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.