Multi-engine checkride
This article was originally written on February 19, 2015.
I awoke the morning of the checkride excited for the weather. Not because it was clear; far from it — it was the murky sort of cloudy weather that instrument pilots love: perfectly safe, smooth air to fly in, but low visibilities and think blankets of clouds that guarantee a green pilot some quality time on the gauges.
Though it was an early dawn at 7 am, I had prepared completely the night before, so it was simply a matter of hopping into the shower, collecting my things, and walking the short distance to the Caltrain station, where I grabbed an express train to San Carlos. On the train I filed and briefed my IFR flight to Chico airport, where the examiner is, and did some last minute studying and memorization for the checkride.
Aviation is all about making room in your brain. As I filed and briefed my IFR flight plan I remembered a time back when I was getting my instrument rating where such a task would consume all of my anxiety and effort. There would be no room left over for a commercial-level checkride on top of that. Now, years later, the IFR portion of today’s journey is the rote part I do without thinking, and my anxiety and effort is directed entirely at the checkride. Still though, I strove to pay due diligence to my flight planning, since IFR is never something to be taken lightly.
When the Caltrain arrived I grabbed a cab to the airport, and in the back of the cab did final preparations for the flight. I got to the airport a half hour early and my instructor, Justin, was nowhere in sight. Eager to seem over-prepared, I took initiative and walked out to the plane to preflight it on my own.
Thick, low clouds choked out the sky, blanketing the landscape in all directions. The airport was quiet save for its only airline, SurfAir, which runs at all hours. The ceilings were too low for the kind of recreational flying most pilots do at San Carlos. The few people who were here, were here on business, and I was among them.
N83ER sat waiting for me, exactly as I left her the previous day, since there’s no one else in the club that flies her. I performed a thorough preflight, and asked the line crew to top off her tanks. Yesterday’s intensive short-field landing practice had taken its toll on the bird, and the resulting low air pressure in the left main tire left her sitting at a subtle list. We noticed this yesterday and I had resolved to ask the line crew to add air to the tire, a fact which sprang to mind only after the fuel truck drove off into the distance, its business complete. Oh well. I’ll remember at Chico.
(Foreshadow: I won’t.)
With the preflight complete, I tied the plane back down, and returned to the club. Justin had arrived and was on a very obviously private and important phone call, so I gave him due space. I casually studied some more, and when he finally hung up, he took me into the briefing room to discuss the flight. Dan, the club owner, came in and had a short and weighty talk with Justin. I lacked the context to understand it, but it was obvious that Justin had come into some bad luck with regards to his career. I opted to sit awkwardly and pretend I didn’t exist.
Dan concluded his visit with a sincere “I’ll support you no matter what happens,” then left the two of us alone. Justin began briefing me as if I had just walked into the room, a facade I eagerly adopted as well. We verified that we had all the airplane’s documents, and then discussed the weather. Justin was rightfully cautious about it.
“I looked online this morning. Everything, and I mean everything, is socked in today. From Arcadia up to Redding, the whole state.”
We checked the forecast at Chico, which was below minimums now, but promised clear skies by 11 AM. It was 9:30 at this point, and so I suggested we leave at 10, as the flight would take about an hour. Justin, however, was keen to depart, and since the procedural load applied by attaching the “IFR” label to a flight would add at least 30 minutes, we might as well leave now. I agreed.
We walked back to the plane, and me having already preflighted it, simply hopped in and fired her up. The sky was still completely overcast, but the air was calm and still, so San Carlos was using runway 12. This was preferred, as this runway faced away from SFO, which reduces headaches when taking off IFR. It does not eliminate these headaches though — even departing away from the international airport, we must still wait for NorCal to create a hole in the traffic for us to squeeze through. And wait we did — for 15 minutes we sat, engines idling, waiting for NorCal to find room for us among a never-ending parade of airliners landing at SFO.
When it was finally our turn, I took the runway, pushed the throttles forward, and brought the plane smoothly into the air. It didn’t take long for the Duchess’s twin engines to bring us up into the 700-foot cloud layer, and my view of the Peninsula was swiftly swallowed up by the clouds. I kept my eyes on the gauges and continued to fly up through the cloud layer, which finally topped out at around 2,000 feet. Once we were above the clouds (and still briskly climbing), NorCal vectored us northwards towards Chico.
The remainder of the flight to Chico was uneventful in so many ways. The instructions from NorCal were infrequent and simple. Traffic was light at the sky was empty. The view was utterly unchanging — other than an occasional mountain here or there, I was flying over a featureless plain of clouds, with no clues as to my position other than the equipment in the airplane. Justin and I made occasional attempts at conversation but nothing really stuck, so we just enjoyed the view, as it were, passing beneath us.
With a cruise speed of 150 knots, the Duchess is the fastest plane I’ve ever flown (for now), but it still felt like a long, slow ride to Chico. An hour later we were there and the unrelenting blanket of clouds had not receded. We would need to fly the ILS approach into the airport. Top of mind for me was whether we would make it: The ILS requires the clouds to be at least 200 feet above the ground, and the forecast did not promise much higher than that. We listened on the radio to for other airplanes attempting the approach, so we could determine if they made it in or had to go missed.
The approach is for runway 13, which points opposite our heading, so ATC had to vector us past the airport, and then give us a nice wide turn back the other direction to line us up. An AmFlight freight plane, another light twin, was ahead of us, receiving the same vectors. Justin and I watched him turn around, descend, and disappear beneath the clouds on his approach. He never popped back up again, so we assumed he found his way to the runway.
Once ATC asked me to begin my descent, I became suddenly overcome by nerves. I’m not sure what it was — I’ve flown approaches before — but perhaps it was the knowledge that this would be a “for real” approach and would likely take us all the way down to minimums in the clouds, not to mention in a fast aircraft where things happen quickly. Regardless, I suddenly became unable to control my nervousness, and struggled to find ways to keep myself calm. My priority was not giving away my anxiety to Justin, and I was able to suppress my legs and arms from shaking, but only by letting my teeth chatter. So that would have to suffice. And regardless of how nervous I was, I had the very real and very grave task of safely guiding this aircraft through the clouds down to the runway, so I had no choice but to get over myself and get this thing on the ground in one piece. (Or at least come as close to getting over myself as I could manage.)
So, with my attention split between controlling the aircraft and controlling myself, I brought us into the thick, dark clouds. I kept my scan up and was focused on the job before me, so it was a bit of a shock when Justin pulled back the power on one engine.
“Engine failure,” he said. I was incredulous. We’re doing a simulated engine failure during an approach in actual IFR to minimums?! But, far be it from me to protest aloud, so I simply added this new development to my growing list of problems to deal with. I performed the engine failure memory items and then referenced the checklist, all while keeping my headings and altitudes under control, and performing the best breathing exercises I could invent on the spot.
With only one engine producing power the airplane began to slow, and I gladly let the speed bleed off. Now we were going through the approach more slowly, which allowed me to space out my responsibilities a little, a welcome reprieve. The altimeter slowly unwound as we descended further and further through the unrelenting clouds, and with Justin’s repeated reminders to me to “stomp on that rudder,” the airplane remained nailed on the glidepath.
At 1,000 feet I began counting away the altitudes in hundreds down to minimums. I had the missed approach procedure ready in my head in case we needed to go missed, a real possibility. At 400 feet — two hundred above minimums — the airplane mercifully broke free of the clouds, and the window filled with the view of grassy fields and a big, welcoming runway ahead. I gleefully brought my eyes up from the gauges to the view outside, but Justin stopped me there.
“Keep on the gauges,” he said. He wanted this simulated single-engine approach to go to minimums, so I was to pretend that there were clouds for another 200 feet of the descent. I kept flying the needles until we reached minimums, when I picked my head up again.
“Good work.” Justin praised me as I brought down the gear and did my final landing checks, then put the airplane down gently on runway 13, the airplane still yawing due to the thrust imbalance. Once the airplane was down Justin returned control of both engines to me. I was already exhausted and my checkride hadn’t even begun. My earlier hubris at thinking I had come so far as a pilot, that the IFR portion of this flight was rote, had bitten me.
“Where are we going?” I asked, realizing I had no idea what to tell ground control.
“We’re going to Air Carriage.” Chico airport is, first and foremost, a freight dog’s airport. The airport is littered with small twin-engine planes (much like our Duchess) coming in and out, all short-range cargo haulers.
“Chico Ground, Duchess 83ER, taxi Air Carriage via echo romeo.”
“Duchess 83ER, taxi echo romeo to Air Carriage.”
Chico is Justin’s stomping grounds and second home, and he was ever eager to demonstrate his familiarity with the airport at every turn. This meant tuning the radios to the appropriate frequencies before I could even look them up, casually knowing the location of every place we could possibly need to go to on the field, and pointing out the aircraft and people that he knew there.
“Oh hey, looks like Martin’s getting close to finishing his RV,” he said, as one of many examples of this.
I taxied the plane to Air Carriage, which was not surprisingly a large warehouse with FedEx boxes stacked up inside. Next to it was a small hangar building where our examiner has his office. With no tie-downs or parking spots, I simply picked a place in an ocean of asphalt and called it mine, then shut the plane down. I gave myself a chance to catch my breath, then collected my things and walked up to the building with Justin.
Outside someone was standing and waiting for us, who I assumed was our examiner. “Is that Henry?” I asked. “No,” Justin laughed. He then introduced me to his friend, Dave, presumably one of many he has at this airport. Justin and Dave got to catching up on their respective aviation careers for a bit, and then Justin led me to Henry’s office. Henry was waiting inside, a venerable old pilot with a somewhat gruff demeanor. I shook his hand, and after a short bit of conversation, Justin excused himself so Henry could conduct the oral. Outside the window, I watched as Dave immediately took Justin over to see his new airplane.
The oral began as a casual conversation about my seaplane experience (which has nothing to do with this checkride). Henry had some enthusiasm for seaplanes so he asked me a few questions about my experience, which I answered conversationally. Then he asked the first question that raised a flag.
“So what’s different from a seaplane and the Duchess you brought here?”
“OK, wait,” I said, not sure what was happening. “Is this the beginning of the oral?”
Henry laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
So I straightened up and began answering questions in earnest. His questions about the theory of multi-engine flying were entirely predictable and in line with what Justin had told me to expect: What is Vmc, how is it determined, what affects it, etc. I answered these questions easily, as my knowledge and confidence level with multi-engine theory was high.
When he was satisfied with that portion, he went on to systems. Since this was a commercial-level checkride, I knew I would be tested in far greater detail regarding the systems of the aircraft than a private pilot would be. And Henry did not slouch to that responsibility. He started innocuously, but would delve deeper from there. I thought I was prepared, but I learned quickly that, along with being an examiner, Henry is an aircraft mechanic. You never want the examiners that are also mechanics, because they love to stump you with the really technical stuff on the systems portion.
I handled questions about the fuel system easily, but slid downhill from there. Henry asked me how the propeller governor works, and how the feathering system works, which I had a decent understanding of, but he wanted to hear much more detail. Detailed questions about the landing gear and the gyro pressure system were met with only exasperated shrugs. I took to regularly apologizing for my apparently poor performance. Henry didn’t let on how he felt about it, remaining stolid and unemotional against my growing frustration.
It’s been my experience that examiners credit me with doing well on an oral exam when I make it a “shit sandwich.” In other words, as long as I start out and finish up on a high note, the examiner will be impressed, regardless of how much I flounder in the middle. I was eager to progress from systems to another topic, where I could top off the sandwich.
Henry moved on to performance. I pulled out the charts, and Henry had me calculate the numbers for today’s takeoff. My spirits lifted, as this was easy: I already have plenty of practice with the charts. I dutifully calculated the numbers, and Henry was satisfied. Then he asked me a simple question.
“What’s accelerate-go distance?”
“It’s 6,700 feet.”
“No, what does it mean?”
I was baffled and ashamed. This isn’t one of Henry’s aircraft-mechanic stumpers; this is basic multi-engine 101. I had put so much effort into learning the charts that I had never bothered to look up the meaning of it. I made my best guess.
“It’s … the distance … that the plane needs in order to take off, suffer an engine failure, and climb at a given rate?” I had kind of fudged a definition of V₂. This was wrong.
I made a few more guesses, and eventually had to admit I didn’t know.
“The answer’s right there on the chart,” Henry said with the most leading tone. He was giving me hints now. Doing what the examiner is not supposed to do. I scrutinized the chart. There was no actual definition of the term, but perhaps I could derive its meaning from the labels of the axes.
I continued to flounder for a few more minutes, before I finally stumbled ungracefully on the correct answer. Henry graciously allowed me to put my thoughts together and restate the answer with more clarity.
“Accelerate-go distance is the distance the aircraft requires to take off, suffer an engine failure right after takeoff, and clear an obstacle of a given height at that distance.” Henry was satisfied, but he had basically fed me the answer.
This was the conclusion of the oral, leaving my steaming shit sandwich open-faced, which I was not pleased with. Henry, however, had not yet found cause to fail me, so the checkride continued. Next up, I had to prove to him that the aircraft was safe and legal to fly.
I retrieved the aircraft logs and demonstrated to Henry that they contained record of the required maintenance checks. Henry asked, “Are you familiar with any continuing airworthiness directives for this airplane?”
Shit. The ADs. I had completely forgotten to study those. I briefly considered lying, but quickly realized that would end poorly, quickly. I had to eat crow.
“No,” I said shamefully. Henry, however, had misunderstood my answer to mean that I am familiar with the recurring ADs, and that there are none, which quickly became obvious to me.
“I think there’s actually one, for the landing gear … unless you got the A-frames replaced…” Henry began flipping through the logbook, looking for the appropriate maintenance entry, while I silently and fervently prayed.
“Ah yes,” he finally said. “Here it is: A-frames replaced. Yep, you’re right.” Thank god.
With luck back on my side, and Henry satisfied that the plane is in repair, I went back outside to prepare for the practical portion. The sky was completely clear now save for some building cumulus in the west. With the start of the day, business at the airport had picked up, and three more small freight aircraft were now parked next to mine, loading in boxes from FedEx trucks.
Though unnecessary, I diligently performed a thorough preflight, giving Henry no reason to believe me cavalier. Henry joined me at the aircraft, and to my dismay, decided to continue the oral.
“How much oil do the engines require?” Henry asked as I checked the oil. Likewise, when I began inspecting the gear, Henry asked me to demonstrate how the gear stays down and locked. I knew that in most airplanes a set of down-locks engage which prevent the landing gear from coming free, but the Duchess has no down-locks. I stared intently at the festooning contraption before me, a tire connected to a smorgasbord of hydraulic lines, push-rods, and braces, and tried furiously to discern its secrets through deductive reasoning (or perhaps ESP). It wasn’t happening.
At about this time a car drove up; it was Justin and another one of his airport friends, off to drive who even knows where. Justin poked his head out the passenger side window to wish me luck. While I was on my hands and knees under the wings, shooting eye-lasers at the landing gear, Henry took the opportunity to chide me a bit to Justin.
“He’s looking for the down-locks,” Henry said to Justin, chuckling.
“This plane doesn’t have any down-locks,” I shot back perfunctorily, unwilling to let Henry have this small pleasure. Justin didn’t mind.
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“Good luck,” Justin said. “Remember to stomp on that rudder.”
“Stop giving me hints during my checkride!” I half-jokingly pleaded. “I don’t want to get disqualified.”
The truck took off to parts unknown, and I was once again left alone with Henry. As the examiner Henry was unable to simply tell me the answer to his question, but he all but led me there, and with his exorbitant help I was finally able to discern the mechanism that keeps the gear in place when it’s down.
Henry had finally decided to stop asking me questions, so we both boarded the aircraft, and Henry gave me his examiner briefing.
“You’ll be pilot-in-command for this flight. I’m just a passenger. I’ll tell you what maneuvers I want you to do but everything else is totally up to you. For any emergency, even a simulated emergency, treat it as if it’s a real emergency. If there’s something I don’t want you to press, I’ll cover it with my hand.”
This was a little different from how Justin did it, but I could manage. I was slow and careful with the checklist, my brain in full checkride mode, and so with due meticulousness I started up both engines and powered up the radios. After listening to the weather report (clear and beautiful), I asked Henry how we should depart.
“Oh I don’t know, I’m just a passenger.” OK, so he takes that seriously. “But I’d like to go to the northwest to look at some land I own.”
Hint taken, I asked Chico ground for taxi clearance for a northwest departure. Henry, still pretending to be the naive passenger, asked me how the seat belts work, so I gave him a full passenger safety brief.
“I want you to fly this like a commercial pilot,” Henry said, temporarily stepping out of character. I took his meaning and switched gears in my head, playing the part like I had stripes on my shoulders and a fancy cap.
I taxied the Duchess out to the run-up area, performed a leisurely run-up, and then, with takeoff clearance received, brought the airplane on to the runway and put in the power. Halfway down the runway and already nearing liftoff speed, I suddenly remembered that I had completely neglected to do a takeoff brief. Henry demanded a passenger brief of me — there’s no way he wouldn’t also require a takeoff brief, right? I briefly entertained the idea of aborting the takeoff, but it was too late now, I was already in the air and climbing. Questions raged in my head as my hands continued the charade of calm and smooth flight. Is it required? Is my checkride already over? On his lap Henry had a checklist of all the checkride requirements, but the font was just barely too small for me to make out what was on there. I struggled to act casual while squinting intently at his lap. My effort bore no fruit. I decided to put my fears aside and continue the checkride, accepting whatever fate befalls me.
After turning northwest, Henry gave me some quick advice. “Turn right 20 degrees; you’re getting too close to victor 23.” (You know, advice that any naive passenger would give.) Once we were settled at 5,000 feet, I cleared the area, and asked what maneuver we should do first.
“Well, I told you the maneuvers I want to see. You can show me them in whatever order you want.” Henry was giving me complete control over this checkride. I truly was pilot in command, and of course this is the attitude would expect of someone being tested to a commercial pilot level.
I opted to demonstrate steep turns first, which went flawlessly. Steep turns are always satisfying when done right: If your turns are round, you run into your own wake at the end, creating a satisfying bump right as you roll out. It’s like the airplane patting you on the back for doing a good job.
After the steep turns I demonstrated power-on and power-off stalls (also flawless), and then Henry asked me to do the Vmc demo. This is where it started to unravel. Justin has a particular way of doing the demo: He locks his foot on the rudder, preventing me from deflecting it fully, which causes the airplane to lose control at a higher (less unsafe) airspeed, making recovery safer. Henry, being the naive passenger, did not put his foot on the rudder. I was stumped.
“How do you want me to demo this?”
“Well, it’s up to you.” I kind of fudged it by preventing myself from using full rudder deflection, but the demo didn’t go very well and I had to kind of fake it. Henry had me do it again. The second time it went better but still wasn’t textbook. I wasn’t prepared for doing the demo this way. Henry, however, was at least marginally satisfied, because he checked off the box on his notes and had me move on.
The next step was actual engine failures. Henry cut fuel to the right engine and I responded appropriately, feathering the prop and running the checklists. Once the engine was dead in the air, Henry asked me to restart it. Again referencing the checklist, I restored the flow of fuel, unfeathered the prop, and the engine fired. I was unable to get full power from the engine until I realized I had never returned the mixture control to its normal position. I fixed this problem and the engine sprang to life. Henry seemed content despite that error.
“Let’s go to Corning and do some landings.”
Like Chico, I had never been to Corning before (or any of the airports in this area). This increased my workload, because along with flying the plane and managing the checkride, I was also briefing Corning airport and navigating my way there. Still, as a commercial pilot, I am supposedly well-trained in workload management, a skill I strove to demonstrate as I split my attention between the multiple tasks before me.
During my efforts, Henry suddenly called out, “One of the passengers in the back just lit a cigarette and caught the upholstery on fire.” This I knew was the start of the emergency descent demonstration. All other responsibilities were now on hold; I chopped the power, deployed the landing gear, and shoved the nose into the ground. Henry and I floated up in our seats as the airplane spiraled earthwards. I watched the altimeter unwind and asked Henry when he wanted to recover.
“Oh, you can recover now,” he said, airplane still plummeting. “That was very good.” I smoothly brought the airplane level again, cleaned it up, and resumed normal flight, and continued briefing Corning airport as if nothing had happened. I read the airport notes aloud.
“You have to be careful at Corning,” Henry lectured. “A lot of ultralight pilots there, and none of them have radios.”
Over Corning we were still very high, so I flew circles around the airport while bleeding off altitude, running the descent checklist and announcing my position on the common frequency periodically. Henry asked me to do a short-field landing, and when I had descended to pattern altitude, I entered the traffic pattern and set up for the approach. A few more turns had me lined up on final approach with the gear and flaps down and the landing checklist complete.
Shortly before landing, Henry said, “An ultralight just entered the runway.” At first I thought he was serious, and scanned up and down the pavement looking for it, but quickly realized this was his way of asking me to go around. So I pushed in the power, raised the flaps, and let the airplane climb away. I brought the gear up, performed my climb checklist, and continued around the traffic pattern for another lap, setting up for landing again once back up at altitude.
The second time around he let me complete the short-field landing. A commercial pilot is required to touch down within 200 feet from the start of the runway, which I was able to do, but the next step is to briskly halt the aircraft with maximum safe brake pressure. Every time I pressed the brakes I heard the tires squeal, so I let off. This happened two or three times before I finally said, “There’s something wrong with the brakes.”
“Look at where your power is,” Henry said. I had forgotten to bring the power all the way back to idle after landing, and the brakes were fighting the engines. I was a little exasperated.
“Well that wasn’t the best short-field landing ever,” I said as the airplane used up the remaining length of Corning’s short runway. I immediately regretted saying it, as I know you’re never supposed to admit your mistakes during a checkride. Henry remained stoic and quiet. We taxied back.
“We’ll do a normal takeoff and landing here, then go back to Chico.” With that botched short-field under my belt I was looking for clues that the checkride was a failure, and was struggling to determine if this was one of them, but couldn’t reach any decisions. Henry was still checking off boxes on his list, at least.
I took off and pointed the airplane back at Chico. After I completed the climb checklist, Henry told me to give up the controls for a bit, which I knew meant it was time to put on the hood. I let him fly the airplane while I donned the hood, blocking my view of all but the instruments. When he gave me back the controls, he began to play the part of ATC.
“Duchess 83ER, turn left heading 060, climb and maintain 3,000.”
I read back his instructions as if he really were an air traffic controller. Henry told me to expect the ILS approach. Since I had just flown the ILS into Chico for real that morning, the airplane was already set up for it, so my prep work was low. Shortly before intercepting the final course, Henry simulated a failure of the right engine, and I began struggling with the airplane to maintain heading and altitude.
I turned onto the final approach course and flew the needles down towards the runway. My control was sloppy, and I drifted both left and right of course as I struggled to maintain control against the asymmetric thrust. At about 1,000 feet, we suddenly lost reception of the ILS, and after 10 seconds of flying blind, Henry finally told me to go missed. I did, and he vectored me back onto the final approach course for another attempt. This time the ILS didn’t fail me, but my control was no better. As we got closer to the airport the effect of my errors magnified, until my approach was unstable. I fixated on the heading indicator in an attempt to fix it, and the resulting neglect of my altitude caused me to drift way too low, creating a full-scale glideslope deflection upward. Henry had me take off the hood.
There was the runway in front of me, in front of clear blue skies. I was noticeably far too low on the approach, and too far to the left. I corrected visually and landed the airplane with one engine still in the simulated-failed setting. I began to worry about the state of my checkride again. I noticed Henry had stopped checking boxes on his notes and had turned the pages over in his lap.
After I stopped the plane, Henry started talking immediately. “I can’t accept that ILS approach.” (Yep, I failed.) “I had you take off the hood because I got worried; we got way too low.” (Listen and nod Tim; don’t let your emotions overtake you.) “The rest of it was OK, but you’re going to have to do that again.” (Keep breathing.)
I’ve failed a checkride before. I’m very familiar with the resulting feelings. Knowing and recognizing them as they came over me helped me deal with them. I thought a lot on what Justin’s reaction would be. Henry continued.
“I’m willing to do a same-day re-test, if you and Justin want to work on that today.”
This perked my ears. Henry was offering to give me a second chance. All I had to do was go up once with Justin, demonstrate to him that I can fly the approach with one engine, and then do it again with Henry. I could still go home with my certificate.
Hot in my mind, however, was the experience of failing my private, and the resulting lesson I got on complacency. In particular, a person’s inability to recognize when they are fatigued and frustrated if they don’t wish to believe that they are. I did not want a repeat of that day, where I made critical mistakes while completely oblivious to my total exhaustion.
I reflected carefully on my mental and physical state. I was enervated, and there were a lot of thoughts and emotions running through me. I wasn’t sure if my performance would be any better for the rest of today. It was 3:30 PM and at some point the clouds would be coming back in. I decided to see how Justin felt about it.
Henry went to his office to print my Notice of Disapproval, and I preemptively texted Justin so he could hear the news from me rather than Henry. I told him about the offer. “Let’s do it” was his three-word reply.
Every examiner I’ve met has told me that they want me to pass, “It’s more paperwork when you fail anyway,” like it’s some shared quip in the pilot examiner lexicon. This time, the additional paperwork wrought by my failure gave me an opportunity to collect myself, relax, and charge my dying iPad. At this point I’d flown for hours, all included, and there was a lot more ahead of me.
Having skipped breakfast and lunch, I asked Justin if there’s anywhere we could go eat, and he simply laughed. The lack of food got added to my mental list of things that might adversely affect my performance. Henry did point me to a water cooler though, and it wasn’t until I quaffed cup after cup of water that I realized how dehydrated I was. The copious volume I drank brought on a second wind, where my mind cleared and my body loosened up. I began to feel more ready for round two.
Once the paperwork was complete, Henry explained again why I failed, and also gave me flak for the botched short-field landing. “You need to fly it like a commercial pilot. You taxi too fast. Be smooth and slow on the controls.” (He started to sound a lot like Rodrigo.)
Henry also took issue with my use of the landing gear during single-engine approaches. “Part of the problem was you dropped the gear way too late. This destabilized your approach at a crucial moment.” I had been heeding Justin’s advice, which was to leave the gear up as long as possible during a single-engine emergency, but both Justin and Henry now agreed I should change my procedure.
Henry ended with general praise for my other skill areas, and then I left him and Justin alone to gossip about me while I preflighted again.
Justin met me out at the plane. I tried to engage him in conversation about my experience but he seemed more aloof and tight-lipped than usual. This disconcerted me. Worried about my fatigue and the impending evening clouds, I told him I’d expedite the departure a bit. He didn’t mind. I started up the plane more from memory than the checklists, and quickly brought it to runway 13 for the takeoff.
Immediately after takeoff Justin had me put on the hood, and started giving me vectors for — once again — the ILS at runway 13. The plane was of course already configured from the last three times, so it didn’t take long for me to get back established inbound. Justin simulated a failure of an engine and I maintained control while flying the needles down to the runway. My performance, in stark contrast to the previous attempt, was flawless. The needles barely budged as I maintained perfect heading and altitude control all the way down the chute. Justin had a few tips here and there but it was obvious that I knew how to do it, and I had just had a bad day.
I landed effortlessly, taxied back, and shut down, clocking only an additional 0.4 hours on the Hobbs total. It was now getting close to 5 PM: The sky was slowly reddening, clouds were creeping up on us, and the midday rush of the freight planes was starting to taper off.
Justin took me back to Henry’s office and we went through the pre-exam rigamarole again. Justin once again signed an endorsement proclaiming me ready for the checkride, and I once again submitted an application to the FAA, which Henry once again reviewed and signed. While Henry did this on his old PC, I took the time to fix his Mac, which he once had such high hopes for, before it had fallen into disrepair. I demonstrated how I fixed some of the more outstanding issues, and he seemed to appreciate my help.
I had left my iPad to charge, as it was both a mandatory part of my flight equipment, and perilously low on battery. Even the 15 minute spurts of power I had given it between flights were welcome.
Once the chores were out of the way, I fetched my iPad, and Henry and I walked outside into the sunset to board the airplane once again. I asked if he needed the safety brief, and he thankfully said no, but I did still use the checklists diligently when starting the plane. I paid close attention to taxiing “like a commercial pilot,” taking it very slow and holding the line precisely.
The flight with Henry went exactly as it did with Justin. After takeoff, Henry had me put the hood on, which I did, and he simply vectored me around in a big circle back onto — you guessed it — the ILS. I was starting to feel like I could do this particular approach in my sleep. Henry simulated an engine failure, and I kept the airplane under control while continuing to fly the approach.
Per Henry’s advice I got the gear down early, and worked carefully to keep the airplane under control. The approach I had just flown with Justin remains the seminal example of aeronautical perfection, but this one was shaping up fairly nicely too. The needles wavered a bit, but nothing ever got too terribly out of control. At 400 feet, Henry had me remove the hood, and the runway was right where I expected it. The runway lights were on amid the fading sunlight.
“Congratulations,” Henry said once I finished my shutdown checklist. He shook my hand. I thanked him for his advice and time, and he took me to his office to print the temporary certificate. I breathed an enormous sigh of relief, and allowed myself, for the first time that day, to finally believe a little bit that I wasn’t a horrible pilot.
Justin was waiting for me with a Coke and candy bar, which was the closest he could come to finding a meal for me. I thanked him and hoped the sugar would keep me going, as I still had to fly home in the dark as well. Justin’s laconic nature had vanished too; I noticed it was no longer awkward to talk to him.
Henry presented me with my new temporary certificate, took a second check from me, and wished me a good flight home. Justin and I hopped into the Duchess for what was hopefully the final time that day. With the light dwindling to a flicker, Justin wondered aloud of the Duchess’s cabin lights worked. I flipped on the battery and he fiddled with the switches. They were dim, but they seemed to work. Nonetheless, I retrieved the flashlight from my bag, just in case.
We took off into the last remaining twilight, and the plane climbed easily in the cool, still air to 7,500 feet. Thick clouds were rolling in over most the valley now, and cities were smeared orange glows pushing up through their surface. Justin and I watched the weather progress back in the Bay Area, trying to determine if we’d be able to get in visual, or have to shoot another approach. The clouds continued to build in the Bay Area but left San Carlos Airport alone for now.
The flight home was slow and easy, with neither of us talking very much, but casually observing dusk fading inevitably into dark night. It got very cold up in the cabin, so Justin and I fiddled with the combustion heater controls until we were able to make it more comfortable. I was grateful for the opportunity to practice operation of the heater, something I had studied in detail in preparation for the oral but never actually used. About 30 miles out (though you wouldn’t know it from the clouds) and still at 7,500 feet, I checked in with NorCal, who had me begin my descent for San Carlos.
Since we were flying directly opposite Oakland Interational’s northbound traffic, NorCal was eager to get me underneath them, so they said, “Maximum descent rate to 2,000 feet.” So, I pushed the nose down and the airspeed (and noise level) increased as we dove earthward. Airspeed topped out at 180 knots — the fastest I’ve ever flown a plane — and the wind noise in the cabin made understanding one another almost impossible. At 2,000 feet we were over Oakland Airport and could finally start slowing down for landing. We crossed the Bay to San Carlos, where we were given landing instructions. The clouds had obscured most of the Bay but the route to the airport was thankfully clear. We crossed under the final approach path for SFO, clearly marked by the interminable line of landing lights out to infinity. That airport never sleeps.
After crossing under the path of the airliners, I brought the plane down for a rocky landing at San Carlos — the Duchess has weak landing lights and it was very difficult for me to judge my height above the runway in the pitch dark.
Collecting my things from the airplane took some time as all those many flights had left them strewn about. “Did you move in to the airplane?” Justin cracked. After securing the plane, we walked back to the clubhouse. I had my face buried in my phone and was working on crafting the perfect Facebook announcement, so much so that I didn’t even notice the airplane wing I walked into at full speed. It hit me square on the forehead, creating a thundering crack, so that Justin surely turned around to see my blunder. I made fun of myself (you gotta just own it) and put my phone away temporarily.
At the clubhouse I finished up my logbook, noting that I only had 1.2 hours to go before reaching 500 hours, which is the first major milestone in any pilot’s career. I considered the feasibility of throwing some kind of 500-hour party and inviting my friends, but I doubt anyone would be interested in that. I paid Justin for his time, ate some cold pizza someone had left in the break room, and set off for home in the dark.
I am flustered, both from victory and defeat. Many people have told me I am a good — even a great — pilot … and not just my passengers; instructors and professionals too. But I weigh this against the shadow of the knowledge that I have now failed two checkrides. Am I really as good as people say I am? Maybe I’m just bad at checkrides?
I struggled to keep my thoughts positive — I did pass, after all, and I am now a commercial multi-engine instrument pilot. The real fun has just begun, however. The Duchess was only ever a stepping stone. Next week I start training on the Seneca, which is a lot more airplane than I’ve ever flown. I can’t wait.
