I got a phone call from the FBO yesterday after my scratched flight — turns out the mechanic was able to fix the tach and N1727V was back in action! They asked if I wanted to come by this morning to knock the checkride out — they didn’t have to ask me twice!
I was pretty nervous heading to the airport today — I really didn’t want to blow this! What would happen if I completely bombed? Would I need another 30 hours before I’d finally be ready to solo??
When I got to the airport my check CFI was already preflighting the airplane. We got everything squared away and started her up — success! The tach was taching and we were ready to go!
I taxied over to runway 8 and we were off. Standard climb out, then a turn to the north towards the practice area. As we were climbing we were fast approaching some clouds. I didn’t know if this was part of the test…
“Umm, let me know how high you want me to climb…I don’t want to get too close to those clouds.”
“We’ll have to get over them to get to a safe altitude, just keep going,” was the reply.
Woohoo! My first time going through the clouds! I climbed up through the thin layer and soon we were on top of them. It was a pretty cool sight seeing the sun appear as we broke through a floor of cloud cover.
My instructor had me get into slow flight configuration and we worked on some turns. I banked a little too steeply on these. Next we did some power off stall recoveries. He wasn’t happy with my first one (neither was I, to be honest) and he told me to approach it like a scenario. I was supposed to setup for final approach, start descending, and when I got to the “runway” 500 feet below me, I was going to pull back to stall the plane.
I set us up for another try and slowly flared the plane. It didn’t stall. I had the yoke full aft — still nothing. We sat there for a minute, nose pointed into the sky, and both had a quick laugh about how this plane didn’t want to stall today. I brought the nose down to set up again and flared a bit more aggressively this time. The plane finally decided to cooperate and I got my stall and recovered nicely. We did a few more of these then headed back to the airport to try some pattern work.
Along the way, the instructor asked me how I would know if the engine had quit or if it was just idling. I didn’t know the answer. He pulled the throttle and demonstrated idle. Then he showed me a true engine failure — he pulled the mixture to idle cutoff. There was no difference as the prop was windmilling. He said this was an important lesson — never try and stretch a glide thinking you might have a bit of power left in the engine. You really can’t tell if the thing has completely stopped working or not.
We headed for a long straight in for runway 8 and I performed a crosswind landing. It wasn’t great, but I think I did a pretty good job. We did a touch and go and went around the pattern two more times. My pattern work was pretty good and the instructor seemed happy with the landings. I was pretty happy with them, too — I definitely feel like I’m improving.
After our last landing we headed back to the FBO. He told me I had done well and wished me luck with the rest of my training.
One more item ticked off the checklist — now to fly with my regular CFI again and see what’s left before I can solo!
Flight time today: 1.1 hours
Total flight time to date: 31.8 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 105
Total landings to date: 101