© C Blythe 2004

Checkride day (again)

I needed to fill my time before 3 pm so I set out a timetable. A Lie in, late breakfast up to the airport, check all the weather and latest Notams, a lunch about 1.30, check out the aircraft and know where all the bits are and hopefully that should see us right.

It did not stop the nerves. When Chris turned up and said “Hi” I nearly jumped out of my skin. “ Relax” we said together and then laughed which did the job.

Chris spent fifteen minutes redoing the brief from Friday and he asked me about the day’s trip. I ran through it all including the notams and picked up a couple of issues in Madison. I picked on what I missed from the oral and he was well pleased, “Nice job” he said. It must be a standard Wisconsin phrase I decided.

Rich was going to come on the ride. It was because he said he was worried about me landing the plane at Middleton. I had only ever landed at Middleton three times and was not used to the narrow runway. The plan was that after landing in Madison he would then fly us back to Middleton. I said that was OK with me and he also said he would like to see how Chris operated. I am not sure whether it added to the pressure as it was high anyway. I just wanted to get it over with.

Chris followed me out for the walk round and asked a few questions all of which I was able to answer. He did the same as we were strapping in. “How did this work, what did that do?” I was all in that same inquiring style of his I enjoyed on Friday. Not out and out questions almost musings really but it got the answers out of me.

The checkride started off with a VFR departure from Morey and it was soon under the hood. Chris acted as controller and gave me an airborne “IFR clearance” which I had to take down and readback. We were to proceed to Lone Rock airport via V2. I then asked him as controller for the VOR A approach.

As we approached Lone Rock VOR he gave me a hold. I carefully mapped it out on the enroute chart only to see that it was also the hold on the approach chart. That had all my headings on so dumping the enroute I concentrated on the hold entry. It went well and by the second time outbound I was adjusting for the timing of the inbound leg when he gave me “clearance” to do the approach. At this point I would have turned inbound for the hold but decided that I was not ready so I went through the final descent checks and thirty seconds later turned inbound heading for the VOR, the FAF. The miss went well although I had not reset the clock after doing the timing for the hold. Anyway I had had a look at the clock as we passed over the VOR and said aloud what time the clock should say at the MAP.

As the clock countered up there was no take off the hood so it was full power and climb. Level at 4000 ft Chris said. He said we were going to do the manoeuvres now; steep turns then unusual attitudes.

We flew a couple of miles away from where we were as John Kerry was still around and we did not want to cause any concern doing our moves.

“Right, for steep turns I was you to do a 45 degree banked turn to the left then level out  back to the heading we are on (east) wait three seconds then a 45 degree banked turn to the right ending back on east.”

So into the left turn, holding it with muscle power and the turn was perfect, I brought the wing level onto east counted to three and went to the right. This was going well until about three quarters of the way around the turn when we began to wobble. Up a bit down a bit. The voice in my headset said “relax you can breathe you know ”. The turn turned out a bit scruffy in the end but within limits. It appears that I had been holding my breath for the two turns.

The unusual attitudes went really well and were enjoyable. The next task was to contact Madison approach and ask for an approach. Chris picked the ILS RWY 21 so I asked for that. I set up for the approach as we were being vectored but could get nothing on the ident. I checked everything through and noticed I was a digit out on the localiser frequency. I finished identing the localiser, the DME and the VOR which provided the radial marking the FAF.

We were being vectored around the north so I set up the final approach configuration. I was talking to myself also about what the next vector should be and sure enough that’s what they were. This was easy, and as PTAC was called the rest started to happen. The needle started coming in, intercepting  the localiser, then just before reaching the FAF I reduced power to 15“ as the glideslope centred and we slid down to decision altitude.

Then it was full power and away to do the missed procedure. Climb it, clean it, course it, Cool it, Call it. In other words, Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.  ATC had other thoughts and took me east at which point Chris covered up the HSI and the AI and asked me to fly the approach to 21 again this time partial panel.

I asked ATC for 21 again. This time they were vectoring me from the east.  I timed the first two turns and then asked ATC for no gyro turns to the localiser. He asked whether I had a problem and said that this was a simulation for a checkride. The next turn was done under no gyro conditions. I knew where I was and knew that I had some time to get set up. Nav 2 was already set up for the intersection VOR with the radial set on the OBS. All I needed to do was set up the localiser frequency and flick back and forth to determine where I was on the approach. ATC gave me a wide lead in  to the approach and I came in from way out on the localiser. Again to reduce workload I had put the aircraft into the approach configuration before catching the localiser.

I waited until we hit the FAF and then chopped the power to 10” to get down to the MDA. With the localiser only then another 250 ft needs to be added to the ILS DA. I picked this up, the clock began buzzing, the DME was showing less than 2 miles. Chris said “look up”, I did, he asked me to land and with being cleared for the option I landed. It was a really nice smooth landing too.

I taxied off “! and pulled to a halt passed the hold lines when Chris said well done, “you are now an instrument pilot “. I sat there speechless, my light blue tee shirt was by now dark blue with sweat, more sweat was running down the back of my neck. We shook hands I turned round and Rich was smiling.

Chris and Rich then swapped places, I asked for a departure back to Morey and we took of for the 10 minute trip back. It was superb. I said nothing. Back at Morey I called for the traffic and did a real greaser onto 28. Chris said to Rich “we did not need you after all he seemed OK on this narrow runway” and Rich winked.

After parking up, Chris and I went to the training room for a drink and debrief. There was sound advice and I was well impressed with both the way the test was done and with the way Chris conducted himself. As a training captain he must be very experienced at putting more junior pilots at their ease.

Once all the paperwork was done, Chris had to go to join his family whilst I celebrated with some of the people who had hung around to see the outcome. Sharon was there and it was a big hug from her and all the other girls too.

We had to celebrate and Rich and Sharon agreed to be my guests for dinner. They agreed to pick me up at 7.30. It was 6 pm by now so I made my way to the hotel and climbed into the shower and enjoyed another 15 minutes of water hammering my body.

Another 10 minutes and I was in the hotel bar having my first drink since the trip. By the time Rich came I was on my third beer and had made a friend of someone at the bar. Dinner was superb. We had a great night reminiscing about the trip and reliving the checkride. Rich telling me how tough it was for him sitting in the back seeing me make mistakes and then catching them.

I found the whole checkride experience rewarding. The flying was straight forward and the test replicated what seems to actually happen flying IFR. The experiences on the trip had prepared me really well for that part of the checkride. The oral was about preparation and I also think it was due to the examiner’s clever way of doing the questioning without you realising what was going on. The biggest difficulty for someone doing the IR or any rating in the US and who normally flies in another country is getting the context right. The theory only takes you so far, you need the experience of trying things out for real.

For me the West Coast Adventure delivered the context. We got to fly the things we saw in the exams, we had all the weather you could face, we did every type of approach, we flew in the mountains, we flew the coast, we flew the desert, we flew the Great Plains and we flew the LA Basin. We flew through over half the ATC Centers and we flew nearly 5000 miles. I saw so much of the US that I want to go back and do it all over again.

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