Putting my flying to the test.

Yep Bob is judging me by flight test standards now. Nothing less will do. Most feedback starts “ the examiner will be looking for …..”

Bob’s being tough, but no tougher than the examiner will be. The idea being, I think, that if I’m consistently performing above the flight test standards then I won’t have any trouble on the big day itself.

Take my instrument flying for example. Something I previously struggled with but am now making great strides with.  My initial 2 minutes in straight and level flight was exactly that, helped a little by the calm air. Next came my 180 degrees turn. Initially a little slow to set up a decent rate of turn, I eventually trusted my flying enough to set up a rate one turn. I rolled out a little too early and had to re correct. Something Bob was quick to point out during our debrief.  Of course despite this I was well within the flight test tolerances which give you a very generous +/- 15 degrees on the heading, I doubt I was more than 5 degrees off what I needed to be.

But he’s right to point this out. I should be aiming for exact figures. Giving myself the biggest buffer zone possible if things do go a little awry.

My second attempt was much better.

All in all for a first attempt at a semi-practice flight test kind of thing, I wasn’t too unhappy with the results.  None of the “areas for improvement” came as a big shock to me. I pretty much know what I need to do. Most of it is just finesse but some of it is a little more fundamental. I still have real issues establishing slow flight. I loathe being on that “cusp of a stall”, to be honest I’d much rather actually stall the plane and that is saying a lot from someone who actively dislikes stalls!

I don’t think I’ll ever really get over that and perhaps a pilot who is wary of stalling the plane is not a bad thing but I still whine louder than the stall horn when I’m in these flight configurations and that is not the image I want to project to an examiner!