Skills Test Part One

So here's how it happened.

The day before the test I met Martin, the examiner, for a briefing. As you might expect from the CFI, he was testing me already and it was a bit of an eye opener. There's always one level of detail further to be learned and appreciated and it showed that I'd stopped a level too soon. Martin also talked me through how he'd run the test and what I'd be expected to do. I made notes for compilation into a 'test checklist' later. How dull am I?

At the briefing we discussed whether the test would be in one or two seperate flights and decided that the latter was best. In fact it was still a possibility that I could do the handling test in the afternoon. Perhaps that would have been okay, but at the time it felt just a bit rushed. Work commitments were giving me ear ache, the weather was typically grey and my mind was set towards dull bookwork.

It also allowed me to get a new chart (they expire every year around about April) and get the PA28 handbook. This is a fascinating book that should really be seralised in a tabloid newspaper for the masses. How everyone lives without knowing the oil types used in a PA28 is beyond me. What are we teaching our kids these days?

So, that evening was spent with my nose in books and charts, before compiling my 'test checklist' into a MS Word document I could tick off as I went through. Now that's what I call an entertaining night in. To keep a little perspective I spent some time with Ellie whilst Jo went to play netball. That probably put preparation back a couple of hours and resulted in a late bedtime, but time away from the book work might have helped it all sink in a little. At this stage I'd spent all Tuesday and Wednesday night working on skills test related stuff.

On the day the weather looked great for flying - clouds were mainly FEW034 (that means 1/8 to 2/8 cloud cover at 3,400ft) so blue sky was the main order of the day, with a bit of haze at low altitudes. Martin had set two routes, one north and one south so as to ensure that if the weather was less than ideal in one direction we could still get the navigation section done. Given the weather, I chose to go south; the northern route had high altitude land over the southern lakes and given the cloud base up there the southern route looked safer, though the northern route was probably more scenic. The planning had taken absolutely ages; I'd been meticulous with both the charts and the calculations. When Martin spotted some, um, areas for improvement, it felt far from good, but the point of the PPL skills test isn't just to fail on any error but to create a safer pilot. In fact, it's potentially the last opportunity for two years for further tuition and you could argue the lessons learned at this stage stay with you better than any others.

So, paper work done and checked, it was time to get up in the air. I'd managed to turn up slightly late, but that faux pas had allowed Martin to fill the aircraft up so G-LACA was ready to go. Now, Charlie Alpha and I have never really got on. We had a slight disagreement around cross wind landings last year, then on a couple of navigation exercises we fell out big time over the amount of left rudder trim needed. I know; minor spats (pun not intended). However, I'd decided to let it go and devote myself to flying the aircraft well - if Frances, Martin and all the other instructors hadn't fallen out with Charlie Alpha, the fault was clearly mine and not the aircraft.

The preflight checks passed off without hitch, apart from a slight embarassment around me losing my fuel tester. There were a couple of good tips from Martin about tapping the propeller (a cracked bell never rings) and then I had Martin squat on the wing root while I did my very best air hostess impression. "The exit is here...and that's it." Then Martin jumped in and I went through the internal checks, which were a bit slower than usual as I'd become used to G-ISHA's Garmin system. Everything you do on test you have to call out, so it feels a bit wierd, though I've been doing that quite a lot on training too. Goodness knows what passengers will make of it.

My radio call into Barton was good, though I wished I'd picked up the latest information before I'd made it - would have been that bit more professional. Calling out checks all the way, we got off, heading for Warrington. Like a complete idiot, I managed to dial in the wrong transponder code, but the first leg timing looked good. Down through the low level corridor between Manchester and Liverpool, my altitude control was good and you know what, the track was good too. It's a while since I've been down the low level route, so perhaps understandably we were ever so slightly right of track coming out of the low level corridor near Oulton Park, but you know, it was actually going ok. Nice day for it. I managed to triangulate the location of Ashcroft and made my turning on schedule.
"Good job.", said Martin.
I just gulped.
"It's quiet up here today," I commented.
"Roger D."
Cue an unspotted Jetranger whizzing over our heads into controlled airspace. Not that quiet then.

The longest planned leg was down to a disused airfield at Hixton. "At the halfway point give me a revised ETA and a new heading if we're off track". Hmm, ok. One momentary lapse of reason later, I remembered why we draw ten degree fan lines on maps - they allow us to estimate how far off track we are. Eyeballing it, we were five degrees off track. Not too bad. Revising our ETA and heading, this was probably make or break point. Really you have to hit them and we did. On the nose. Looking at the map it was easy to identify the disused airfield using a reservoir, road and the town of Stafford as my key points.
"Large body of water...road...town over there; I think that might be our destination."
"Affirm."
"On target for our ETA, give or take thirty seconds."
"Roger D".

This was going well. Off towards Netherthorpe we went on our new heading. Half way up the route, the first googly; a diversion. Now, I only realised afterwards that Martin had set me up with a golden opportunity to do some VOR tracking - basically it's a radio compass, so you can fly a heading (a radial) and use it to keep on track. Instead I did it the old fashioned way, plotting a course, allowing for wind drift, adjusting heading for magnetic variation and so on. Doh. Thankfully, I'd remembered all the right bits, so it was a pretty good job and we were on track. At the quarter way point I was asked for an ETA and had real trouble adding 25 to 39. You try it while trying to fly - it's a bit like someone asking you to add up while you're trying to play the drums. Spare mental capacity I think they call it.

Following a short diversion around Camphill gliding site just south of Ladybower Reservoir, Martin put me under the hood. This "instrument of torture" means that you can't see out. In fact you can't see anything but the instrument panel. Under the hood, we did rate one turns, VOR interception and tracking, climbing, descending - it felt like hours but was only twenty minutes. Deprived of the view out, which is everything you train for, it's very difficult work to concentrate and trust the instruments. If you don't, then when one day you inadvertently fly into cloud, you probably will die, because you literally don't know which way is up. If this sounds mad, then you have to remember that you could be in a dive but your body could feel like it's flying straight and level. So it's fairly important in avoiding a aeroplane/ground high speed interface.

Back for lunch via an unusual join and a moment to take stock. I'd passed navigation. Half way there. Good grief. In fact, it was a pretty good pass, though the full debrief would follow after the handling test.

Lunch was a very tame tuna sandwich, a mug of tea and a flapjack. Lovely.

The afternoon loomed large though and all the cake in the world wasn't going to disguise it; the handling test.