Instrument Checkride Practical – Part II
After some scheduling difficulties due to weather, as well as my catching a nasty cold, we finally got back together to finish the practical. Same drill – I picked him up at his office. We talked about last weeks bust, what a good learning experience it was, etc. Then off to finish what we couldn’t […]
Instrument Checkride Practical – Part I
I felt really prepared for today. The examiner told me what we’d be doing after we finished the oral last time – the BUR ILS 8 to a missed, back around for the BUR VOR 8 to a missed, out to the practice area for steep turns, unusual attitudes, holds and then back for the […]
Instument Checkride – Oral
Well – today was the big day. Got up at 5:30am (for a 9:00am checkride) because I couldn’t sleep. Got a weather briefing, finished the flight planning to Monterey, loaded up, and went to breakfast. Studied for the oral while eating, and then the time had come. Showed up at Mark’s office about 10 minutes […]
Last chance to clean up
Well, tomorrow is the checkride, so Kent and I went up for some final tuning. Things didn’t go as we’d planned, but it was good anyway. The weather was ideal for IFR training – 4000 foot ceilings and light rain. We headed to Chino first to shoot the ILS there and have breakfast at Flo’s […]
The home stretch
Well, it’s been an interesting few days. For starters, I took and passed the written last Thursday. I wanted it out of the way, and felt ready to take it. I got a 90. Happy with that. Then I flew VFR to Vegas to give the Lady Luck some extra cash I had laying around. […]
One more for the road
Tonight we decided to head out to Santa Barbara (SBA) for one last cross country, and do it to checkride standards. Departed Van Nuys around 5:30pm, and climbed on top of a pretty nasty haze layer. Smooth and clear (from what I hear) the whole way from there. That is until we got to SBA […]
Polishing
Now we come to the most painful phase of the training – polishing the skills to get ready for the checkride. Not that flying of any kind is boring, mind you, but being under the hood tightening up things that you already know about doesn’t exactly rank as “excitingâ€. So we went up for some […]
Instrument Cross Country
Friday the 13th. Perfect day for 300+ miles of flying, all under the hood. To meet the requirements of the rating, the trip needs to be 250NM total, three legs, one leg over 100NM, and three different approaches. I planned a trip from Van Nuys (VNY) to San Diego-Montgomery Field (MYF) to Camarillo (CMA) back […]
Tightening things up
As the checkride approaches, it’s time to start getting things tight. Tolerances are now lower – 50 feet on altitude, 5 knots on airspeed, 2 degrees on heading. We thought we’d head to Camarillo, then to grab a bite at Santa Monica (SMO). We departed VFR, with the plan being that Kent would give me […]
So much for Big Sky theory
Today we decided to just go a quick one out to Camarillo (CMA) and back to Van Nuys (VNY) – I had to pick up the daughter at preschool, and had only 90 minutes or so. Should be plenty of time. Only it wasn’t. By the time we got our clearance and got released, 20 […]