9/13/2007

Another checkride already. Feels really odd. Weirder still, I think I want to pass this one even more than my PP-ASEL checkride, mostly due to the extra expense of training and inconvenience of traveling to M54. That said, I'm not particularly nervous, much like last time. I can pass or fail any given day, but I'm as prepared as I can be at this moment.

The weather is absolutely perfect. I arrive at M54 early so I can preflight and get things moving. We have to fly from M54 to KRNC for the checkride. Only about a 20 minute flight, but it takes me a while to untie the airplane, pull off the cover, preflight, runup, etc. I'm not doing cartwheels when I find out some dude has the airplane right now.

It's not a huge deal because he's scheduled to return at 12, so I should still have plenty of time to get to KRNC by 1:30. But then he doesn't show up until 12:20, which kinda irks me. We chat a bit when he walks in, and it turns out the guy owns a helicopter school in town, so I end up not reading him the riot act. He's lucky I think helicopters are cool or there was an earful coming. He's training for his multi-engine as well, and I tell him my checkride is today:

Guy: Who is the DE?
Me: It's (insert name of DE here)
Guy: Oh, he's a great guy. He'll put you right at ease.
Me: Well that works for me.

After a brief chat, I preflight and MEI and I get on our way to KRNC. Our trusty seminole only has text-based GPS. It's a bit like flying a Commodore 64 with an old Zork game loaded on it. I'm a little worried I won't find this place in time, and MEI and I are both looking around knowing we're right on top of it but not seeing it. Suddenly, and simultaneously we both point and exclaim, "There it is!"

One too-high approach and slightly long landing later, and we're on the ground. MEI begins to tie down her side of the airplane when I discover that the rope on my side is too short to reach the loop under the wing. Grrr. I roll the airplane forward a bit. Nope. More rolling. Ok, finally, it *just* reaches and I have all of about 6 inches of rope to work with. It ends up taking me some time and no small amount of cursing to end up with something that at least resembles a tie down. I'm 100% sure the DE is watching all of this with great amusement from the FBO window.

We walk in the door and introductions are made. Sure enough, he was standing where he could not have missed the tie-down fiasco. The checkride has not begun and I'm already sheepish. I have no choice but to address the issue by ragging on myself.

Me: You don't grade on tie-down performance, right?
Some guy: Yeah, he's already deducted some points for that. Was the rope too short or something?
Me: Yeah, it just didn't reach on that side.
DE: Ok, well, in that case go ahead and tear up that pink slip...
Me:

I like this guy already.

We sit down for the oral and I get asked a number of questions, not all of which I can now recall. Some that I do recall are:

1. What is an empty fuel weight?
2. Does your airplane have one?
3. How many fuel pumps are on this airplane?
4. Describe the effects of altitude / aft CG / landing gear / flaps on Vmc.
5. Between gear, flaps, and windmilling prop, what produces the most drag?
6. What produces the second most drag?
7. Describe the gear system on this airplane (with emergency procedure).
8. What kind of engines does it have?
9. What kind of propellers does it have?
10. Would you attempt a single engine go around? Why or why not?
11. Describe how the propellers / governors work.
12. What is an MEL and do we have one?

I missed a couple of the questions, but overall I did quite well, according to the DE. I'll let his quote speak for itself:

DE: You did better than many of the aero majors I test from MTSU. Even the questions you weren't sure about, you reasoned through for me showing me that you understand the topic.
Me: Well, thank you. Now if I can just fly...

Wow, high praise! I'll bet you I can still lose 300 feet in slow flight if I really try though.

I head out and briefly preflight again, and we hop in the airplane. He requests a short-field takeoff and I give him one of my better examples of one. Then I'm instructed to climb to 4000 ft. Roger, dodger. So far, so good.

By the way, the pitch angle in the Seminole to achieve Vx is patently absurd. "Hanging by the props" is the best way I know how to describe it. It's *really* nose up... that took some getting used to, believe that.

A couple of clearing turns later and he requests steep turns. Here we go to the left... ok, roll it to 30, little back elevator pressure, continuing on to 45, watching altitude... Now, at this point I see the altimeter has not moved a degree since setting up the turn. I trim the pressure out and it stays rock steady for the entire turn. Didn't move 10 damn feet. I started to think the static line was plugged! It was incredible, and noone was more shocked than I was.

As I rolled out I kept the airplane trimmed for the turn and just pushed the yoke forward and held it down with forward pressure.. Then for the right turn I rolled it in and simply eased that forward pressure around 30 degrees and got another shining example of a steep turn. I was amazed. So what say you on that, Mr. DE?

DE: Well, that met commercial standards.
Me: I get lucky every now and then.
DE:

Next up, slow flight. Alright, what the hell. If I'm going to fail, let's get it out of the way early.

I talk through the whole thing, even stating, "We have to be patient, this airplane has lots of momentum". I probably took longer to set it up than ever before, but when I got there, I was able to hold it within 50 feet or so fairly easily. We turned to the left and right, no problems there either. It was around this time when I realized I might actually pull this off. I'm gonna owe God some good behavior for a while it seems.

Mr. DE next sees fit to remove one of our engines from service. I run through the securing operations for it, including a full feather. Yep, there it is, all quiet, still, and very unengine-like. Fortunately for me, it only took a little bit of coaxing to get it restarted. That was something else I worried over, so I was quite relieved when it roared back to life. Mental note to buy that engine a nice quart of premium oil when this is all over.

Stalls were up next, and completely uneventful. Same for the Vmc demo, about which I was somewhat nervous. My thinking on all of those was to recover early and recover fast. If he wanted to see a full stall or hardcore loss of directional control, he was going to have to request it. My thinking: Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Besides, he doesn't want to be made nervous anymore than I do...

After that, I perform an emergency descent for him, nailing the 140kt speed for the first time ever. Gear back up immediately after, and we head back into the pattern. It's going swimmingly so far, and all the hard stuff is behind me. I'm really hopeful now.

He first requests a normal landing, here I made the only bobble of the day. At midfield downwind I put the gear down like normal, which would be fine, except that he had killed the right engine. I momentarily forget all about the extra drag when I lowered the gear, but I can't just yank them back up in the Seminole. I briefly considered pulling them back up later and opted to leave them down.

Me: Probably should have left that gear up.
De: Yeah, but I think we're ok.
Me: Same here.

Sure enough, we had plenty of climb performance and made it safely to our landing spot. Afterwards...

Me: Did you want taxi back or full stop?
DE: Taxi back.

Damn! Not done yet, but it was worth a try. :-)

We taxied back and took off again and he pulled the left engine on climb out. I ran through the drill: identify, verify, feather in short order and began a slow turn to crosswind. He mercifully gave me back my engine and then requested a short-field landing.

DE: What do you guys use as your target?
Me: Thousand foot marker. That ok?
DE: That's fine.

So I set it all up and on final it's looking pretty nice. On short final I start to get a little low, which is very unusual for me on short fields. I goose the throttles pretty good and then chop them and drop the wheels about 20 feet inside the edge of the marker. It was a close one, but I've never done a better short field landing than that.

DE: You can taxi back to the ramp now.
Me: Ok.

I go through the after landing checklist and taxi on over, and after shutting down we discuss the flight briefly.

DE: Nice job. You flew very well.
Me: Does that mean I passed?
DE: Yeah, you passed.
Me: Thank goodness. I was hoping that was good enough, because that's the best I've flown this thing...

PP-AMEL, baby!

He goes in to start typing things up and I tie down the airplane. Walking back into the FBO, I consider briefly messing with MEI with a sad look and a shake of the head, but when I walk in, she has already heard the news.

MEI: If only you had 250 hours... well, tell your wife you flew to commercial standards.

I'm guessing the DE told her as much, though he only said it about my steep turns to me. In all honesty, however, I did fly well that day. I remarked at first that I'd never flown the Seminole better, but the fact is that I'd never flown *anything* better than that. I guess checkride pressure brings out the best in me.

The flight home was uneventful and fast. I remember thinking how nice it felt to just fly not train. The weather was still perfect and the air very still and calm. Plus we were hauling ass. That always brightens my mood.

In the pattern, a helicopter calls that he's on downwind as we're turning final. I, naturally, call my turn...

Helicopter: So, are you a multi pilot now?
Me: (confused) Yes, I am.
Helicopter: Told ya he was a great guy.
Me: (laughs) Hey, I'm trying to concentrate here...
Helicopter: Oh, sorry...

One decent landing and shutdown later and I'm on my way home with a very large checkride grin on my face. I'm pleased as punch that I could not only pass the test, but handle the aircraft as well as I did. Hell, I'll just say it... I was proud.

PP-AMEL complete. Instrument next, after these messages....

Tags: multi, checkride, seminole