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. They accepted it happily. Ironically, the weather was nearly IFR with bad turbulence for the ride home.

The plan was for me to fly on Monday with Gene Hudson for a phase check. Gene did my phase check for the private, and exposed several things that needed work. Only problem was, I didn’t have an airplane. The club 172 had some sort of plug fouling problem, and was stranded in Santa Barbara. After finding out that it was only minor, I scheduled two more training flights for the week. I’d have to do it without a phase check.

So today we flew the first. We decided to go from Van Nuys and shoot the VOR-8 at Burbank to a missed, then the VOR-A at Santa Monica. It was brutal. For starters, the radios had been looked at, and neither were working properly – squelch problems all the way around. Then the approaches themselves. Things happen SO fast in such a short period of time, it’s not even funny. By the time I got established on the approach course, we were crossing the FAF. I descended too fast, and my airspeed was way off. It worked out OK, but sloppy. We went to Santa Monica, and that went pretty good. I managed altitude well, and stayed reasonably ahead.

After dinner, we decided to fly out towards Simi Valley, do a hold, and then shoot the LDA-C back to Van Nuys. After leaving Van Nuys, Kent gave me an intersection hold. I handled it well – a real confidence builder. One turn around the hold, and I had it nailed. The approach to Van Nuys went well too.

So the plan is to spend Friday working out some final problems, prepare for the oral a bit, get all the paperwork in order, and try and relax for Saturday. MAN am I nervous!