People who fly airplanes usually posess qualities such as confidence, a sense of adventure, intelligence, and attention to detail. One less frequently found quality in pilots is humility. I am no exception. I have a tendency to think I am pretty good at this flying thing. Well, my flight yesterday helped me remember to be humble.
It was supposed to be just a regular pre-checkride check, and I was going with an instructor named Ann St Peter. My regular instructor, Matt Bradshaw thought I would benefit from going with somebody else. I agreed that it was a good idea.
So, I went through my normal preflight checks on the Commander N4591W and we strapped ourselves in. Ann was pleased to see that she was not going to need her booster pad to see over the instrument panel. She is a little vertically challenged, but a fantastic CFI.
I began running through the engine start checklist, and got to the point where it was time to engage the starter and fire up the engine. So I started cranking the thing over, and it wasn't starting. It had flown earlier that day, so I didn't think it would need priming. After a few tries, though, I decided it could use some more gas, so I primed it according to the checklist. Cranked it and it sputtered a few times and died again. What gives? Finally, after letting me wallow for a minute, Ann casually mentioned that I may want to put the mixture at full rich if I wanted the engine to run. Garbage! *$#&#*!!! That would cause me to fail on my checkride.
Finally, I got the engine started, and pulled myself together. We took off and headed north towards the practice area west of the OGD VOR. We messed around, watching the CHT which had spiked to redline after liftoff. It crawled back down, so we continued.
We did just about all of the commercial and private maneouvers. My steep turns stunk. I busted the altitude standards a couple of times. My chandelles were aweful. Ground reference maneouvers were good, as were my lazy 8's, slow flight, and stalls. Those things were the high point of the flight.
We finally and mercifully decided that I had had enough. We headed back towards skypark. I set up to land. I let the thing get a little bit ahead of me, then I let it get too slow on final. I was supposed to be demonstrating a normal landing, but I ended up doing a fantastic short field landing, except I touched down about 20 FEET in front of the extended threshold. SUCK!
Totally disgusted with myself, we taxied back to the hangar. Ann was great, she said this was the reason we do these stage checks, so that we get this kind of flying out of our systems. All of her students do their worst flying right before a checkride. That was some solace, but I still flew like crap.
I pulled myself together and went by myself this morning. Things went much better. I had better success with maneouvers, and three really good landings, including one soft-field landing with a wheely that lasted almost until I was ready to turn off onto the taxiway. All in all, I think I will be ready for my checkride next Friday. But one thing is for certain: I won't be forgetting to be humble for some time.
11:34:13 AM 
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