jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
Passed the commercial practical today! I got to the airport at 8:00 a.m. to start the oral with the examiner (Les for anyone from Dallas reading this). We did paperwork from probably 8:30 until 9:30, making sure that everyone is in order. We started the oral at about 9:30 a.m. and went until about 11:30 a.m. This was the longest oral I've done as of yet. I wouldn't say it was hard, but it did take a bit of time to get through all of the material. If you want to know what we covered, check the PTS. We did pretty much everything.
We took a break for lunch and met back at the airplane at 1:00 p.m. We started by pre-flighting the plane. During my other practicals the examiner never came out to come out to pre-flight with me, so it was a little weird having someone looking over my shoulder the whole time. He asked a few questions, and it turns out I don't know what any of the antenna's on the Piper Arrow do. I've got to work on that before Wednesday as I have my multi check ride with the same examiner then.
We did a regular run up and departed the pattern to the south to start on the first leg of my cross country flight. We got to the first way point on time but about 2 miles east of course. I did the regular visual checkpoint with a VOR radial as backup. He said there was a thunderstorm out in front of us and he circled an airport on the sectional that he wanted me to divert to. I made a quick turn to about the heading I figured would take us to it and pulled out the AFD to figure out how to get there a little more exactly. I know some people like to do just do pilotage diversions, but I like to use every trick my bag in situations like this. I could have probably just tuned in the GPS for this, but when I realize that the same radial I had used as a checkpoint would take me to the diversion airport if I tracked inbound I just watched for 24 DME off of the VOR. The examiner asked me to tell him when I was directly over the airport. I knew that I had to get it right, because if I said “I think we're over the airport” when I really wasn't, he was going to pull my power anyways and tell me to land. That is in fact exactly what happened. We did a power off circle to land approach from 3,500' down to about 500' directly over the airport. We made an uneventful landing and then made a soft field departure, departing the area to the southwest so that we could go setup for some maneuvers.
Maneuvers were fairly stock. We started with steep turns, which I did alright on. They were fine until I started to loose some altitude on my the last half of the last turn. Then we had a series of slow flight and stalls. After this we setup for some chandelles and did two of those. These were some of my best chandelles yet. After this we hit my worst maneuver; lazy eights. They sucked, but were within PTS. We climbed up a little higher and did a steep spiral down to about 1,600' MSL to do some eights on pylons. I picked my points, setup to enter downwind and did what the examiner said were some of the best eights on pylons he's seen in a while. This ended the maneuvers and we headed back to the airport to do some landings.
We started with a short field landing, which had a little more float than I'd like to have. This was done as a touch and go so we could come back around and do a power off 180. This is a maneuver that I think most people have a bit of trouble really getting down. Somehow, though, I managed to slam the plane down (and I do mean slam) on the fixed distance markers. I didn't actually think I was going to make the runway at first. It was a hot day, about 100 deg., and we had a decent amount of wind blowing down the runway. I made a turn real quick but then it looked like I didn't turn fast enough. I got lined up on the runway after a modified base to final (didn't square up at all) fairly close to the runway, dropped the gear and hoped I had enough altitude to hit the markers. It worked out, and we did another touch and go. The “last” approach was to a go around. On the real last landing the examiner managed to turn on the panel lights when I wasn't paying attention to him. If you know Piper systems, you know that this will dim the landing gear lights. I put the gear down and didn't get three green. I recycled the gear to see if I could get the gear to come down and felt a clunk in the rudder pedals and noticed the aerodynamic indications that the gear are down and locked. I thought to myself “Maybe just the nose wheel came down...no I'd have at least one green light....this sob turned on that panel lights!” I went and turned off the panel lights and I magically had three green again. We made an uneventful landing and taxied in to the Skymates ramp. Check ride over, I passed.
It was a long day, we didn't get done until about 4:00 p.m. Went to Hooters for some free beer and wings with Steve and Austin afterwards. I'm off until Monday when we start multi engine training. We'll fly on Monday and Tuesday with the check ride on Wednesday. Then I should start right in on the CFII stuff just as Steve should be passing his II ride.
We took a break for lunch and met back at the airplane at 1:00 p.m. We started by pre-flighting the plane. During my other practicals the examiner never came out to come out to pre-flight with me, so it was a little weird having someone looking over my shoulder the whole time. He asked a few questions, and it turns out I don't know what any of the antenna's on the Piper Arrow do. I've got to work on that before Wednesday as I have my multi check ride with the same examiner then.
We did a regular run up and departed the pattern to the south to start on the first leg of my cross country flight. We got to the first way point on time but about 2 miles east of course. I did the regular visual checkpoint with a VOR radial as backup. He said there was a thunderstorm out in front of us and he circled an airport on the sectional that he wanted me to divert to. I made a quick turn to about the heading I figured would take us to it and pulled out the AFD to figure out how to get there a little more exactly. I know some people like to do just do pilotage diversions, but I like to use every trick my bag in situations like this. I could have probably just tuned in the GPS for this, but when I realize that the same radial I had used as a checkpoint would take me to the diversion airport if I tracked inbound I just watched for 24 DME off of the VOR. The examiner asked me to tell him when I was directly over the airport. I knew that I had to get it right, because if I said “I think we're over the airport” when I really wasn't, he was going to pull my power anyways and tell me to land. That is in fact exactly what happened. We did a power off circle to land approach from 3,500' down to about 500' directly over the airport. We made an uneventful landing and then made a soft field departure, departing the area to the southwest so that we could go setup for some maneuvers.
Maneuvers were fairly stock. We started with steep turns, which I did alright on. They were fine until I started to loose some altitude on my the last half of the last turn. Then we had a series of slow flight and stalls. After this we setup for some chandelles and did two of those. These were some of my best chandelles yet. After this we hit my worst maneuver; lazy eights. They sucked, but were within PTS. We climbed up a little higher and did a steep spiral down to about 1,600' MSL to do some eights on pylons. I picked my points, setup to enter downwind and did what the examiner said were some of the best eights on pylons he's seen in a while. This ended the maneuvers and we headed back to the airport to do some landings.
We started with a short field landing, which had a little more float than I'd like to have. This was done as a touch and go so we could come back around and do a power off 180. This is a maneuver that I think most people have a bit of trouble really getting down. Somehow, though, I managed to slam the plane down (and I do mean slam) on the fixed distance markers. I didn't actually think I was going to make the runway at first. It was a hot day, about 100 deg., and we had a decent amount of wind blowing down the runway. I made a turn real quick but then it looked like I didn't turn fast enough. I got lined up on the runway after a modified base to final (didn't square up at all) fairly close to the runway, dropped the gear and hoped I had enough altitude to hit the markers. It worked out, and we did another touch and go. The “last” approach was to a go around. On the real last landing the examiner managed to turn on the panel lights when I wasn't paying attention to him. If you know Piper systems, you know that this will dim the landing gear lights. I put the gear down and didn't get three green. I recycled the gear to see if I could get the gear to come down and felt a clunk in the rudder pedals and noticed the aerodynamic indications that the gear are down and locked. I thought to myself “Maybe just the nose wheel came down...no I'd have at least one green light....this sob turned on that panel lights!” I went and turned off the panel lights and I magically had three green again. We made an uneventful landing and taxied in to the Skymates ramp. Check ride over, I passed.
It was a long day, we didn't get done until about 4:00 p.m. Went to Hooters for some free beer and wings with Steve and Austin afterwards. I'm off until Monday when we start multi engine training. We'll fly on Monday and Tuesday with the check ride on Wednesday. Then I should start right in on the CFII stuff just as Steve should be passing his II ride.
