Stage 2!

I passed my second stage check. Given the number of technically stupid things I did (procedure turn instead of parallel entry, forgetting to start the time on the two approaches that needed it, ending up far, far away from the airport on the NDB approach), I'm a bit surprised, but the instructor could tell I knew what had gone wrong and, as he later pointed out, he didn't have to fix it. Still. I feel like I should be better at some of this by now. THAT'S OKAY THOUGH. I'm happy panda.

We did a bunch of approaches at Tacoma Narrows along with another two or three people. The approach controller finally told a guy he couldn't depart IFR out of Spanaway because he had too much traffic to deal with. Even though we were only ten or fifteen minutes away from the airport, it took him a while to get us our clearance. We went through the holding pattern somewhat legitimately for a few minutes waiting to get cleared for the second approach, thinking it was going to take at least five minutes or so, but then he told us if we could be ready for it he could give us the approach right then. So off we went. Whee.

I guess all in all I didn't do that badly, but I know I can do better. Oh well. On to cross countries.

Stage 2?

"Whenever someone's giving you crap about being young or a girl, just tell them this: 'I'm going to be a flight instructor before you even started flying.'" Jesse says the greatest things.

I think I've finally gotten used to my new instructor. We're going to do ground today, then one flight tomorrow and hopefully I'll be signed off for my stage two check. Then after that it's a few cross countries and suddenly checkride.

Honestly, until now, instrument has been a serious rollercoaster. It went from being awesomely fun to mildly frustrating to intensely frustrating to slightly improving to explode. It stayed on explode for a while and only just recently started getting massively better. When things go right, it's fun. When something goes wrong, at least for a while, it was much less fun because I didn't - and mostly still don't - know how to handle it.

Still, currently I'm a lot more comfortable with the flying than the ground stuff, and I've been studying like mad for weeks now. I took instrument ground back in January, so unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of stuff, but some of it's coming back. I've only just started to get re-motivated since Jesse left. I am getting superstitiously concerned because it's been two and a half months since I started flying with Ross, which is approaching the end of the three-month period of how often I manage to point instructors/people toward new jobs. I guess we'll see if I'm right for the eighth or ninth time.

In almost entirely unrelated news, my friend Emily Biss passed her 787 checkride! She's now allowed to fly my other favorite plane. She's been helping me study some instrument stuff. Speaking of which, I need to get back to that before I go to the airport. Yay.

Instrument and Life

Today I had an amazingly good flight. Now, this means nothing without context, but basically my past several flights have been kind of terrible. I've barely flown in the past three weeks. My approaches haven't improved at all. I started to talk on the radios, but then I backed out of it. Basically, crap.

On Sunday I did one of my worst DME arcs ever, and they were one of the few approaches I thought I had nailed (I previously got a + on one, which is like a gold star for kindergartners). I forget to tune/ID the VORs until way late, I didn't set the courses right, and I flew right through the inbound course. "There it is! ...and there it goes." This was not helped by the fact that Approach took a good solid 20 minutes to get us our clearance, and that was only after my instructor asked them in a very aggravated tone. They were taking VFR flight following requests over our filed IFR flight plan. It was awkward and made for two unhappy pilots.

Things got better when I had the distinct pleasure of landing behind this guy.



It departed out of Paine Field as we were lined up on downwind. I forgot how to say words once I realized it was a Dreamliner. I was so worried about its wake turbulence that I had a really crap landing, but then I got to stop on the runway and wait for that to dissipate and then take off again, and I felt so special. We did a fun transition over Seatac to go back home, and then I had one of the greatest landings I've ever done. Even so, I was not happy with how the important part of the flight had gone, and I let pretty much everyone around me know it.

Last night I took out my kneeboard and my approach plate and drew out where each radio frequency should be set, what the nav instruments should look like as far as set courses, the missed approach, all that good stuff. I didn't really end up using it today - just a quick glance - but it helped so immensely that flying this 15.3 DME arc for a good 90 degrees of a circle or so seemed like it was actually too much time, a problem I never thought I would have.

What changed in those two days?

Well, I emailed my mom-away-from-home, Karlene Petitt.

"I'm thinking the only thing stopping you from your instrument is your distracted mind. Distraction is the number one cause of accidents, so... you need to focus. Emotional and flying don't go together. And if you can't fly with focus then you shouldn't be flying. Can you get over the emotional aspect of what's happening? I know you can. Just park it on a shelf.

Christine, there is only one thing that you have control in your life, and that is your attitude. Your attitude of how you're going to deal with situations that come up in life. Deal with today. Make a choice to be proactive and deal with it and finish your license.

Don't be emotional. You have to stop taking emotion into the plane. You need to learn how to compartmentalize and set it aside. The plane...now, and in the future.... is not someplace to be worrying about Jesse, or finances, or anything else. You need to learn to focus on the task. If you can do that, then fly. If you can't, then you're going to be a danger to yourself. "

A lot of crap has happened in the past few months. My best friend and favorite flight instructor left the school, and until today I haven't really done as well with my new instructor. I've run into financial problems and might just barely be able to finish instrument before I have to find another way to pay for all this fun. School is eating my life again and I'm trying to plan something that will probably change everything I've adapted to for the past two years.

But today, all I heard was Karlene's voice saying "Compartmentalize it. Set it aside. You're flying a plane, so fly the plane. Don't let it fly you."

Best therapy ever.

New website!

Don't worry, I'm not leaving blogger.

I made a new website (click here) for my editing business. If you've written a book and you're trying to get published, see if you think I can help you. I'll also go over short stories or essays/term papers for pretty cheap. Tell your friends.

Instrument fun times.

I've been doing instrument stuff for a little under three weeks now. Jesse and I have been flying pretty much every day and getting a lot done, but I do wish I could get the hang of using VORs better. For some reason, NDBs weren't too bad, but intercepting radials and doing time/speed/distance calculations are my weaknesses. Disregarding the fact that doing math in my head while in airplanes is ridiculous enough, it's been plenty windy lately, which makes things even more exciting. I made a bunch of checklist-type things that show step-by-step how to do it, but yesterday Jesse was asking me stuff like "How do you find out how long it takes to get to the station?" and I couldn't remember anything past figuring out what radial we're on, so we're going to practice them some more today. I like when I can get something right away. I know it's probably better in the long run to have to work on it a lot more before it clicks, but still.

He's still getting settled in at his new job (teaching maintenance for Boeing), but after a bit he said I can follow him to work and be all WOW LOOK AT THAT.

I brought Amanda and Lindsey along for the flight yesterday. We found out Lindsey went on an intro flight with Jesse last year, which cracks me up. 'It's a small world after all...'

Helicopter? What?

This is Amanda Sargent. She let me fly an R44 yesterday. It was awesome.

Jesse was disappointed with me, though. He said apparently I'm too cool to hang out at Auburn anymore. Awww. I told him I wasn't going to switch over completely just yet, and he said I should wait until he gets his helicopter CFI because apparently whenever he gets bored he gets a new rating. I guess we can finish fixed-wing together first, then.



I won't go over to the dark side just yet.



I do understand constant-speed props much better, though. Hooray!

The checkride itself.

Super long post. Your warning has been issued.
-
So now to go a little more in depth about how my checkride actually went.

My flight instructor actually brought the examiner and me lunch, so I got to attempt to eat for a while. My advice is to eat a decent breakfast without overloading yourself, and then maybe have a snack just before you go in case you're still partially hungry. The last thing you want to be thinking about on short final is cheeseburgers.

I flew with Summer Martell. I heard a lot of great things about her before we went, and I realized I had actually met her once before when she was doing an instrument checkride with another student at my school a few weeks ago or so. I got to the airport about two hours early because I worry that I'm always going to be late, and I probably would have been fine showing up later, but in the end my first flight instructor showed up unexpectedly and I got to give him a hug, so that made me feel a lot less nervous about everything. :)

Anyway, I went over the maintenance logs and kept a checklist for each thing I looked through, but in the end she went through them herself and didn't ask me about anything inside the books. Jesse went over them quite thoroughly with me, though, so it's good to know where to find things just in case you do get asked about them.

Before we started the oral, she went over how everything was going to work. She explained her fees and what would happen if I ended up having to do a retest, as well as what would lead to that. She told me a few reasons why most people end up failing a checkride, usually lack of checklist use and failing to keep watch for traffic. First we were going to go through the oral portion, which was not just a bunch of random things she was going to pull out of the air; she had her own PTS book plus a few pages of notes just so she would't forget what she wanted to ask me about, and she said I could look at them if I wanted to. They were covered in drawings of horses, which made my entire day. Then she said that assuming I passed the oral, I would have however much time I needed to get the plane ready (someone had used it just before me, so I couldn't preflight or get the weather and do my weight and balance before the whole thing, but if you can at least do the preflight and weight and balance and get a forecast, then just update the information just before you go, you can save some time) and we would fly. "There are no do-overs on the maneuvers except if we have to cut something short because of traffic or other extenuating circumstances." I definitely remembered that.

The oral was a lot easier than I was expecting. Not because she asked easy questions, but because she could tell right away if I knew something as far in depth as she needed me to know it, and we would move on to the next thing without spending an hour on it. She definitely wanted me to pass, and she was totally cool about taking short breaks so I wouldn't get overwhelmed. Whenever I asked her to rephrase a question, she could tell that I had just learned something from a different angle than she was asking it, but she was really accommodating and helped me out. She said she didn't expect me to know everything because it's all so in-depth.

When I was planning the cross-country she gave me beforehand from Auburn to Spokane, I planned it so it wouldn't go over the mountains, and it ended up being a 435-mile trip spread across 4 pages of navigation logs. She thought it was actually interesting and different because most people take I-90, so even though I took a much less direct route, I was able to explain that I chose it because there are more airports that way and a lot of good visual checkpoints, so I was more comfortable doing that than flying over the mountains in the summer. I also called to ask her whether I needed to figure out the most up-to-date winds for the entire trip with it being so long, and she said I could just do it all the day before and then update the first checkpoint or two with that day's winds because those were the only ones we would actually be flying. I would definitely make sure you clear that with your examiner, because they're not all the same about things like that.

The oral went really fast, and she said it went really fast because I studied. And I did. A lot. I was not born knowing any of the information; I studied it in pieces over weeks and weeks and tried to use as much of it in the plane as I could so I would understand it better. You can't cram it all into your brain in one night, so don't try. Just brush up on the things you know you don't know so well - for me it was basic aerodynamics, sadly enough, as I learned on my final stage check - and bring your books in case you want to look something up. We ended up having to check something in the FAR/AIM because she forgot whether it was 2500, 1500, or 1200 feet. I said it was 1200 and I ended up being right, so I guess the moral there is don't be afraid to defend your answers when you know they're correct. Just be absolutely sure of it, though, because if you're wrong then...well, you're wrong, but at least you're confident, right? :P

We took a break to let me deal with the plane, and I was nervous enough that I tried to put my jacket on upside down, but I calmed down once we were in the plane. Definitely use your checklists; they're not just there to impress the examiner, they're there to lighten your workload so you don't have to memorize four hundred steps. She offered to hold anything for me that I needed, but I had everything organized enough that it wasn't necessary. She told me we'd be diverting pretty quickly, so I was ready for that. I had my plotter, E6-B with the current wind dot marked on it, A/FD, and sectional in the side pocket next to me, and my kneeboard (from bottom to top) was notepad, terminal chart, checklist, and passenger safety briefing list, with two pencils clipped on the side. I am not an organized person by trade; my mom can attest to that. So if you're like me, make it a priority to give yourself enough time to get sorted before the flight. I didn't learn it overnight; I had to fly a few trips with everything shifting all over my lap before I figured it out.

I did ask Summer if we could work on our soft field stuff at Tacoma because I wasn't comfortable doing normal and soft landings at Auburn. Our runway is 2200 feet instead of the usual 3400 because they're working on the lights, so it's a bit shorter than I'm used to. She was totally fine with it because she just wanted me to be comfortable with the flight. She diverted me to Tacoma after my first checkpoint, and just after I called them up and said we were ready to land, she told me to get my Foggles because it was unusual-attitudes-under-the-hood time. We did two of those, then I did some turning climbs and descents under the hood, then she told me I could take it off and pointed me over to Tacoma. She pulled my engine abeam the numbers and had me do a go-around just before landing in an effort to combine as many things as possible and save on flight time. The second time around, she had me do a slip on final and a soft field stop-and-go (and it actually turned out to be a touch-and-go but she told me to do it so it was okay). We left Tacoma and headed for Vashon Island.

She intentionally put me under the 3,000-foot shelf there so I would be more careful about not breaking it, but she did remind me it was there more than once. She wanted me to be aware of it but not afraid of it. I did steep turns first, and she had me specifically do them in a figure eight shape, one right after the other, and let me choose the first direction of the turn. Jesse told me that's what they have you do, but another instructor said that's only in commercial, but either way I was ready for it. It went fine. Remember to be looking outside, and when you hear someone nearby report their position and you don't see them right away, it's okay to ask if they see the traffic. The point is to be safe and use the resources available to you, not prove that you absolutely have to do everything yourself and let your passengers be useless.

We did slow flight, which started to get interesting because it was a little windy, but she didn't hold it against me. Power-off and power-on stalls were fine, and I was really happy with my power-on stall because it was the one maneuver giving me a ton of trouble up to that point. The ground reference ones were a little rushed in the interest of time; she picked a road and told me where the wind was coming from and then said I could go ahead and start turning at that moment. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough, and she was asking me what I would do if I wanted to go closer to or further away from the road. We did turns around a point next, and for that one she let me set it up however I wanted, so I took my time doing the entry and everything. I ended up being too close to it, and she asked at one point if we had flown over it, but we hadn't, it was just hiding under the wing.

So we headed back to Auburn. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Throughout the whole flight, if there was ever some lag time (like when Tacoma made me do a 360 for spacing or on our way back to Dash Point), I got to just talk to her like she was just a passenger. She was really cool and I was completely comfortable flying with her. I ended up doing a go-around on my first landing back at Auburn, and she just looked at me and said, "What was that about?" I said I just didn't feel good about touching down late with the short runway and I hadn't done my crosswind correction well enough, and she said the important thing was that I was confident about my landing, so it was a good choice. Jesse told me if you ever get to the point where you THINK you need to go around, you do.

The next one was fine, and she reminded me to step on the brakes a little more firmly, but we didn't have to backtaxi or anything, and then we went over and parked. My flight time was only 1.2, and she told me I passed as soon as we got our headsets off. She headed inside to finish some paperwork while I cleaned up the guts of my flight bag from the inside of the plane, and Jesse came outside, followed by both of my parents. I guess the line guy waiting to fuel up the plane was actually the first one to learn that I passed my checkride, but hey, he's cool.

Summer is going on vacation and won't be back until the beginning of June, so she's not free for checkrides for a while, but if you ever get the chance to fly with her, I highly recommend it. I would definitely like to go with her again.
-
Yesterday, Jesse had me help another student figure out performance numbers, density altitude, etc. Jesse told him it's really important to get it right because the examiner looks at the weight and balance sheet very closely, and I said, "I guess I won't mention that mine didn't do that, then," and he rolled his eyes and said "You didn't give her a reason to. If you're smart, they leave you alone. If you give them a reason to dig, they will dig." True statement.