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No tach, no flight!

Today was the day I was supposed to take my pre-solo checkride with another instructor from my flight school. I was a bit anxious driving out to the airport — it had been a week since I practiced my maneuvers with my regular CFI and I was really hoping I wouldn’t make a fool out of myself!

I met my instructor for the day and we started off going over my logbook and talking about some of the procedures I’ve been training on. I was able to answer most of his questions correctly, but I did get hit with a couple of things I should’ve known but didn’t (like cloud clearance requirements for VFR flight — I keep mixing up the above clouds and below clouds numbers!)

After being sufficiently grilled, we were off to the plane. I did my preflight and we climbed in. I started my pre-start checklist and the differences between the two CFIs became apparent — this CFI wanted me to call out all of the checklist items as I performed them. He mentioned most examiners would expect this during a certificate checkride. I have to say, I love my instructor, but I do like flying with different people because you really do get some different perspectives on things.

I got through the checklist and cranked the starter. The engine started right up and I checked the tach. Nothing! It was pegged on zero. I mentioned this to my instructor and he thought it over for a second. He tapped on the gauge, I ran the engine up to see if it was stuck or something, but nothing worked. He said he would be fine flying without it, but I probably would have a hard time taking the checkride with no tach. We decided to shut down and call a mechanic.

C172 tachometer

Inside, we had no luck. The mechanic informed us he had just replaced the tach yesterday and it was probably a broken cable. He would have to order a part; there would be no checkride today.

We headed into a classroom and went over cross country planning for a bit. I showed him the flight plan I had sketched out and he gave me some really good tips on choosing checkpoints and planning out the details of the flight.

I was disappointed I couldn’t knock the checkride out today, but not much I can do about that!

Flight time today: 0.0 hours (!)
Total flight time to date: 30.7 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 102
Total landings to date: 98

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Cross country planning

I had a premonition that we wouldn’t be flying today when I encountered IMC while driving to the airport. There was a low layer of fog which made the drive in pretty interesting. Sure enough, when I got to DXR, my instructor said we’d be doing some ground school today and going over cross country planning.

I was pretty excited about this, since, as my instructor says, this is why you fly…to get somewhere! He told me my mission was to fly from DXR to Groton, CT (GON), about 65nm away. Then we would head to Windham (IJD), an untowered airport about 25nm north of Groton. Finally, we would head home to DXR, 63nm to the west.

We sketched out the flight plan on my sectional and looked at considerations like airspace we’d be passing through, safe altitudes across the trip, and any obstacles we might have to content with. My CFI showed me how to use my E6B flight computer to calculate the proper headings, and then he showed me how to use the E6B to factor wind forecasts into the equation and come up with a wind correction angle (WCA) for each leg.

E6B flight computer
E6B flight computer

I was told we would not have any more ground school until I came up with a full flight plan for the cross country. I’ll be posting about this process in more detail as I work through it. Even though I haven’t soloed yet, this made me feel like I was really on my way to a major milestone in my training!