Re: America\'s Newest Commercial Multi Engine Pilot
Thanks everybody. The ride did take me two times to complete because of what I consider bad luck, though I should have known what I screwed up on.
Of our fleet of Seminoles, most of them have the Garmin 430 GPS, but a few of them still have the Bendix King KLN89s. I only flew with the KLN89 a couple times this semester and those flights were for primarily VFR stuff. So of course, because of my fantastic luck, I get out to the airplane and find that I have the good ol bendix king GPS. Of course I have to demonstrate a GPS approach. I've done it before on this unit, but its been quite some time and I forgot about the part where you need to hit the OBS button and tune in your final approach course when getting vectors to final. I knew there was one thing I was forgetting but I couldn't remember for the life of me. Since I couldn't load the GPS correctly that portion was deemed unsat (rightly so).
So she gives me the option of continuing with the flight. I had gotten everything done other than the landings earlier in the flight, and they had gone fairly well so I figured it was a good idea to continue and get those out of the way. They went fine, and because of that the next flight I had to do only one single engine GPS approach.
Because it was not deemed an aircraft control issue, but rather a technology one, I didn't have to do a review flight with my instructor, but instead just went over the GPS trainer for the Bendix. As soon as I got on the ground after the checkride, she pointed out what I did wrong and I was wanting to bang my head on the panel because I knew that, but was just drawing a blank when I was in the plane. So the review with my instructor was about 10 minutes long, much of it discussing what color the NIssan 350z looked better in ;-).
So then came the day of the second flight, went really well and I shot what I think is the best single engine/GPS approach I've ever done. But of course guess which kind of GPS was in the aircraft this time...a garmin, which I knew inside and out even before the review.
Such is luck I guess, I'm just glad its done.