQZ) to meet with Chris, my best friend from high school (who just so happens to live in Dallas), and introduce him to flight in a single-engine piston aircraft. We took off from KHQZ after a quick meet and greet with his wife and kids, and overflew his east Dallas home. Then up north to the frisco/prosper area for the standard tour. Then a quick touch-and-go at McKinney (KTKI) then back to KHQZ to drop Chris back. We got a chance to talk a bit and catch up and fly.
Last week I made a quick solo flight at night where I tried and aborted two attempted touch-and-goes at Caddo Mills (7F3) before giving up and returning back to KTKI. Then I took another friend, Tim, up for his first time in a Cessna in anticipation of a cross-country with Tim and the lovely Mrs. Dirk L'Orange to Austin to attend a University of Texas football game. Tim handled it well, had a lot of fun and we're all looking forward to the trip on 8 Nov.
On Tuesday, this past week, Robert and I flew to Arlington Municipal Airport (KGKY) via Mesquite (KHQZ) and Lancaster (KLNC) and took a crew car up to the Arlington Sheraton to see Phil Boyer (president of the AOPA) speak at a Pilot Town Hall. It was fun and interesting and gave us material for a new website that Robert came up with to rate crew cars from various GA airports. The website is http://crewcars.blogspot.com, if you're interested.
Finally today, I drove up to Denton Municipal Aiport (KDTO) to fly in get checked out in a Diamond Star DA40. For those of you who are not familiar, it's really cool looking airplane and it flies really smoothly. Even in turbulence, the plane wants to fly pretty true. The wings don't pop up on you nearly as much as they might in a Cessna 172. It flies faster and is a low wing aircraft, but the approach speeds are almost the same as the 172. This is also the first time I flew in an airplane with a constant speed propeller. There are a few rules to keep in mind and some additional checks on the engine run up before flying but in general it's not that difficult to fly. This plane had a stick instead of a control yoke, it was pretty easy and fun to fly with. Also, the visibility in the plane was outstanding. All in all, I'm going to enjoy flying in it again. It's a lot o fun.
Next scheduled flight, probably a refresher with my instructor before I go on the long cross-country and then to Austin-Bergstram International Airport (KAUS).
I haven't mentioned my last few flights... two flights to Paris , TX and a local flight around dallas. The flights to Paris were pretty much uneventful, other than the happenings on the ground. The night flight yesterday around dallas was fantastic. Here's how they went.
First, a week ago from last Sunday, I flew with my friend to take his kids back to their mom near Paris, TX. The kids had never been on any kind of plane and they had a blast. We did have a bit of a problem finding his wife's house, but once we figured out where we were, we found the house pretty quickly.
One thing about my friend's ex-wife.... she is a bitter, bitter woman. Now she's even more of a country hick than before now that she lives out in the sticks. My complaint about her -- and this is a complaint that my wife shares with me dating back years -- is that she sets up these expectations of others without checking to see if those expectations are realistic or agreed to. If you don't meet said expectations, she has a fit. And when she wants things to go a certain way, she doesn't take others into consideration.
So, we're running late and my friend had told his wife that he would get his kids fed before dropping them off. Because of the timing of the flight and the lack of civilization between the airport in Paris and my friend's ex-wife's home, we couldn't really stop. We were lost, Google maps didn't help... nor did the paper map we had in the courtesy car from the FBO. It was quite annoying... so we're trying to find recognizable landmarks and back track when his phone rings... after some complaining about being late, not feeding the kids, etc etc... we hung up and found our way. My friend delivers the kids while his ex-wife berates him some more and we head back for an uneventful trip back.
One thing happened though... I left my iPhone in the courtesy car in Paris at the airport. I called them the next morning and sure enough, they had it and said they would hold onto it for me. So, I took the plane back on Monday and picked up my phone... safe and sound.
Last night I decided to fly with another friend (who happens to be a student pilot) to maintain my night currency. He came along because flyin's fun and because he hasn't done his night time training and wanted to see what he was in for. Even though he couldn't log any time I think he got quite a bit out of it. We took off from mckinney and tuned in the ATIS at Addison to get the weather info, then contacted regional approach. They gave us a squawk and instructions to head toward addison and then handed us off to the tower who gave us instructions on the direction of approach (we were to enter left base for runway 15 and descend at our discretion). We did so, touched down once we found the runway (which was a bit trickier for me than the other times I've been there) and taxied back to tell them we wanted to transition class bravo airspace enroute to dallas-executive airport.
We were told by ground, squawk 4673, after takeoff, turn right heading 180, climb and maintain at or below 2000 feet, expect to contact love tower at 123.7 for further instructions after handoff by addison tower. After my readback was confirmed, i switched over to addison tower to let them know we were ready to go, they handed back to ground to give me some additional info, which turned out to be nothing, ground handed back to the tower who finally released us. We took off, climbed out and turned to 180 when we heard the tower say, "Cessna 3-november-bravo, you're cleared into class bravo contact love tower at 123.7, have a good evening."
When I switched over to love tower, before I got a chance to contact them to report in, I heard, "cessna 3-november-bravo, are you with me yet?"
To which I replied, "Love tower, cessna 3-november-bravo has you."
Followed by, "Cessna 3-november-bravo, maintain 2000 feet, overfly runway 18-36, maintain heading until cleared direct to dallas-executive." I repeated the instructions and we had an outstanding view of dallas right in front of us.
As we flew over the runway, we watched a Southwest Airlines 737 landing to our right, we was pretty impressive. Once we passed love, the tower called and said, "cessna 3-november-bravo, proceed direct to dallas-executive." I started looking for the dallas-executive beacon and waiting for the next instruction, which came after I inquired, "3-november-bravo, you are clear of class bravo airspace, radar services terminated, squawk vfr, frequency change approved." I set my transponder back to 1200, tuned in the Dallas-Exec ATIS only to find out the tower was closed. So, we switched to common traffic advisory frequency and started making traffic calls to the airport in anticipation of our arrival. Since, no one else was around, we got in and out of there pretty fast.
We made our way over Lancaster airport and played with the pilot controlled lighting, then turned toward mesquite and noticed their runway lights were turned off, so I turned them on and made my calls to mesquite traffic on their frequency. We landed nicely, taxied back, and took off again, this time, to go back home to McKinney.
As we approached McKinney, I started lining up for runway 35 guessing that they would probably have us land to the north since the wind was calm and we were heading north anyway. Sure enough, when I called them they told us, proceed direct to runway 35. I lined us up to the runway center line and we were called back a couple of minutes later when we were still 6 miles out, and was cleared to land... I pulled in the carb heat, slowed us up when we were on a 2 mile final, and put it down nice and easy flaring as we passed over the numbers. We extended our landing rollout to taxiway C to that we could go directly across to parking from there.
It had been a couple of weeks since I last flew and I was getting that itch again... but this time, I didn't just want to fly, I wanted to have a purpose. So, Friday, with the day off, I decided to fly out to Paris, TX. It wasn't a useless trip. I was actually using this as a dry run because my friend mark and I plan on flying out there this coming weekend to return his kids to their mother after his weekend visitation. The flight was planned in short order, so I went to http://www.duats.com and logged in to get a weather briefing and file a flight plan and everything looked alright. So, we got to the airport checked out the plane and took off. As we climbed out and got approved for a frequency change, I called flight service to open the flight plan and they told me that there were some areas of instability that were not moving south and east of Dallas and recommended I called flight watch when I leave Paris to return to McKinney.
We landed and hung out in the FBO for about 15 minutes, chatted with the guy manning the FBO, and watched clouds get a little taller and decided to leave. On the climb out I called flight watch for a report and they told me there were pop up cells all around my area and to be on the lookout, but that McKinney was clear. As we flew, we saw two menacing clouds just to the south and to the north of my flight path. In both of these clouds there seemed to be a wall of condensation that extended down to the ground so we made sure we were clear of that and continued southwest. We actually flew in between both "walls" toward the clear skies just beyond this cloud. I told my Mark to keep his eyes open for any lightning and tell me immediately if he sees any. Just as we got past the bad stuff, mark saw a bolt of lightning far away to the North. Since we were past it already and past any menacing clouds I didn't worry about it. That's not to say I wasn't more than a little nervous. Let's put it this way, I was flying a plane that has a brand new engine in it. The break-in instructions call for the pilot to fly at 75% cruise... let's just say that I was flying at a little bit more than 75% power on my way through this area of the sky.
Anyway, we made it back to McKinney in short time and landed with the wind 110 at 8 knots (a nice little crosswind) and landed without any problems.
The next day, my wife and I decided to go on a $100 hamburger run to the Blue Pig BBQ up in Ardmore, OK. The weather was much better, although there was a thick haze layer that cut visibility to less than 10 miles. We had to wait longer than usual to take off, as there were several planes in line to leave McKinney and still more landing. So when we actually left, we were about 20 minutes late taking off. Interestingly, one of the other club planes, 68K, a Cessna 150 left McKinney about 3 planes before us.We got into the air and started toward Ardmore and I assigned the wife the task of tracking our checkpoints and making note of the times. She did so while reading a magazine. I guess I should take that as a sign that she trust my ability to control the airplane. When we got close, I figured out that Ardmore tower doesn't have any RADAR. THey asked us for position reports at 5 miles and then again when we were abeam of the tower. Anyway, we arrived in Ardmore and were met on the ramp by a very nice elderly gentleman who threw down a pair of wheel chocks and asked if we needed fuel. We said no thanks and went into the restaurant. I had a bacon cheeseburger and the wife had a brisket sandwich... both were excellent... while there we ran into the couple that took off from McKinney in 68K and said hello. They left before us, but we got there first, as our plane is a little bit faster.
It was a short lunch, but a good one, and after we finished we got back into the plane and started back to McKinney. Once again, having to announce my position at 5 miles out on departure. On the flight back, the air was a little choppier and the skies a little cloudier on the way back, but nothing to be concerned about. We were back a little more quickly than we left, all in all a fun time was had.
Updated Pilot Log
On my last cross-country, out to Granbury, which I am calling Pancake Run 2008, we had a good time, but I wasn't happy with the three landings I made at the airports we visited (Granbury - KGDJ, KHQZ - Mesquite, and KTKI - McKinney). The landing were solid, but there were things I could have done better. For example, In granbury, I came in hot and high on a 3600' runway. I had 20° of flaps, and decided to perform a forward slip to get the plane down. What would have been preferred is to add full flaps (40°). That would have slowed me down and allowed for a steeper descent, so even if I had to still do a forward slip, I would not have had to hold it for as long. On the landing at Mesquite, I just came in too fast and didn't allow the aircraft to float down the runway as long as it needed to and ended up bouncing once. My last landing at McKinney was okay.
I decided that I needed some practice just landing the plane. Since I received my private certificate I haven't worked performed more than 3 landings in one flight so I felt I my technique was a bit rusty and my decision making could use some work. So, I got in the plane yesterday after getting off work and stayed in the pattern and just did landings. In almost an hour I was able to get in 10 landings. I didn't try to do any special landings (like a soft field or short field). I just wanted to do normal everyday landings. After finishing, I felt like I had made progress and had sharpened the rough edges that had developed from not having nearly as many landings since my check ride.
The other thing working landings helps with is sharpening your maneuvering. Doing touch and goes and working in the pattern allows you to practice the four fundamentals of flying. In flying there are only four things you really need to know how to do. Those four things are climbing, descending, turning, and flying straight and level. When working in the pattern you put all four of those fundamentals into practice. You climb out as you take off from the runway and turn to crosswind. You level of and fly straight and level on downwind, you start descending as you turn from downwind to base and from base to final approach. Being able to control the plane under these four fundamentals is essential to all the other maneuvers you perform.
All in all, it was a good hour and I felt like I made some progress in sharpening the rough spots that had develped over the past couple of months where training has not been my primary purpose in flying.
I woke up early this morning (Saturday) to be at the airport by around 7am to fly to Granbury, TX for a fly-in pancake breakfast they have the last Saturday of every month at their airport. For a $3.00 donation, it's all the pancakes and sausage you can eat. So, I got out to the plane and did the pre-flight check, and was joined shortly there after by Robert, who came with me.
The flight out took about an 1 hour, 20 minutes because of a headwind just about the entire trip there. The total distance was 98 nautical miles because we had to fly around the DFW Class Bravo shelf, so, our route of flight was McKinney to Mesquite, to Lancaster, to Midloathian/Waxahachie to Granbury.
The city is nestled nicely against a really pretty lake (Lake Granbury) and seems like a nice little town. The airport is nice and the people there were friendly. We landed without too many problems (having a GPS/Transponder that displays traffic came in handy) and parked the plane on the grass in-field just off the parallel taxiway and had some good and an inexpensive food.
At around 10am, we got back in the plane and headed back the way we came and stopped at Mesquite Airport for some cheap AVgas and headed back to McKinney, arriving 15 minutes ahead of schedule aided this time by a tailwind.
... and here's a list of the places I've landed.
View Larger Map
Since I passed my check ride about a month ago, most... make that all of my flying has been local and giving friends the standard tour of the hinterland north of Dallas. Generally, the tour consists of taking off from KTKI and flying slightly northwest to overfly Deion Sanders' (yes, Deion Sanders the former Dallas Cowboy Cornerback) north texas estate, which is pretty much the only interesting thing to look at that far north of Dallas proper. After a couple of circuits around the Sanders estate, it's south over my house, then over to the Frisco Roughriders baseball stadium, then back to the airport. Generally, I will customize the trip for the individual and work in a flyover for their home too, if they live in the area.
Yesterday, however, was special. It was my first real cross-country flight that was not associated with meeting a requirement for my private pilot certificate. My Friend Robert and I both had the day off work and decided to go on a so called "$100 hamburger" run up to University of Oklahoma Max Westheimer Airport (KOUN) in Norman Oklahoma, to eat at a small diner next to the control tower called Ozzie's. The food was okay. It was not bad, but edible... the airport was outstanding and line service at the FBO was excellent.
On trip up to OU, we decided to use victor airways, so we took off from KTKI and flew due north until we intercepted the Victor Airway 573 at the YOGVA fix, flew that to the Ardmore VOR-TAC, then turned to Victor Airway 17 toward Oklahoma City. When we got to the WETIX fix about 15 south of Norman we turned toward the airport and landed on runway 21. We had trouble getting flight following from regional approach on our way out, so we just monitored the Dallas-Fort Worth Approach frequency and kept our eyes open. On the way back we flew direct KOUN to KSWI for some cheap AV gas before heading back to KTKI. Leaving Norman was very easy and we were able to get flight following down to KSWI.
The total flight time was 3.1 hours, counting all the time on the ground getting ready the trip took a little more than 5 hours. That included the pre-flight stuff, lunch, and our side trip to KSWI in order to refuel with much cheaper AV gas than KTKI sells. Overall, the trip was a blast! Robert and I had a lot of fun and we look forward to going on the next cross-country.
After several months of training I was finally ready for the Private Pilot Checkride. I had fulfilled all the requirements (40+ hours, night flight, cross-countries, etc) and my instructor, Richard Klein, agreed that I was ready, so he told me to give Smitty a call over a Classic Aviation down at Addison Airport (ADS) and get it scheduled.
Why Smitty? He is 86 years old and FAA Examiner almost 60 years. He’s probably given over 10,000 checkrides. Everyone I had spoken to who knew of Smitty told me that he is the best. He’s tough but fair and he is flexible. Everything he tells you is designed to teach you something as well as to test your knowledge. If you don’t walk away from your checkride having learned something from him, you have done something wrong. In short, he knows what he’s doing.
The first thing to note is that I was nervous. There was no way around it. I tried to tell myself this is no big deal, that I was ready, and that even if I failed the checkride, I can retake it in a few weeks. So, no worries, right? No luck, I was still nervous. However, when I walked into his office, and we began our conversation over the necessary paperwork I almost did not notice that he had begun our oral exam. He just started telling stories and would, at various points, pause to ask me question. His style set me at ease quite a bit and made recalling the knowledge and answering the questions easier.
At this point, I should note that I did the oral portion of the checkride and my flight portion on different days. That is not normally how you do it, but the weather was marginal VFR on the date of my original exam due to low ceilings and I just was not comfortable flying that day. The take away here is that it is okay to say, “We’re not flying today.” If you feel uncomfortable flying for any reason due to weather, or maybe you aren’t feeling well that day, do not hesitate to either suspend the flying portion or reschedule the checkride all together. You should exercise the same judgment for the checkride that you would in an actual cross-country trip.
For the oral, he asked me to plan a flight to Tulsa, OK and do a weight and balance problem. I called ahead and asked about this prior to the checkride. I charted the flight and filled out a navigation log with checkpoints, weather, and course heading including wind corrected angle. Basically, I treated the flight plan as if I was really going to fly it all the way to Tulsa. For the weight and balance calculation was to solve for 4 of me in the Cessna 172 I used for the checkride. In my case, I could only carry 11 gallons of fuel, which meant; ultimately I would need a bigger plane. So, I did an additional weight and balance for myself and Smitty (estimating that he was 150 lbs).
Additionally, I got to know the plane I was flying. I needed to be able to show him (if he asked) how I knew that the plane legally allowed to fly. I needed to know things like what paperwork is necessary, the fuel capacity, the voltage of the electrical system, the gross weight of the aircraft, and the horsepower of the engine. Knowing your aircraft is an important part of knowing its capabilities and therefore, an important part of the practical exam.
Remember, you are the pilot in command. You have the final say in the operation of the flight. Smitty will probably not ask you about seatbelts, but you should know what the FAR says and if he decides not to put his on, you need to brief him on it and make sure he is in compliance. Remember also, that if you feel that something he asks you to do is unsafe, you have the option of saying “no.” It is your responsibility as pilot in command to ensure the the flight is conducted in a safe manner.
Smitty is flexible but knew to still be on my toes. On my checkride, He asked me to do a soft field takeoff, so I set up the plane and started my takeoff run and when I got off the ground he said, “there’s an obstacle, get us over it.” We essentially did a combination of a soft field and short field takeoff. I was prepared for this eventuality and steepened my climb to get over the obstacle.
When I took off I was flying my flight plan using solely using dead-reckoning and pilotage. In fact, Smitty set the GPS so as to render the display useless during this phase of the flight. He expected me to use my heading gyro, chart, and eyes looking out the window. After I found Aero Country Airport (T31) and he diverted me to McKinney to do the landings.
Smitty is not looking for a reason to fail a pilot, he wants pilots to succeed. There are some standards must be followed, but if the pilot is not perfect he’ll be flexible as long as air safety is being maintained. When we started our landings, first one was a soft field, which I did fine. The next was a short field. When I was cleared by the tower, I was asked to make a short approach and didn't get rid of the power quick enough. Smitty saw that I was going to be too far over the obstacle by about 100 to 150 feet and said, "Let's just make this one our go-around instead." We went around the pattern and I did the short field landing the next time. He saw that I was going to have trouble and he was critical, but he was flexible enough to allow me to try something else and attempt the landing the next time around.
I succeeded with the next attempt at a short field landing and when we took off again, he took control of the plane and asked for a northwest departure and took us up to 2300 feet and put me under the hood. He gave me a couple of headings to turn to, then we did two unusual attitudes (one nose up and one nose down), had me fly toward a VOR, and while he was doing this, we was giving me a scenario where I inadvertently flew into the clouds and tuned the radio to 121.5 to ask me what was significant about that frequency (it’s the emergency frequency). Then he had me take off the visor and ask me to figure out where we were. At this point I was allowed to use anything I wanted in the plane to determine my position, including the GPS. When we first left ADS, Smitty put the GPS in a state where it would not display anything helpful to me during the cross-country phase of the flight. I could not initially figure out how to get the unit into a more useful state (remember the nervousness I talked about), so I went to the VOR, used the CDI to determine with radial I was on and looked at the chart to estimate my position. I saw a big body of water in front of us and stated that we were just east of Lake Ray Roberts.
He replied, “Are you sure?”
I answered back with a slight pause, “yes.”
He said, “Okay” in a tone that seemed to suggest, we’ll just see about that.
We were actually east of Lake Lewisville. Afterward he explained that was going to wait to see if I got myself into any trouble with airspace or to see if I could find my way back to ADS.
He took over and got us to place away from any populated area and we did a couple of steep turns, slow flight, then to a power-off stall, then a power-on stall. Then he took over again and found a cross roads for us to do a turn about a point. He flew us into the turn so that he could give me a starting distance from the point and had me go around the point once. We went into the turn on the downwind side so I knew to start my turn with a steeper bank and start making the bank shallower as I began to fly upwind. We finished that maneuver and he said, “Let’s go back to Addison.”
This time I took a second to take a look at the GPS and figured out how to get the moving map to show up and pressed the “direct to” button and punched up KADS and headed straight for the airport. When we landed and were done, he did not say much, we went into his office, took my logbook and wrote an entry with our flight time and a comment that read, “Private test passed,” along with his signature. Then he picked up a booklet of blank Temporary Airman Certificates and filled one out. When he was finished he explained some things about the certificate and sent me on my way.
I'll write more later. I passed my checkride. Woooo-Hoooo!
