2 months of Ups and Downs

Wow... so much has happened since November... and unfortunately, the most recent event was not as pleasant as I had hoped. More on that in a minute.

Back in late November/Early December, I had been hard out prepping for the CPL Flight test. Running through the CPL syllabus, practising the ground work exercises, reading the aircraft flight manual from cover to cover and back again, AIP's, AC's and Part's 61, 91 & 135.

I had booked my flight test with ASL, hoping to get it in before Xmas. Unfortunately, it would appear that everyone else wanted to do the same. I suspect the inclement weather we had didn't help either.

The upshot being that I couldn't get a flight test date. :(

Then "real life" got in the way, with my sister's wedding the weekend before christmas (awesome day btw... congrats Keryn+Dave ;), Christmas, New Year, my wife actually getting some annual leave so I thought it best to spend time with her ;). Before I knew it, a month had gone by and I hadn't been near an aircraft :(

And then I got a flight test date of the afternoon of January 25th.

Awesome, something to work towards... unfortunately, and I must take some of the "credit" for this for not pushing harder, the lead up just wasn't there. Weather and lack of aircraft didn't help my cause and I went into the flight test ready, but probably not as ready as I should have been.

The day itself was a nervous wait... just making sure the aircraft, me, the paper-work, the aircraft, me, the paper-work, me, the aircraft etc. etc. were ready.

As is usually the case, most of my nerves were unfounded, the examiner was friendly and cheerful and we got down to the business of the paperwork and the ground theory.

This went well enough, and he seemed impressed by my obviously thorough preparation and sound knowledge. I pre-flighted the aircraft under his watchful gaze and after strapping him in and running through a safety briefing we taxiied out.

The flight started smoothly enough, Max-performance Take Off, Engine Failure After Take-Off and then into the instrument flying. Fairly simple stuff that I did well and he commented as much during the post-flight debrief.

We ran through some turns, stalls and other basic manueveurs and then we got to Max-Rate Turns... and I came unstuck :(

I had had some issues with these during my training, and I was a little nervous as we started the exercise and my first turns were very tentative and not up to the required standard. I had another go and the result was pretty much the same.

At this point, we decided to come back to those, as he wanted me to demonstrate some stalls in the steep turns, which were a bit rough, but passable... then the slow flight exercises and then some steep gliding turns and then, without warning, straight into a forced landing without power. I was a little high, but some aggressive S-Turns got me into a good position to make the chosen field. He commented later that it was a little untidy, but passable.

On the go-around, he originally instructed me to head for 500' and I figured we would then do the low-flying exercises. However on the climb he changed his mind, instructed me to head for 1000' and we would have another go at the Max-Rates...

I think I started to panic a little, knowing that my entire flight test basically rested on the next 5 minutes. Unfortunately, I blew it. My turns were even worse and the examiner suggested that I would need further training, and that we should head back to base for a de-brief. Flight examiner speak for "You have failed" :(

We flew back, I made a fairly awful approach but a nice enough landing, taxiied back in and shut down. CFI Rob got some of the others to secure the aircraft while we went inside to de-brief with the flight examiner.

We covered all the good points and things I had done well, made some general observations about things that while "passable" I should definitely consider thinking about for the next flight test... and then the issue of the max-rate turns.

To be completely honest, I don't really recall a lot of the discussion... as I was pretty bummed... and kinda tuned everything out at that point. I was mostly upset at me for letting myself down :(

I headed home, had a few drinks, felt sorry for myself and went to bed. The next day, I woke up, built a bridge, got over it and was determined that I would not fail next time. I set about rebooking a new flight test date, and getting the preparations started as I will now need to redo the full CAA Fit and Proper Person process as it will be more than 24 months since my last one.

Today was my first flight since the flight test. It felt good to be back in the air. With a fresh perspective from a different instructor, I went and practised Max-Rate Turns and Stalls in Steep Turns for just over an hour and a half.

Certainly some things to work on, but things are coming along nicely ;)