So I went back last Friday for the rest of the checkride with the examiner. All was not well. Got stuck in traffic on 206, and got off late. Climbed into 971 which was recently re painted white but they forgot to repaint the wings and has a weird splochy snow leopard look to it. Also the left brake kinda half works. We departed to the north west towards Binghamton. He asked for a short field takeoff which is done at a steeper angle to achieve best angle of climb over any obstacles. The manual calls for a speed of 54 knots (60 something mph). I had to demonstrate that I could hold it at that speed in the climb with a +10 -5 deviation. I didn't, and let it get slow to 45 knots. We still had 10 degrees of flaps out which lowers the stall speed but it was still beyond the -5 deviation from the practical test standards. Strike one. Examiner didn't like that. (I should not have allowed it to get slow.) But in hindsight with input from the examiner a speed of 60 knots would have been just fine. I keep whispering 'speed is life' in my head like a mantra.....
Time to climb was roughly what I had estimated and we leveled off at 3,000ft. Since I could see my first checkpoint (round valley reservoir) and got the actual time enroute close enough to the estimated time enroute, the examiner told me to terminate the hypothetical flight to Binghamton and begin our airwork of ground reference maneauvers, power off/on stalls, slow flight, steep turns, and emergency procedures. No problems here.
Then came the 'under the hood work' or the simulated flying on instruments. I grabed the the plastic blinders and put them on to block my view of everything except for the gauges on the instrument panel. The examiner then told me close my eyes as he took the controls and put the aircraft into unusual attitudes for me to then recover from. Eyes open, took the controls and tried to return the plane to straight and level flight. No problems here.
Then came the fun stuff. VORs. After about half hour of sitting in the little two seater right up against the examiner who's 220lbs and I'm sweating bullets becuse I'm scared shitless of not doing something right; now I had to think to use the onboard radio navigtion systems and fly the plane whilst wearing the blinders. VORs are really very simple when you're on the ground and can draw nice pictures of points with 360 lines radiating out from their centers. I was supposed to fly direct to a VOR station. So I tuned the radio to the Yardley VOR and spun the omni-bearing selector until the needle in the VOR gauge centered giving me the exact heading to fly in order to stay on the specific radial towards Yardley. Only problem was, the needle was centered but we were northboud, the oposite direction of where the station was. I spun the omni-bearing selector to center the needle at the reciprocal heading and was reverse sensing. It was indicating 'to' instead of 'from' but we were flying the wrong way. So I caught myself and tried to make a 180 degree turn and correct the problem. Keep in mind i'm still wearing the blinders so all I see is a cluster of 8 instrument gauges. As I was turning, I couldn't get the needle to center up and it just swung from the left to the right and I had made a complete 360. Strike two.
Examiner made me turn back towards Princeton to make simulated engine out landing and then a another short field take off and landing. No problems there either but since I failed to initially on the short field take off. He couldn't pass me. No big deal really. He even told me not to stress too much about it and just take a couple more lessons with my instructor to iron out the two issues and reschedule another 'ride' for the following week. (Hey I faild my first driver's road test.) The re-checkride he would only be testing me on VOR navigation and short field take offs.
Here's where the proverbial hits the fan though. I was the second student of the day to fail with the same examiner and something like the 6th or 7th student to fail a checkride at the Raritan Valley Flying School at Princeton in the past 6 months. Hmm what does that mean? Either we all had very bad luck and just suck or the quality of training at Princeton is sub par. Now I don't think my instructor is sub par in any way at all. He's got over 1700 hours total time and is good at what he does. I began reschduling additional lessons with him and managed to get 2 in before I was subject to verbal abuse by the airport manager, let's call her "Marge." Marge (who holds no pilot ratings whatsoever) wouldn't let me just take a couple more lessons and reschedule with the examiner. Marge cliamed I was an unsafe pilot and should either be grounded or forced to repeat another Prog. 26 flight with the cheif instructor and additional lessons with my primary instructor. It would be two weeks before I could reschedule another checkride.
For fucks sake I've got just about 90 hours total time now after 14 months of training in 5 different aircraft. The FAA only requires a minimum of 40 hours total time to get the license. I was being forced to take at least another 7 to 10 more hours of instruction at $115 per hour. All because "Marge" was pissed that I was number 7 to get 'pink-slipped.' I took my Prog. 26 flight over a month ago with an instructor who wasn't the cheif pilot (because the chief pilot was all booked up.) This guy signed me off. "Marge" authorized him to give me the flight even though he's only a 300 hour pilot. Less experienced than my primary instructor. I did everything by the book with these people and they signed me off as proficient to take the checkride. And when I failed they got mad at me for tarnishing their record. This really pissed me off since I had already spent more than my target ammount of money to spend to finish the license and they wanted more.
So Fuck them! Fuck Princeton! Fuck "Marge" and her ridiculous little pilot shop where they are still trying to sell sim software on floppy disks for $40 and still using paper spread sheets for scheduling in end of 2009! (They're selling fucking airband handheld two way radios for over $100 more than retail price and wondering why nobody buys their shit.)
I found another airport 10 miles north of Princeton called Central Jersey Regional 47N. It's smaller and the flying school there is run by a nice Tawainese guy who helps train pilots from Taiwan to get their comercial license so they can fly profesionally back home. They've agreed to just give me a few more lessons and I've already schedueled with the same examiner I had last week for next Tuesday.
Central Jersey Regional has the same model of aircraft that I was using but better. A Cessna A152. Their version is fully aerobatic just like the A150 that I was flying out of Penn Yan, NY last year. Rated to +6/-4 Gs. (Same airframe, differnt engine, 8 more hp.) It's a little bit more expensive to rent but it's in much much better condition. For starters it actually has functioning fuel gauges. (Which in theory makes it airworthy, unlike the 3 Cessna 152s at princeton.) The seats are not broken and don't feel like they're going to fully recline if you lean on them too much. The guys at 47N have installd a very nice Garmin 296 color gps and a traffic avoidence system along with a DME (distance measuring equipment.) All the instruments work too! The first time I flew it two days ago, I was about to taxi and anticipated giving it some gas (the same muscle memory I was used to in Princeton's planes) and it really tried to take off (dind't actually take off on the taxi way but felt like it, a good jolt.) So I had to be a little more subtle with the throttle. The compression in all the cylinders is higher and up to factory specs unlike the planes at princeton. Also both left and right wheel brakes worked too. Unlike Princeton where one of the 152s left brake has air bubbles in the hydraulic lines causing the left rudder pedal to flip all the way to the floor and requires manual pumping to get the pressure back. Nothing like a brake that half works (also not really safe.) On my intial flight in this new machine, the bird took off like a rocket. Something that I wasn't used to in the the same aircraft at Princeton. It took what ever I gave it and performed much better. Didn't feel sluggish and was very crisp and responsive on all control surfaces.
Had another flight in the like-new A152 yesterday but ended very shortly as low ground fog started to roll in. Went in today and had an hour in 47N's full-motion simulator (very cool indeed) to work on chasing VORs. I've met 2 new instructors who seem very confident and cool. One of them has a wife in Hong Kong and is building time to be able to apply for an airline job in the far east. The other instructor is a pretty funny dude and had some funny stories about his father who used to fly KC-135s (Boeing 707s refitted as airborne refueling tankers) in Vietnam. There's a standard safety procedure that is to be respected at all times: no drinking (alcohol) within 8 hours of flying, and no smoking within 50 feet of any aircraft. Back in 'Nam' it was no smoking within 8 hours before flying and no drinking within 50 feet of the aircraft. (Yes pilots have sad jokes.....)
Oh and UCSB's deadline is Monday. I've contacted two professors in the Geography department and they've both contacted me back and they like my CV. One of them told me not to worry too much about my GRE scores. Magee and King have both let me know that my LORs are on their way. I'm still waiting for a confirmation from D'angelo. He responded to one email but I haven't been able to get him to pick up the phone yet. Still a little nervous though.
"
