Check and Solo

I had my final instrument checkride on Monday. It was fairly straightforward and everything went well. We flew down to the Valley for some McAlister's. I flew a circling approach, vectors to an ILS, and a VOR procedure turn. We finished up with vectors to an ILS back at the homefield. That's a weight off the shoulders!

Yesterday's airnav solo went alright as well. I didn't get to go out and back, because my CP wasn't flying the same sortie. He was already syllabus complete, so I just flew a big circle up to San Antonio, over to Houston and back down the coast for vectors to an ILS final for a full stop. Still, it was a solo with 2.2 hours of PIC (Pilot-in-command) time!

I'm flying an airnav solo today as CP. Should be fun.

End of Block

Happy Easter everyone! I flew my last review stage sortie on Friday. It wasn't really as bad as I thought it would be. My first and third rides were more difficult. It was on par with my second review stage flight. I flew a PAR to start things off. Everything went fine, but I got an engine malfunction at the end. I decided I was about to land, so I wasn't going to shut it down, but it turned into a fire, so I had to shut it down anyway. I misjudged the time I had on final. I should have just shut it down when I got the first indications, but I learned something there. I flew down to the valley and did a fix-to-fix to an arcing circling approach. That went single engine, but it was fine. I landed it. My ILS went to a localizer and I had to wave it off because of simulated weather. Then my IP played "bad copilot" and tried to have me land on the wrong runway during a visual approach. I caught it all and ended up with a solid end of block ride. Checkride tomorrow after a restful weekend.

San Antonio

Today I had my second review stage ride. It wasn't too bad, but I kept shooting myself in the foot. I haven't flown since last Thursday. I sat SDO on Friday, answering the phone and talking on the radio tracking the flights in the morning. We got canceled yesterday, so today was the first flight of the week for me. I flew a partial-panel (no heading or attitude indicator) ASR approach to start things off, then flew over to Beeville for a GPS approach and circling maneuver to the opposite runway. Those both had two bad moments in them, but were otherwise ok. On the ASR I got really slow at one point, and on the GPS I started descending at an intermediate fix I confused for the final approach fix. I'll have to fly another GPS approach to make up for that, but the SSE circling and missed approach went well. I flew the ILS up at Lackland AFB in San Antonio following that approach.

On the way back I wasn't flying, but the IP thought he had unsafe gear up indications, so we went through the checklist and did a low approach for the tower to check the gear and everything. Everything was fine, but when we got on the ground, we asked why he had called for the gear EP checklist and he couldn't really say. It was a lesson in CRM. He'd had a few gear issues in the past and thought he heard a weird noise, but when he called the gear on the climb checklist he thought he might have actually been looking for gear lights when they were actually supposed to be out. We thought he'd seen something we hadn't but never called him on it. Just a good lesson in assertiveness and speaking up when something doesn't look right. We did the safe thing though.

Not the best day for me, but not the worst either. Early flight tomorrow.