No longer an amateur
Well, I'm officially a commercial pilot. How weird is that?
Last night I was fairly certain I was going to bust my checkride this morning.
I'd gone out flying yesterday afternoon and had an awful time. There were really strong surface winds so it was pretty bumpy but I still thought I flew horribly.
I made two miserable crosswind landings. The first, at Princeton, was downright scary. I lost about 10 knots on final due to windshear, poured in the power and dropped the nose and then got it all back at the threshold. So there I was, fast with too much power and getting bounced around from the mechanical turbulence of the wind whipping over the trees next to the runway. It was ugly.
Back it Crystal it wasn't much better, with moderate turbulence on final and some shear as well. I sort of bounced it in and taxied back to the hangar with my tail between my legs.
Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night and when I got out to the airport at 7 this morning I was less than optimistic.
By the time I completed my preflight and double-checked that all the required documents were in the airplane and up-to-date I barely had enough time to depart, do two steep turns and head for Anoka.
The checkride wound up being fun, although I didn't fly up to my typical standards.
We did some ground, got in the airplane and flew the maneuvers I've gotten so sick of.
A steep turn, some truly awful lazy eights, some stalls, some slow flight, a short-field landing (it was actually pretty darn good), a 180-degree power off approach followed by a go-around, some eights on pylons and then back to Crystal for a soft-field landing.
We taxied in and shut down. I looked over and said "I'm sorry. You didn't get my best flying today."
Turns out I didn't need to apologize because a handshake and some paperwork later and I had a nifty temporary airman certificate with commercial privileges for single-engine land airplanes to go with my nearly new instrument rating.
Now I'm ready for a break, at least from training.
Of course, I still have some work to do getting checked out in our Cirrus. And the weather is getting nice and I've always wanted a sea-plane rating. Not to mention a commercial multi-engine certificate is at least impressive at parties.
Hmmm....
Last night I was fairly certain I was going to bust my checkride this morning.
I'd gone out flying yesterday afternoon and had an awful time. There were really strong surface winds so it was pretty bumpy but I still thought I flew horribly.
I made two miserable crosswind landings. The first, at Princeton, was downright scary. I lost about 10 knots on final due to windshear, poured in the power and dropped the nose and then got it all back at the threshold. So there I was, fast with too much power and getting bounced around from the mechanical turbulence of the wind whipping over the trees next to the runway. It was ugly.
Back it Crystal it wasn't much better, with moderate turbulence on final and some shear as well. I sort of bounced it in and taxied back to the hangar with my tail between my legs.
Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night and when I got out to the airport at 7 this morning I was less than optimistic.
By the time I completed my preflight and double-checked that all the required documents were in the airplane and up-to-date I barely had enough time to depart, do two steep turns and head for Anoka.
The checkride wound up being fun, although I didn't fly up to my typical standards.
We did some ground, got in the airplane and flew the maneuvers I've gotten so sick of.
A steep turn, some truly awful lazy eights, some stalls, some slow flight, a short-field landing (it was actually pretty darn good), a 180-degree power off approach followed by a go-around, some eights on pylons and then back to Crystal for a soft-field landing.
We taxied in and shut down. I looked over and said "I'm sorry. You didn't get my best flying today."
Turns out I didn't need to apologize because a handshake and some paperwork later and I had a nifty temporary airman certificate with commercial privileges for single-engine land airplanes to go with my nearly new instrument rating.
Now I'm ready for a break, at least from training.
Of course, I still have some work to do getting checked out in our Cirrus. And the weather is getting nice and I've always wanted a sea-plane rating. Not to mention a commercial multi-engine certificate is at least impressive at parties.
Hmmm....
posted by Will at 1:20 PM
1 Comments:
Congratulations, Will. You've been working hard without much of a break. Now with warm weather finally approaching, it's time to go enjoy some of those $100 hamburgers and more importantly, just relax for a bit.
I'm proud of you.
Linda
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