The recheck was Saturday afternoon. It was a short flight, only 1.0. It was exactly as he said it would be. We went down to Coolidge, shot the approach single engine, I feathered it perfectly and we headed back for Gateway.

I was pretty relieved to get the ride over with. As I started to drive home, I realized I could fly an airplane without looking out the window. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I mean you obviously need to look for traffic, but if I were flying through clouds, at night, I could get to where I want to go. How cool is that?

Today I went in and started my CRM training so I can begin cross-countries on Wednesday. That should be exciting.

Here’s how it all went down.

300am.
Alarm goes off.

415am
Arrive at school. Make sure everything is in order, charts are updated, etc.

500am
Oral begins. The IACRA portion was pretty easy and over with in about 15 minutes. We sat back and discussed our aviation experiences for a bit and I started to get comfortable. Soon enough he started asking me questions related to instrument flying, weather, airplane systems, etc. Nothing too difficult.

Then I pulled out my flight plan which was to Las Vegas-McCarran. I walked him through the flight plan. From the departure procedure to arrival. He asked me a couple of questions about MEAs and MRAs and what the differences were.

Then we moved onto some scenario based questions. Mainly because he was asking me FARS and I didn’t have them memorized, but I knew how to follow them in the situation. For example, what happens if you receive your clearance, take off and lose comms. I explained what to do and he was happy because he prefers pilots who know what to do when things get crappy versus being able to recite acronyms.

The oral lasted for 3 hours, but it wasn’t all a test. We talked quite a bit so all in all I would say it was probably an hour and a half of oral exam.

800am
I head out to preflight the airplane. The weather was perfect so no concerns there. After all was said and done we took off towards the east. He had me intercept and track a radial. Then arc 15 DME from the VOR. Once we got to a certain radial he cleared me direct for a GPS approach to Coolidge. I entered the hold and as I turned back inbound to the fix, he failed my engine. And this is where it all went to crap. I tried to blast through the checklist by memory. In all of my infinite wisdom, I feathered the wrong engine. I realized it as I was half way down the gear lever but it was too late. He offered me the opportunity to discontinue but said he hoped I would continue because I was flying really well.
I wanted to keep going to he cleared me for the VOR approach to Casa Grande. He said to enter the hold and after he cleared me inbound I would go partial panel. I went missed and he cleared me for the ILS back to Gateway. I was about 10 miles out when approach had me break off and turn to the west because of KC-135s doing touch and gos. So we circled for a bit and then they re-cleared us. I flew the approach perfectly and made a soft landing on the 1000 foot markers.

1000am
We went back inside and talked with my instructor. He said overall, I was stellar. My oral was very good, the VOR approach was “meticulous,” and my ILS was also great. He said he was impressed with my situational awareness and how I stayed miles ahead of the airplane, but he couldn’t let my, brain fart as he called it, pass.

I am pretty pissed and crapped out. Not at the DE, but at myself. I screwed something up that was incredibly basic yet very serious. And I think what makes me even more upset is aside from that my flying was probably the best yet. I do the recheck either on Friday or Saturday so we shall see how that goes.

I am still fighting the head cold I picked up in Vegas. I’m all hopped up on Vitamin C which is helping a bit. I also spent the week reviewing for my instrument checkride. My instructor and I went up today and I flew really well. Only a couple of small things to correct for. Hopefully I will do well tomorrow.

After taking a look at ticket prices it appears I will be hanging around Phoenix for the 3 days we have off. I may try and non-rev home but loads are always full.

It was very beneficial to meet other career-minded pilots as well as having a total blast in Vegas. I took pictures and video and will post them over the next few days.

And now back to racing to get things done since I am leaving for NJC on Sunday morning.

Other than that this week was boring. Sim, sim, and more sim with about 4 hours of ground school afterwards. I have to hand it to my instructor, a big chunk of this program is self-study. A small number of instructors come in; hit the sim with their student; assign homework and send them home to study. But RB has been awesome about going through everything with us and then sending us home to study.

It makes the days longer. We start around 7am and don’t finish up until 6pm or so. But I think it is well worth it.

On Saturday we flew out to Long Beach, CA. I had such a good trip. We shot approaches at Coolidge and Casa Grande then aimed LGB. The flight out was uneventful. RB and I grabbed the keys to the crew car and went in search of food (and Amp for him). We ended up at this Philly Cheesesteak place on Long Beach Blvd. It was pretty interesting because it was a combination Cheesteak, Deli, and Mexican place. Yet they had this really loud indian DVD playing with Indian music on it. The two of us looked at each other and knew we would regret eating here in a few hours but we were so hungry it didn’t matter.

After dinner, we fueled and filed. At about 800AGL we started getting a vibration in the #1 engine. That vibration turned into an issue with the prop governor no holding an RPM setting. So it would spool up about 200RPM, then down, then back up. Which causes the airplane to yaw back and forth (very annoying). I mentioned that maybe we had carb ice. As my instructor pulled out the POH I worked on the cruise checklist. When I got to the #2 electric fuel pump, it went past the red line indicating no fuel pressure. I never flipped a switch back so fast in my entire life. At this point it was clear something was up. So we threw on the carb heat and sure enough, fuel pressure started coming back and the #1 stopped vibrating.

The whole situation made me a bit nervous. And I would be lying if I said I hadn’t introduced the idea of diverting to Riverside for the night. But I am so glad it happened since I know what to do in carb icing conditions.

I took some pictures and will try to post them soon.

This week has been pretty interesting. Monday I passed my multi-engine checkride. My pairing partner had his on Wednesday. We dove right into the instrument stuff without wasting anytime. The whole drinking water from a firehose metaphor applies here.

Nevertheless, I have a great instructor and my pairing partner is pretty cool too. We went through the private program together.

Well until next week…

My instructor, pairing buddy and I went out to Joe’s Farm Grill for lunch to celebrate.  Now onto the instrument phase.