ATP RAL -- MEL Add-on experience

JediNein

New Member
Greetings!

Day 1: Arrive after 4 miserable hours in traffic, go directly to hotel, do not pass airport. Collaspe in bed, watch the war for a bit, and conk out.

Day 2: Met the instructor, Socal. We do a bit of cross examination on the oral questions. We fly twice in a 2000 Piper Seminole. I land one time so hard I'm sure I set the ELT off. As we are taxiing back, another pilot reports hearing an ELT to the tower. The light on the panel looks illuminated, so I try the push-to-reset. The plane's ELT starts warbling. OOoops... Nope, the landing wasn't that hard. The list of maneuvers: normal takeoff, lose the engine on crosswind, land, short field takeoff, out to practice area, steep turns, slow flight, power off stall, power on stall, Vmc Demo, emergency descent, ILS to another local airport, land or missed, VFR back to home base. More fun, and I manage to stagger out of the airplane at the end of the second flight.

Day 3 is the same as day 2. Except I let Socal fly for a bit, with the knowledge that he'd be losing an engine on the way home. I pull it on him during the downwind leg at the IFR approach airport, and he flies it back home single engine. Ahhhh, haven't pulled an engine on someone in weeks! Of course Socal makes the whole procedure look easy and even does an awesome single engine landing.

I have a great deal of respect for instructors like him that can deal with training other instructors. Going from "fly my way" to "fly his way" is difficult for me, and having been the instructor trying to get another experienced pilot to fly my way, it's REALLY hard to communicate, decide when and what to change, and when to shut up. Even as the student wanting to change my flying procedure, it is still hard. Good job Socal!

Day 4, checkride, having been moved up from Day 5:



Yep, no checkride.
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The weather that caused the cancellation cleared up in the ten minutes it took us to decide to cancel the ride (over the phone with the examiner) and me to leave the airport.

The forecasters were predicting rain, thunderstorms, snow, low ceilings, frogs . . . and it has been excellent VFR with a high layer of scattered clouds all day with bright sunshine and in the mid-70's, even in the areas that were not supposed to reach VFR.

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Weather... go figure.
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Fly SAFE!
Jedi Nein (posting again in three days)
 
It is a multiengine add-on to the commercial rating. It also includes the instrument rating. The multiengine instructor is another checkride, which will be a bit into the future.

Today was the checkride and I walked away with a CPSEL-MEL-IA certificate.

Cool.

The ride was as advertised except for an ILS approach into Riverside, not Chino, but that's not a big deal. I gave dual for that approach in IMC (in a single engine) less than two hours before the checkride.

Fly SAFE!
Jedi Nein
 
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