The Joy of Aviation

After 9 months of studying and flight training, I achieved what many call the hardest pilot rating there is. And it all came down to this….

I met my DPE, Master CFII and National Instructor of the Year in 2004 Doug Stewart (photo), at 10:00 at 1B1 Columbia County airport, his office, base of operations. We spent some time going over the IACRA form as there was some debate over areas such as night instruction, landings, fields I left blank. The instructions said “fill in only what’s necessary for the applied for rating” but he and his supervisor at the FSDO thought it’s not a good idea to leave stuff blank. So a new app, a call to my CFII to get him to re-sign off (luckily he was available and near a computer). All the Ts crossed, we started the oral. Here are SOME of the questions/topics I can remember:

Started with the weather. Things like
WX
-where do you get wx info… pre, and enroute?
-what do you look for in the wx (what’s bad)?
-how can you tell if things are not going as forecast? What do you do?
-What’s Airmets, Sigmets. What kind of things will you find in each?

Equipment:
What’s the static system?
What operates on it?
Ways it can malfunction?
How does a Altimeter, VSI, Airspeed indicator work?
Troubleshooting those instruments in flight.
Induction, airframe icing precautions, symptoms, solutions,

Flight Planning:
In advance, he gave me a 350nm flight to plan.
-MEAs, Alts, Notams, Wx,, what runways might I choose (based on availability, airplane equipment and wx)
-Fuel planning ( I would need 1 fuel stop,., so essentially two flights)
-Alts

Approaches:
What does “Alpha, Bravo” mean with regards to VOR and ADF approaches
There’s a buncha GPS, RNAV questions he passed on cause I don’t have either in the plane.
One question that surprised me: How wide is the localizer at the threshold. My answer: “I’m guessing here… 30 feet” 70 feet is the correct answer. There were 3 questions in the oral that I didn’t have answers to. I was blunt and honest – didn’t try to BS.
When can you descend below DA / MDA?

Regulations:
Take off mins
ODP, DP (Obstetrical Departure Procedures, Non-standard Departure Procedures)
I’m sure there were a bunch more on regs, but I can’t remember what they were right now.

Then I heard “You passed the oral” and I gave a big sigh of relief. I was most worried about that – in fact quite stressed about it for about 3 months. He said I performed extremely well, above average.

We took a break and went to the restaurant next door for some lunch. He had veggie burger (one of his fav things) and I had the buffalo chicken club sandwich.

Headed back to the ramp, sumped the tanks <wink> and got ready for our flight.

The Plan
1B1 D->* PSF [LOC 26, miss, hold]
PSF D-> ALB [VOR 28 miss, ILS 1 miss]
ALB south, unusuals, D-> 1B1 [Full NDB, full stop]

*Normally, when launching from 1B1, it would have started the “cross country” portion of the test. But we skipped the navigation part because the week before I spent 12 hours cross country flying with him for his Narly Northeast Instrument course, during which he said my planning, nav and control skills were exceptional.

Winds aloft (dang I should have recorded them.)
They were something like 100/35kt. One indelible memory will be the crab angle I had to maintain traveling from POU, my home base, to 1B1. Normally, I can’t see the crab… even when other pilots in the right seat can. As soon as I leveled out, WOW… I noticed. I had about a 35* correction in. I said “yikes, this is going to be interesting” knowing that two of the approaches were going to be west-bound.
Periodic moderate turbulence
Clouds: Scattered 4500, Broken 7000

I did all my ATC communications mock via my DPE. I “filed” before we left his office and requested a “hold for release”. Got loaded into the plane, and “Called FSS” and got my clearance with a 20 min void time. (generous)

Taxied to the north end of 21 checking turn coordinator, ball, AI, then did my run-up.
Called “Blue and white skyhawk departing 28 to the east” on the unicom gave one last look at the pattern and pushed the throttle in.
My clearance was “upon reaching class E airspace, turn 090 then D->DXT” (Nice way to insert a little test there)
At 700′, I turned 090.

I briefed, tuned, briefed, tuned, briefed, checked, briefed, checked for 20 mins.
Crossed over DXT (NDB IAF) and headed outbound, reverse sensing the localizer.
This being a mountainous area there were a lot of up/down swells. It keep me busy with the throttle.
Procedure turn… and back inbound… announced “inbound” to “ATC”.
With the strong easterly winds, I was trying to control my ground speed with throttle. Was reasonably successful. Upon crossing the IAF, I put in 10* of flaps and took out even more power. I tracked down well and the airport ended up exactly where it was supposed to be at about 4min 15 seconds.
Miss, call “ATC”, head back to DXT.
Now for the hold… thinking entry, cross wind correction, flop sweat.
I decide on parallel entry (I joined the track just before crossing the IAF)
Yikes that was HARD. I did my entry, and just about got established inbound for about 5 seconds before I had to turn left for the hold. I added about 25* of correction – enough for an OVAL, I forgot that’s not the point, but not enough to correct for being blown to the inbound. Was all pretty sloppy, but safe. I asked “how about another”. Yes. Second one was better.

Doug contacted ALB App, told them that this was a check ride and asked if we could do a VOR-28 followed by ILS-1 (if the ILS was up…. it was notam’ed out earlier. They came back with permission for that sequence and that ILS was operative on 1.

D-> ALB VOR

For 15 mins of the enroute, I was able to take off the foggles and give my eyes a break.

Then on the way I lost my AI and then my DG. I called “ATC” to let them know… and “they” said “awe…. tough nuts”.

I had forgotten to find a strong AM station in Albany in preparation for this exercise – so my approach was not the prettiest, but despite the tail winds, I got the job done.

Miss, climb runway heading to 3000 switch to departure for vectors to ILS 1.

Now, it becomes a bit interesting. The wind is really pushing me west, I’m -pointing- south via vectors. I get into a little banter with departure about my heading vs what they see. First time they say I’m off by 30+ degrees, I apologize and say I’ll sync my DG (cause it does precess a lot and I just did some climbs and large turns). Now synced, we banter a few more times. I look several times and I’m synced perfectly. After the controller starts to sound annoyed with me, Doug chimes in and says there’s quite a bit of wind up here (it’s reasonably calm on the surface) and we are indeed heading on the vectors he’s been asking us to fly. Ok… that ends the debate.

I get final vector for ILS 1 and coast down the GP. Needles crossed almost all the way down. Probably one of my best approaches. Down to 485′ (200 AGL) and back up for the miss.

Climb out on 040 per the tower’s missed instructions .

Received vectors out of the class C airspace.
A few minutes after getting cleared of the airspace… we did unusual attitudes. He has a very unique (and seemingly more realistic) way of performing this test.

Normally, my CFII says, “close your eyes” banks and pitches the plane all over the place and then says “Ok, now correct”. It’s always been interesting, but it seems that I’ve always had a slight idea of were were were going to end up. Doug does it differently. His instructions “Close your eyes. Take your feet and hands off the controls” After about a minute, he says “now correct”. WOW what a surprise. I knew that we were diving (I heard the engine revving up), but I had no idea we were in about a 40* steep bank. KEWL! I corrected promptly and effectively. He says it works every time. Some planes take longer than others, but he says it works within 15-60 seconds. I like that too.. very realistic. You let go of the controls to get something off the floor, back seat, and BAM things are whacky.

We get back on track for D-> PFH NDB for the NDB-A into 1B1
Winds have calmed a bit and the air is smoother.
Cross PFH right over the top, head out for the procedure turn.
Sync the DG, turn back, and then call “inbound” to “ATC”
I struggle a bit with what I think is cross wind*. I do an adequate approach. We circle to the right, cross over mid-field for a left downwind to 3. Decent landing and let out another big sigh of relief. I made it! (For the non-pilots: if you fail anytime during the test, the test intermediately ends and you head back to the airport. Since I made it this far, I knew I passed!)

*It turns out, Doug pointed out that my struggle to stay on the approach was due to the DG precessing quite a bit. I think he said it might have been off by 20*. Ugh… that thing is vexing. It’s a brand new unit, just installed a couple of weeks ago. The old one used to precess 40+ on a 180 turn. UGH. Gonna have to get our club mx officer to look at that.

Got back to Doug’s office for the debrief:
-The hold at PSF was my worst of the ck ride. But I did pull it together.
-I was close to a couple PTS busts, but I recognized them quickly and corrected. He says, he’d rather see me see/correct errors than fly a perfect approach. Because we aren’t perfect.. and a safe pilot looks for errors and corrects them.
-My strength is control skills and navigation, weakness is communication. I recognize this and as such, per his recommendation, I’m going to file for EVERY flight in the near future – to get practice talking and the rhythm of things.

We were done at 5:30p

I had the most euphoric 30 minute flight at 2500′ back to my home drome. With my senses and motor skills on high – everything looked so clear. So sharp. Like I could reach out and touch the trees and Catskill Mountains. The plane flew as if it were on auto-pilot.

I greased the landing coming in with minimal energy and made the first taxi exit. Tied down and cleaned up the plane while the sun worked it’s way through the low stratus cloud layers.

Ah, what a perfect day!

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