Subtle changes

I’m trying hard to get into the mindset that I’ll need for my flight test, the odd situation whereby even though I’m the student and the least experienced person in the plane; technically I log the time as Pilot in Command.

In my own subtle way I’m trying to treat Bob as an examiner rather than an instructor where I can.

Sometimes it’s easy. I verbalise all my taxiing and preflight checks stuff to explain what I’m doing. Mostly to demonstrate that I’m doing stuff for a reason, like wandering off the taxi line to avoid the plethora of potholes as opposed to not being able to drive straight.

Other times it is a little more tricky. I’m failing on the “passenger briefing” section at the moment because it feels all kind of wrong to point out the exits to a guy who knows the plane better than me and to tell uber-fit Bob that he can’t smoke in the plane. 

In other situations I’m trying (not always successfully) not to rely on Bob for guidance. Again sometimes it works…

I don’t know if Bob was deliberately trying to catch me out but I was at the practice area, having emerged from a good 10 minutes under the hood. “Ok, set us up for slow flight please” he requests.

I take a moment, I’m not sure if this was done on purpose but he’s had me crawl here under the hood, still at 2500ft.

“I’d be happy to once I’ve climbed a little.” I reply, knowing that none of the airwork should be attempted unless I can recover from it at least 2000ft AGL. I’m slightly smug that Bob hasn’t caught me out, and continue with my HASEL check.

The quality of my steep turns wipes the smugness from my face fairly quickly.

....Sometimes it’s a bit more problematic. I spend a good few seconds of mental energy trying to figure out exactly what Bob is asking me to do under the hood. It doesn’t seem to make sense. I parrot back his instructions to him as I usually do, hoping that he’ll realise that something is not quite right or at least he’ll clarify what he wants.

Nope, I’m still confused. I know that flight test instrument work consists of 2 minutes straight and level, then a 180 degree turn and then another 2 minutes straight and level, but Bob’s asking me to maintain a heading that’s 180 degrees behind me, does he want me to turn or not?

Eventually we figure out that he’s misread the heading bug that’s still set at the heading of the ground winds (I do this to remind me of my wind taxiing inputs), but it does illustrate that I’ve got to find a way of politely asking an examiner to clarify his intent. I’ll work on that.

My hope of projecting a cool, professional façade disintegrates with the slow flight. Yet again the only thing whining louder than the stall horn is me. That really does require some attention.

I redeem myself slightly on the way back, ATC give me a choice of runways and I’ve picked without even remembering that Bob might have an opinion on our options. It only occurs to me briefly as the words “we’ll take 26 please” pop out of my mouth.

I think I’m slowly getting there. My goal for next lesson is to get through the slow flight and stalls without kicking up a fuss. No examiner is going to pass someone who pleads “I hate this, please don’t make me do it.” Every time the stall horn kicks in.