My Flying Career

Today I took my FOI (Fundamentals of Instructing) knowledge test.  I felt very confident as I have studied hard for a while.  Not only did I pass, but I got a 100% test score!  Funny little side story – recently the LaserGrade testing centers have been able to reveal what answers you got incorrect at the end of your test.  I know, most of you are thinking, why hasn’t that always been the case?  Well, they have been a little behind the times, and until now, you never got to see which questions you got wrong.  It was very depressing.  Well the proctor was very excited to see how the new system works, and how it shows you your missed answers.  Well when I had finished, she was confused at how come we didn’t get to see my missed answers, then she looked at the score.  ”Wait a second, no wonder….you got ALL the answers right!”  I chuckled and apologized for not being able to be the guinea pig for this new system. Maybe next time…. hopefully not, but maybe.

Next up, studying for my FIA (Flight Instructor Airplane) test.  This is a 100 question knowledge test spanning basically everything I have learned thus far (minus Instrument Rating questions).  So this is a big question bank they will be grabbing questions from.  So I will need to review and study A LOT!  So let me get back to that, so I can get another 100%.

Today I passed my Single-Engine Commercial addon checkride!  Which basically means I can use the commercial pilot privileges in a single-engine aircraft as well as a multi-engine aircraft now.  How’d it go?  Well I woke up this morning, looked at the TAF for the time that we had scheduled for my checkride, which was 3pm, and saw that it was forecasting 2,500 broken and winds somewhere around 20+ knots and gusting.  Perfect day for a checkride huh?  Well, my checkride rolls around and the clouds were 8,000 feet overcast, which was perfect. The winds were 19 knots gusting to 26 knots!  Luckily it was straight down the runway.  Well, when it wasn’t randomly gusting sideways.  I got to say though.  When I walked outside and felt how string the winds were, and was watching a little Cessna 152 struggle to keep the blue (or grey) side up on takeoff, I wasn’t worried.  I don’t want to say that I have every come to a place where I can’t learn anymore, or become over confident, but it never cross my mind that I couldn’t do this.  Anyway, I felt very professional walking out there in the gusting conditions and feeling confident that I could complete the task at hand in a safe manner.

A couple things to let you know how windy it was…  When I was taxiing, I had to slow to a crawl on turns, or else the wind would start lifting the plane and skidding it sideways!  It was one of those times were your Aileron placement was extremely important to keep from flipping over.  After takeoff, my examiner got this idea that I should get the plane as slow as I possibly could into the wind, then look down and see if we are moving over the ground.  It was incredible, I got the plane to about 50mph or so, then looked down.  It reminded me of when you look out your window and you see that lone bird just fighting the wind and not going anywhere.  Just hovering.  Well that’s what we were doing.  I turned an airplane into a helicopter!  Well enough with the playing around, we had maneuvers to accomplish.

The chandelles and lazy eights were not much more difficult with the high winds.  As those are not ground reference maneuvers, it doesn’t matter as much what the wind is doing.  I felt that it was a little different, but I still think they went really well.  The eights on pylons and the steep spiral on the other hand were MUCH more difficult in those high wind gusty conditions!  I did them within standards, but they were by far the hardest maneuvers of the day.  The short field, soft field, and 180 degree power off landings were a bit less than perfect.  I didn’t get the kiss (chirp chirp) that I like to get, but I also didn’t cause back pain either.  They were adequate.  It’s hard to expect a chirp-chirp landing when you have winds gusting like they were.

Anyway that was pretty much it.  Oh yeah, the Oral exam went really well.  I felt very prepared and don’t remember a whole lot of questions that I didn’t know the answer to right off the top of my head.  It was also a very fast oral, since it was just an addon rating, all that was tested was the performance and systems of the airplane we were flying.  And there isn’t a whole lot to a Cessna 172.

Ok, so what’s next.  CFI!  Starting immediately I will be studying for my FOI (Fundamentals of Instructing) knowledge test and then my CFI-A (Certified Flight Instructor – Airplane) knowledge test.  I seriously can’t wait.  Now I get to learn all the nitty gritty details about pretty much everything I’ve learned up to this point.  I also get to learn about how to instruct and get some skills in that arena.  I’m very excited.

I will try and do my best to find things to post about as I study while not making it dry and boring.  With my writing skills that’s difficult enough as it is.

Until next time…

Wow, I can’t believe I am preparing for my Commercial Multi-Engine checkride (or the official name, Practical Test)!  What a ride it has been so far, and it is only just beginning!

The last several weeks I have been working towards meeting time requirements, cross-country requirements, practicing maneuvers, and studying for my oral.  All in preparation to meet the PTS (Practical Test Standards) on the day I have to shine the most.

As I have been preparing for my checkride, I notice a few things different about this checkride as opposed to any of the others I have taken since.  For one, this checkride is a culmination of practically everything I have learned to this point.  This is not like an Instrument rating, where the examiner can only really ask you questions about Instrument related issues.  Or a Multi-Engine rating where the examiner can only ask you questions pertaining to Multi-Engine aircraft.  This is a Commercial certificate, which basically gives the examiner the right to ask you questions about nearly anything I’ve learned up to this point.  The amount of knowledge I need to know and have readily available is much larger than my other recent checkrides.

Anyway, last Wednesday, I took a practice oral exam with one of the senior flight instructors at Hillsboro Aviation.  I felt pretty confident about my knowledge.  My biggest challenge was getting what was in my head, out my mouth.  For some reason I really struggle with putting what I know into short, concise, detailed statements.  I turn them into these huge bloated paragraphs that in turn confuse me and the guy asking the question.   It’s frustrating to me, because I know the answer, I really do.  But when I put it into words, I sound like an idiot.  Need to work on my communication skills I guess.

The flight portion of the practice checkride we scrapped due to weather.  The weather wasn’t terrible, but I needed 4,000 feet to do single-engine maneuvers in the twin, and it didn’t look like we were going to get that.  I opted to just wait until next week and do all the maneuvers at once instead of breaking it up into two flights.  So barring any weather issues, I’ll do the practice flight this Monday and let you all know how that goes.

Well, I have that on top of the world feeling once again. I just passed my Private Multi-Engine Land checkride! It felt so good to log my first few hours of PIC multi time! Instead of paying all that money for non-PIC multi time.

I learned something from this multi-engine training experience. I am better at learning knowledge as apposed to learning a skill. This is the first checkride (since my private) that I had to learn a new airplane. And not just a new airplane, but brand new concepts to the plane. So what I took away from this was that I could learn the concepts of how things worked on the plane, and why the plane moved and operated the way it did. But actually flying the airplane was more tough.  I felt like I was back at square one when I learned to fly the Cessna 172.  I was an infant learning to walk with new legs.

Having said all that, my next step, my commercial multi-engine rating, will be a very challenging one.  As I basically have to do the same checkride, but with stricter margins.  For example I have to do a short field landing on a point +100 feet, -0 feet.  As opposed to a short field landing on a point +200 feet, -0 feet.
I also have to study for my knowledge test.  I’ve gotten above 90% on all my other knowledge tests, and I would love to keep that streak going.  However, I have heard the commercial knowledge test is much harder than the Instrument and Private knowledge tests that I have already taken.  I guess that means I just have to study all that much harder.  Again, my strength, I believe, is in the knowledge, so I’m not sweating it too much.  I am more concerned about learning to fly the airplane to these stricter standards without paying an arm and a leg in aircraft rental (and instructor) fees.

So begins the Commercial Knowledge Test studying.  Back to the King Videos.

I must say, I’m a little disappointed with the King Multi-Engine ground school course. Definitely not up-to-par with their other courses I have used (namely, the Private and Instrument courses). But I don’t think King is completely to blame, as a Multi-Engine add-on is one of those ratings that is pretty specific to the airplane you are flying.  So they are not able to go into the intricate details of how the landing gear system works, or how the fuel system works.  From my little experience, it seems that their are some pretty major differences with these systems amongst light twins.  So that leaves a fairly large portion of the ground school up to you to figure out (with the help of your instructor of course).

These are things that I have found useful in studying for my Multi-Engine Oral Exam:

• Everything Explained for the Professional Pilot: Excruciatingly Detailed Explanations of Everything Essential for Every Pilot – This is a great book that will benefit you throughout your entire training.  It’s got a very informative section on Vmc as well as some other, otherwise hard to understand, concepts.  If you don’t have this book, and you plan on continuing your education towards a Professional Pilot career, check it out.
• Of course the POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) – This is an ABSOLUTE for getting your rating.  I had to read through the systems section at least twice.  There is so much information their, and sometimes it can be overwhelming, so read it again a few days later.  Also, highlight key terms, so that IF you need to reference something on your oral exam, you can quickly.
• And last but, absolutely not least, is your instructor! – I’m the kind of guy, that if I don’t know something, I like to find the answer myself.  But if I can’t find the answer, or don’t even know where to start looking for the answer.  Your instructor can be your biggest resource.  Not only will he most likely know the answer, but if he doesn’t, he will probably want to know the answer just as badly as you do, and will find it.  Also, on this note.  I HIGHLY recommend you take at least 2-3 hours to sit down with your instructor and fill in the gaps of anything that you don’t know.  Allow him to start prodding and probing for what you know.  My bet is you will find stuff you don’t know, and LEARN it!  I also recommend, if you have the opportunity, to sit down with a different instructor than your main instructor.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  One is it keeps your instructor in check and make sure he hasn’t missed anything.  Second, it gives you a HUGE confidence boost that, “Hey, not only does my instructor that I have been flying with the last few weeks think I can pass my checkride, but this guy does too. “

If you notice, I didn’t put the King Multi-Engine course in that list.  To be totally honest, if I were to redo my Multi-Engine education, I would take the $280 bucks that it costs and spend it on an instructor AFTER I have studyed on my own to fill in the gaps.  But that’s just me, and this post isn’t meant to be a review of the King video course.

I hope some have found this post helpful, and if you have any questions or things to add to this list, shoot a comment below.