The longest day...

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

8 years, 5 months, 24 days to be precise. That was the time from my first logged flight (August 11th 1999) to my PPL flight test (3rd February 2008) and in that time I racked up:

• 90 flights...


• in 15 different aircraft...


• totalling 88.8 hours...


• and 284 landings[1]

and what do I have to show for it? A handshake and a 'Congratulations' from the flight examiner :)

Yesterday was quite possibly one of the longest days of my life. After spending most of saturday evening doing my last minute prep and making sure I had all my documents in order, I found I was so excited I could barely sleep. In fact, I did not dose off until after midnight and I awoke around 6:30am.

After tossing and turning for an hour or so, I finally gave up and had a shower, triple-checked that I had everything and then headed out to the airfield.

Of course, no other idiot was stupid enough to be at the flying club at 9am, so it was all locked up. I just sat at one of the outdoor tables watching the early morning circuit bashers and doing some last minute study of the flight manual.

A couple of other people showed up, so I started ringing people to find someone with a key. A keyholder finally arrived around 10am, which meant I got to sit inside and be anxious instead of sitting outside and being anxious ;)

The flight examiner, John, arrived soon after, but had a lot of paperwork and some other business to attend to first. So I waited.

Around 11:15, I commenced the ground work portion (doing flight plan, weight & balance etc.) and thanks to a practice run on Saturday and my paper work prep the night before I had finished in about 25-30 minutes... you get 1 hour. I went to tell John, but he was busy doing an Instructor Renewal so he told me to go and get a coffee. So I waited.

During this time, the cloud turned nasty, it rained... it started to fine up... it started to shower again... you know, typical Auckland "4 seasons in one day" weather.

A couple of flights came back saying "cloud base and weather down to minimums"... so I thought it was over, but John said "we'll wait and see". So I waited.

He went and did the instructor renewal flight and came back and said the weather was not too bad so if we leave it a little bit and work through the paperwork it should be good to go. So I waited.

It rained.

So John decides he'll head back into town to go pick up his father and come back and drop him off at the Warbirds association for a beer... he'll be back in 30 minutes. So I waited.

He arrived back and said "Ready to go?" so I preflighted the aircraft (I had already done this earlier, but he wanted to watch how I did it) and we strapped ourselves and went. I made sure I verbalised everything that I was doing and worked through my checks thoroughly.

We taxied out at 5:30pm... and I was still feeling excited, nervous and amped despite being up for nearly 12 hours.

The next 1.1 hours were a bit of a blur... climb out, head down towards the training area via Drury, steep turn left, steep turn right, basic stall, fully developed stall, power-on stall, compass turns, forced landing, EFATO, bad weather/low flying, medium turn left, medium turn right, steep turn left, steep turn right, head back to the field for some circuits.

Rain showers sweeping across the field made it interesting, as did the light twin behind me doing asymmetric circuits, but it's his responsibility to get his spacing right so I was not too concerned with what he was doing.

So we did a normal circuit (I did a go-around because I was high and not happy with the approach), a flapless (demonstrating crosswind technique for John, not easy when the wind is calm!), another normal (with a go-around at about 10 feet!) and then a shortfield approach to finish (55kts all the way down final and totally nailed it!)

Taxied back to the club, parked up and ran through the shutdown checks at which point John smiled at me, then offered his hand and said 'Congratulations'. I thanked him and we chatted for a minute about a couple of things (my first go-around and my apparent reluctance to use full flaps) and then he asked if I minded securing the aircraft on my own. It was still raining and he obviously didn't want to get soaking wet, but I could have cared less...

Being the "professional" pilot that I am, I waited until he had climbed out and disappeared back into the clubhouse before celebrating my success... but I'm sure everyone inside heard me ;)

So I worked through the paperwork, then got out and secured the aircraft (the rain was actually quite refreshing) and headed inside to a dead quiet clubhouse before everyone burst in applause and congratulations.

My wallet ended up a little lighter after the bar shout and a nice cold Monteiths Summer Ale (in honour of the lovely summery weather), but the nothing could get the stupid grin off my face... It's still there today and probably will be for the next week or three :)

Then I had dinner with the in-laws (which became an impromptu celebratory dinner) and headed home. I had been planning on cracking open a bottle of Wild Turkey that a friend gave me for xmas, but by 10:30pm, I had been up for around 16 hours with about 4 hours of sleep before that... so as you can imagine I crashed pretty hard! ;)

And then irony of irony's... today is beautiful blue skies and bright sunshine... much like the 3 weeks of perfect weather before my flight test... Typical!

Anyway, I still have some paperwork to tidy up (Fit and Proper Person) before CAA will issue my license... and I cannot exercise my PPL privileges before I am in possession of the plastic license, but for all intents and purposes, I am a qualified Private Pilot (Aeroplane).

Now I just need to do my cross countries to lift the restriction... and get a 172 rating... and get a cherokee rating... and get a night rating... and get an aerobatics rating... and get a taildragger rating... and......... ;)


This flight: 1.1 PinC (Pilot in Command)
Total Hours: 88.8 (68.0 Dual, 20.8 PinC, 5.1 IFR)

[1] in case you're wondering how 90 flights ended in 284 landings, when you're doing circuits you do several landings per flight ;)