Flying Lesson 74 - I Can't Catch A Break

To say it was a day where darn little went right is an understatement.

The day is nice, sky clear, light winds out of the east, perfect weather for everything.

I did the preflight and needed to call for fuel as the tanks were almost to unusable fuel levels. Other than that it was ready to go. So we wait quite a while for the fuel truck to get there and fuel the plane. Aside form waiting the day starts out rather encouragingly with Ray saying I'm coming along and he's interested in making sure my oral exam knowledge is ready to go as my flying is pretty decent.

Yep, that's how you jinx it right there.

Ray decides we will work on maneuvers, the weather is too nice for pattern work. Drat, strike one.

So I start it up and we taxi towards Runway 9, which is a very long taxi indeed. I'm working on doing the slow walk taxi that the examiners like instead of the more generous "Get there sometime today please" taxi we normally use. Good enough but a controller was a bit miffed we were going slowly, Ray said to ignore it as I was at the exact speed I should be om the checkride.

Decent enough run up, and I get clearance to takeoff and depart to the northeast.

We fly out and I didn't quite do a perfect transition from climb cruise to level and Ray was on that, again need to do the procedure - get to the altitude, nose forward, then reduce power and trim. I wasn't using enough nose forward and wasn't quite on it. And it went downhill from there.

We did slow flight under the new ACS rules, which was ok but I needed to put more power in and again was a bit off where I should be.

Then we did power off stalls and sure as hell I couldn't get a frickin' break. Between the nice cool air and not constantly increasing the angle of attack enough I was probably at 20 knots airspeed with nose up and no stall.

Sure enough I'm bulldogging the controls and not being fluid enough when I should be pulling back continuously, but not too continuously mind you.

So we did that again and after Ray demonstrates it I get it going ok again. My procedure isn't great and its not the best stall in the world. Decent enough recovery but its getting into the stall that's being a PITA.

On to Power On stalls and again they're not going well.

We finish up and head back to the airport and it's a friokin circus.

First there's a plane not communicating with the tower but was pretty close but below us - it turns out its a Piper seaplane that took off from one of the lakes. Then as we're heading into the 45 to downwind a Piper Saratoga is coming up behind us, Ray takes over so it can pass us and we follow it in on the downwind. Then we get to come in and I undershoot the base to final turn (still better than overshooting but really), come in with a lousy approach and land kinda flat and off centerline.

Then the tower wants us to skip Kilo taxiway and get off at Juliet, so we continue but that causes us to be on the runway longer so the tower has to have the next plane go around.

On top of that apparently I've been consistently off center to the left of the taxi way markings and Ray really wants me dead on. Interestingly enough from where I'm sitting it appears I'm on it but I need to be even farther over. That puts an end to a lousy lesson.

Frustration and discouragement, yes we have it, cause this is getting kind of stupid.

Those of you in the betting pool on what hour I may get my license may want to adjust your bets upwards accordingly.

Yeah, I know there's one out there - if you want to win, contact me and we can swing a deal to fix it, ok?