Lesson 53 - Pre-solo Stage Check

 

Once my instructor put me in for my stage check, I got paired with another instructor from the school to fly with me and sign off that I was indeed ready to be turned loose on my own. A "second opinion" of sorts which needs to be done by someone who does not fly regularly with the student. This instructor/examiner called me to schedule a time to go. I had a plane booked the following week which matched his availability, so we agreed to meet then. After getting off the phone, I looked at the long range weather forecast. Beautiful weather every day except the day we scheduled. But you can't do anything about the weather, and neither of our schedules allowed sliding things one way or another. We figured we'd take our chances and see what happens. 

That day came, and so did the snow. No flying today. However, we agreed to take care of the written and oral portions of the process since both of us were free. The "written" test is a sheet of 40 questions which ask about airport operations, frequencies used, basic questions about the plane, club rules for flying as a student, etc. I had filled this out early on in my training, so this was more review than anything else. Aside from a few questions whose wording was a bit ambiguous, these were questions that if you couldn't answer after your first 10 lessons, you weren't paying attention. 

The oral portion was more in-depth, a good, though basic warm-up for the oral part of the final check ride. I had previously sat down with my instructor to go through a mock oral where he noted things I needed to brush up on, and I had taken that to heart. I met my examiner, and we essentially had a casual conversation for a few hours about flying, covering all the basic acronyms for required equipment and procedures (ARROW, ATOMATOFLAMES, NWKRAFT) and the like. We talked through some "what if..." scenarios and looked at what would need to have with me when the weather cooperated and we got up in the air. I did well on the oral, though I definitely need to remember those acronyms better. (Even as I type this, I'm trying to remember some of the letters.) 

The practical day would have to wait a bit, as I was going to be on vacation the following week. I had a plane booked two days the week I was to be back from vacation, and it worked out that my examiner would be available the second of those two days. I figured that would give me a "warm-up" day prior to the practical. I liked that idea as it would have been three weeks since my last flight and I was nervous about being a bit rusty, especially when you combine that with general nerves of being tested on things. Well, that "practice" day with my instructor arrived on 30 knot wind gusts, so nope. No flying. I would go into the stage check cold. But--hey--if I "need" a warm-up day to get back in the groove, am I really ready to fly by myself? Probably not. I hit the simulator pretty hard all week to keep fresh on procedures and flows. 

Friday arrived on the heels of an overnight snowfall. I got to the field to find the sun had melted most of the snow off of the plane already, but the side that was in the shade was still icy. (Typical Colorado.) My examiner met me, we spun the plane 180 degrees so the sun could melt the ice off the other side while we talked about preflight stuff and what we wanted to do. (As an aside, one advantage to flying low-wing aircraft--much easier to de-ice the wings.) I could feel the nerves today, not so much about the practical flying, but all the little details I knew I was bound to forget. At this stage check, they're not looking for perfection, just proficiency and safety. It's a progress report. 

We hopped in, started the plane (after my examiner reminded me to push the primer pump handle all the way in. Nerves), and headed out. The winds were calm so we took off on runway 10, which got us headed southeast towards the practice area. I got us down there without any trouble though I gained 200' of altitude when I was supposed to stay at 7500'. Again--nerves. My practice area radio calls were shockingly smooth. I normally get tongue-tied with those though I can talk to ATC all day long. 

We started with slow flight and stalls. I forgot to do my initial clearing turns which I knew I was going to forget. That will be my third sticky-note for my final check ride. "Left," "Right," "Clearing Turns." Those went well, though I didn't realize on power-off stalls there was supposed to be a limit of how much altitude you lose at the start. I always just pulled power, pointed the nose down for about 75 knots, counted to three, then pulled up. I lost about 300' doing that while my examiner was looking for less than 100' loss. Not a dealbreaker, just a lesson to me to make sure I'm aware of what the parameters are of any maneuver I'm being tested on. 

We did some steep turns, which while not required for this stage are always fun. These weren't as smooth as I would have liked, not for lack of mastery of the skill, but because in both cases my nerves got to me and I forgot to note the heading I started at, instead just relying on what I saw out the window, which I noted after I had started the turn. Naturally I overshot on both. That, and apparently my definition of "steep" and my examiner's definition were not the same. I was flying around 45 degrees of bank, he was looking for 60 degrees. Something to work on. We cleaned up from that process and did a simulated emergency landing. Fortunately there was a convenient field off my left wing, and it was easy to set up an approach and landing. Once I got lined up to where landing would be assured, I did a (fairly textbook) go-around, then headed back to the field for some touch-and-go landings.

If I could have started the day with landings, my nerves may have been a bit calmer through this process. Landings were what held up this process to begin with, and while I was more-or-less confident in them, I still had that little bit of uncomfortable doubt. This was (literally) where the rubber meets the runway and if I botched the landings, it was back to the drawing board. I would have much preferred to get the "hard stuff" out of the way first so I knew if I passed that the rest would be easy. Instead, we saved them for last (which made the most sense from a practical standpoint), and I flew with this little nugget of apprehension hanging in the back of my mind much of the time.

Our first approach was a straight-in approach. For whatever reason, I prefer straight-in approaches. Maybe it's because I don't have to worry about turns in the process and have a better gauge to how high or low I am. Despite the straight-in approach, I still ended up just a touch high on short final, but I adjusted and managed to land pretty much where I intended. I uttered a celebratory "YES!" on touching down, but immediately wondered if my examiner interpreted that as "holy crap, I actually did it." I figured I had a few more chances to prove it wasn't an anomaly.

Once I hit that first landing, I knew that monkey was officially off my back and I could relax a bit. We did three more landings in the pattern. I tended to be high on all of them, but that's typical for me. It's rare that I fly a "normal" 3-degree glide slope. Being above the normal glide slope is particularly common when I'm landing on runway 35 where the terrain rises to the south of the field and I'm very hesitant to loose any altitude on the downwind. CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) tends to result in a hard "fail" on stage checks. On the plus side, I dropped us into a slip to get us back on glide slope on one approach, which the examiner noted with "ooh, nice slip." Overall, my landings were pretty solid. My airspeed control was where it needed to be, and a lack of any kind of crosswind (phew!) made landing on the centerline of the runway (within a few feet) pretty easy. 

Our fourth landing would be our final one. The stage check was over (save for tying the plane down). I did it. It wasn't perfect. Flying seldom is, even for seasoned veterans. It was good enough to show that I can fly and land safely by myself. The examiner praised certain aspects and pointed out areas where there is lots of room for improvement. But--most importantly--I passed. I'm officially cleared to fly a plane solo, and move onto the next phase of my training. From here on out, it's not about learning how to fly a plane, it's about learning how to fly a plane well and for a given purpose. I'm not going to say the hard part is done, but my confidence has definitely been given a nice boost. 

Now, I hope for VFR conditions with little wind on a day when I have the plane booked. That's proving to be hard to come by lately.