Getting Ready....Again.

I had a lesson last week with Kevin, mostly because the FARs (federal aviation regulations) require that I have at least 3 hours of instruction with my instructor within 60 days prior to the checkride. It's been so long since my initially scheduled date (March 27) that most of my instruction fell out of that range, so we bumped up the instruction a little.

So now the date is May 1. Mayday -- how appropriate! It's going to be with a different examiner, Mike Shiflett, who keeps a website called checkrides.com that helps students through their checkrides. That's encouraging; I've heard he's a fair guy, so I think as long as I have my head screwed on properly everything should be fine.

The hard part is going to be getting ready for this. I've already gotten psyched up for a checkride twice. There are certain things I should try to keep in my head, like all the airspace information and specifics about the electrical and pitot-static systems of the plane, and all that. But I've already stuffed my brain with that stuff twice. Hopefully I can do it a third time.

I'm flying solo tomorrow morning in the hopes that my landings are still halfway decent, and then I'm hopefully going to have a phase check flight with Chris on Wednesday (yes, I've been saying this for 2 months). Unfortunately that check will be in a different plane, since 6521J is going in for her annual. Great timing there, West Valley -- hopefully she's done before May 1. Wouldn't surprise me if she's not.

Landing Fix

I went out this morning and was greeted with the most beautiful day this area has seen in about 2 months. It's gorgeous out there! But my goal was singular: FIX those LANDINGS! As I said before, my six landings yesterday were pretty terrible. I had a bounce, a small balloon, and actually my landing at RHV was a large balloon that I did a great job of saving -- I added power and kept my pitch up, and landed pretty softly -- but that's not the kind of thing I want to do on a checkride.

So I went out this morning and stayed in the PAO pattern, and did 8 landings. The first six were alright; they were not all that accurate and my flare height was still suffering. I came in low and bounced one (and maybe two; the second felt like a small bounce). I didn't balloon, though, so that's good.

The last two were very good. The seventh was the right height, but I didn't maintain active control on the rudder during the flare, so I landed a little bit askew. Not bad though. The eighth was very good. I might be flaring just a touch too high now, but honestly it's been so long since I did normal landings (vs. short/soft field) that it's possible I'm just becoming unnerved by a normal touchdown. In any case, it was a very good landing.

So, I'm back on track. No reschedule yet; the examiner has yet to contact me. I guess I'll try calling her again today.

Frustration

I wrote this while sitting at RHV, waiting for my examiner to return my call. She'd left me a message after I'd departed PAO, telling me the ceilings were too low to do the ride. That was at 11:00. By 12:30 or so, everything looked fine. I waited at RHV for 2 hours, and I called her back and left messages twice (plus once with no message). The bright side is that my landings were bad today, so maybe it's all for the best. Without further ado:

Frustration. Some people say that frustration is a low grade of anger. That may be true, but frustration is a lot more versatile than anger itself. Anger is all-consuming -- it's a powerful emotion that sends its owner into a positive reinforcement loop. Anger leads to power, power feels good, power enables more anger enables more power. Of course that is mitigated to some extent by the correspondingly enormous feeling of guilt it leaves in its wake, but that doesn't make it any less addictive -- an alcoholic doesn't stop drinking because he can't handle the hangover. And then there's the whole "hair of the dog" thing. Not good.

But frustration, even as a stop on the path to all-out anger, is more flexible. One can be, as I am now, frustrated, amused, and collected all at once. Frustration, and in particular MY frustration, has many causes, which are worth listing:

Poor communication
Currently, I'm at Reid-Hillview Airport awaiting a phone call from an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner. I was supposed to have my private pilot checkride today, and based on my judgment, the weather was OK to fly. But the Examiner called me after I'd taken off from Palo Alto, and left me a message to the effect that the weather was not adequate for flight. I wonder what I would've thought if I'd somehow received that message while I was in the air. Inadequate for flight? I wonder what it is I'm doing right now? Hopefully it's not like the Hitchhiker's Guide method; that thought alone could have sent me plummeting to the earth. NTSB report for cause of inadvertant spin: Pilot's momentary failure to believe in the possibility of flight.

Stupidity; or, rather, lack of forethought on the part of others
Nobody's perfect, and nobody can predict the future. However, it is pretty easy to limit the possibilities that could happen. For instance, I never put a cookbook on top of the stove. What if the wrong burner somehow gets turned on? At best, I lose a cookbook and stink up the house; at worst, the house burns down. It's not worth it. Probably this behavior would be described as "neurotic" but to some extent it is actually sensible. Now, if I get frustrated when other people display a lack of forethought, imagine how I must feel when I do something stupid. For instance, not calling the examiner before I left Palo Alto. I could have avoided this entire thing. Grr.

Expectations of me that are unreasonable
The key word here is "unreasonable." I don't get so upset when someone has expectations that are simply ridiculous or impossible; in that case, it becomes very easy to say, "That's impossible." Or just laugh. But it gets trickier when it's something that I could conceivably do, but not without having an impact on other things I'm doing, or possibly just causing an inconvenience.

The danger is when all of these factors hit at once. Note that I am not currently experiencing any expectations of me that are unreasonable (other than figuring out what the heck is going on without enough information, but that's more of a "poor communication" issue). Hence, I'm able to be frustrated, amused, and measured in my responses to people.

So, what comes next? I have no idea. It's past 1:00 (I've been here since 11:30) and I'm getting impatient so I might as well start getting ready to go home, back to Palo Alto. How incredibly disappointing today has been. I studied yesterday, I practiced this morning, I got nervous, I took the day off of work; I did everything right. Perhaps this is a case of MY expectations of something or someone else being unreasonable, which I can accept but I would like an explanation. Oh well; life doesn't always give us what we want, does it?

Two more practice flights

I got back into an airplane on Thursday, which was a lot less of a bizarre feeling than I thought it was going to be. The weather in the morning was nice; winds were calm (actually very slight tailwind on 31, which was active until they decided to switch it around). One cool thing was that my co-worker Vinay was in the pattern with me, though he didn't know it. So, I decided to do my 5 landings, and...well, I wound up doing 6, and none of them were particularly good. But I got my work in, so I was happy. Nothing particularly eventful happened; I think I half-heartedly tried a couple of soft-field landings, but they were unconvincing at best, given that apparently I didn't even convince myself.

Today was much better. I was out for 1.4 hours, and did 8 landings. Among those were 2 short field takeoffs, 2 good short field landings, 2 soft field takeoffs, and 2 soft field landings (one of which was brilliant). My normal landings still aren't great; I'm still not consistent on my flare height, but I think I'm getting it.

After the second one, I started to remember to time my laps, and was consistent after that. After the third one, I made myself do my checklists each time. After the seventh one, I decided I should go out and try some steep turns, so I requested a left 270 departure from runway 13, which I'd never done before. This is where I kind of went to pieces. Not lots of pieces..maybe let's say that there were a couple of cracks in my otherwise luminescent veneer. I forgot to shut off my carb heat after landing and before takeoff, so as I'm climbing, I'm not quite climbing like I should...and then I look down and see the carb heat out and jam it back in. Ugh. I marked my time off, though, and went out over SLAC. There were scattered clouds above me, so I didn't go too high; I stayed around 3000'. I did a nice left steep turn, then a nice right steep turn, then two crappy left steep turns. But I started getting the hang of the quick corrections. I still need to make sure I roll out in a timely fashion; I'm inconsistent, and that's one thing I can't correct for.

Then came the inbound; I was told to make left base for 13, which I expected. So that I did well, and actually lined up the approach very well -- EXCEPT I forgot to do my prelanding checklist! Will I ever learn??! My landing was alright; it was long and a little .. unsmooth? It wasn't rough, I just had a little bit of up-down action going during the flare. The touchdown itself was fine, though.

I'm scheduled for a phase check (the flight portion) tomorrow. I guess we'll see if that happens; I have my doubts.