Roadblocks in the Sky Part 3, Finale

This is it! - we hope.

I seem to have a thing for taking checkrides at any place but my home airport. When I took my private pilot exam, I had to fly myself 60 nm north to Chico to meet the examiner and take the practical test. A year later I was ready to get my instrument ticket and this time it was down to Sacramento’s Mather airport to meet an examiner who was available during my limited window of time. Naturally by now I was feeling it would be nice to simply drive to Auburn and take a flight test right there and not to have to go somewhere else.

But with the latest development, I had a choice: have Rick, my examiner, come back up to Auburn the following week and pay him the full retest fee—or accept his offer for a generous discount if I would fly myself over to his home airport in Cameron Park... So much for staying local. I picked the obvious choice.

Probably the worst thing about discontinuing the test was coming back home and bumping into all my friends who were very excited to know the results. Thankfully the week went by quickly, and pretty soon I was staring down my checkride day again. I got word that the plane was back in service, so I went out for a good long session, practicing the navigation, landings, high work, and familiarizing myself with the area around Cameron Park.

The landing gear was working flawlessly. That wasn’t the only thing Bob had fixed. Apparently the pilot’s seat had been sagging, so he straightened that problem out. Of course, I hadn’t even noticed the seat was broken—until it was fixed. I wished he would have done that after my checkride.

Everything seemed to stay together as I headed back to Auburn. It was a bit disconcerting to have some small birds appear in front of the plane and flash past the window. They managed to make it out of the way and a few moments later I touched down with a plane that was as flaw-free as any 44 year-old plane can be. Next flight on the schedule: a hop down Cameron Park the next morning to see Rick again.

Since we were meeting at noon, I didn’t have to be up hours before dawn getting ready. I was enjoying my leisurely morning a bit too much, however, and I found myself scrambling at the last minute plugging in newly adjusted headings in my navlog. Finally getting it all together, I headed out the door, hoping that this time I would return with a brand-new Temporary Airman Certificate.

Bad attitude. Ok, that's an old joke. Wasn't funny at the time.

The flight to Cameron Park in the Arrow was short, barely 12 minutes long. I was thrilled when I took off to find the attitude indicator (artificial horizon) all out of whack, indicating a 60-degree bank while in straight-and-level flight. Just the day it would decide to break. Since it's not a required instrument for VFR flight, I got out a sticky note and pasted "Inop" over the dial's face. Halfway through the brief flight, the instrument mysteriously revived.

Entering the pattern, I decided to do warm up for the day by arriving with a short-field landing. As I descended down final I could see a figure standing in the transient parking, watching. I flared…and floated, finally settling down with a thud beyond my aiming point. So much for that.

Rick was the person waiting in the parking area. We went inside the local maintenance hangar’s office and did the online paperwork. We were both grateful the government shutdown had just ended, because that meant the bugs with IACRA (the FAA’s online certification website) had been fixed. No oral to do today; it was just a short briefing from Rick on what the “plan of action” for the flight was, and then back to the plane to go do it.

First up on the to-do list after taking off was cross-country navigation. I picked up a course from Cameron Park that followed Highway 50 toward South Lake Tahoe. The VOR at Placerville gave me the opportunity to demonstrate my ability to use electronic navigation, and the pilotage and dead reckoning also worked out quite well. It helps when your checkpoints aren’t 50 miles apart.

After about ten minutes it was time to move on to the next part of the scenario. “Okay Michael, let’s say we don’t like the look of the weather up ahead and I hear they make some good hot chocolate down at Rancho Murieta. Take me there.” Righto, time to demonstrate diversions. Do some quick plotting and calculations, turn to the new heading, and advise the examiner of the ETA. A  few minutes later, bingo! Right over the field, right on time.

Demonstrating lazy-eights between other no-so-lazy tasks.

Maneuvers were next. Steep turns, lazy eights, slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls, accelerated stalls (did I mention stalls?). The next part was fun: a simulated engine fire, necessitating a rapid descent. That led to the next emergency procedure of demonstrating an approach to landing in a field of my choice. Eights-on-pylons rounded off the maneuvers and then it was time to start on landings back at Rancho Murieta.

Somehow a “normal” landing doesn’t always come off as well for me as some of the other, more technical landing techniques. In this case a bit of crosswind combined with a tense hand on the yoke resulted in a touchdown left of centerline. I was more concerned with setting down in the mandatory 200-ft window, so I wasn’t even thinking about the centerline until I heard Rick’s voice in my headset. “Michael, see those white lines? We’re supposed to be over there.” I stiffened, and got on the rudder pedals to realign the plane in the middle of the runway.

A soft-field take-off and landing followed. Touchdown seemed a bit squirrelly, but I met the main objective of holding the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible. Needless to say, I was also quite concentrated on that centerline. Returning to the beginning of the runway we took off again for the most dreaded maneuver of the commercial checkride: the power-off 180 degree accuracy landing.

“This is it. Remember, you have one shot at this. Show me you can put the plane down on the mark.” Though I was well aware of the high stakes, I didn’t find this maneuver that intimidating. Maybe I should have. I think I was just dreading the short-field landing back at Cameron Park more than this.

All set up on downwind, I pulled the throttle back and started my arcing turn for the runway, making sure to focus on my aiming point. Right away I realized the lower-than-usual traffic pattern altitude had thrown me a curve ball and I was already getting too low. Time to pull back the blue knob. Trees and buildings were passing rather closely below the plane now as I continued making a beeline for the tarmac. I could see Rick start to stiffen up out of the corner of my eye. As I steepened the bank a couple hundred feet above the ground to line up with the runway, I wondered if he was going to call the game for my rather low maneuvering. But no, on we sailed, now with the aiming point definitely within reach.

Prop control forward, full flaps, bring it in. Start to flare…oh, we’re going to float. I pulled out my last trick, reaching down and smoothly lowering the flap handle to the floor. The flaps retracted, dumping lift from the wings, and we settled firmly onto the runway inside the 200-ft window. And dead on centerline.

Now for that last landing. I powered up the plane, took off, and headed back to Cameron Park. Rick directed me on the specifics of how locals fly the traffic pattern so as to airport neighbors happy. “Make a dogleg from base to final here. We don’t fly over that person’s house because they tend to get upset and call the airport manager,” he said, pointing at a building on the ridge to our right.

I was on final now, looking at the runway beyond a very long displaced threshold. I was a bit high and a bit fast. Not good things. I pulled power and got back on what looked like a good glide-path. The runway loomed. I flared. And ballooned.

The plane came back down, hitting the main gears rather solidly, but I couldn't tell if I had landed within the prescribed window. Somewhat distracted as I wondered where I had touched down I was late on the brakes, and then completely forgot to retract the flaps to maximize braking effectiveness (although it’s not a requirement). I felt very warm and uncomfortable as I taxied back to the parking ramp.

I shut the engine down and Rick asked me about what to do post-flight. He mentioned a pilot he knew who lost his job because he failed to check the business jet after landing. When he returned the next day to fly the boss, they saw the plane had actually been damaged in flight by a bird strike. What could have been fixed overnight resulted in the boss being late and the pilot getting fired.

We pushed the plane into its parking spot as he continued to share little snippets of information. Then, almost as a forgotten gesture, he stuck out his hand and grasped mine in a quick a handshake. “Oh, congratulations, by the way,” he interjected. I felt slightly weak. I almost didn’t dare to believe it. I had passed.

Debriefing back in the office was helpful. He went over the stronger and the weaker points of the flight, and then managed to wrangle IACRA into producing a printable certificate. Finally, there it was in black and white: Temporary Airman Certificate, Commercial Pilot, issued October 17, 2013.

I think this picture says it best.

I managed to get a quick snapshot with Rick and my certificate back out at the plane before we said goodbye and went our separate ways. I climbed into the Arrow and slowly began setting up the cockpit for the return flight. I took my time, trying to process the past hour and a half. My brain felt completely saturated; somehow this felt like the toughest test yet. But by the grace of God I had passed. One thin piece of paper. One huge milestone in the path to the mission field. One sweaty commercial pilot.

Amazing what we'll go through for something from an inkjet printer.