Chicago Aviation

One week after my discontinued checkride, I was able to resume.

This time, I was able to get to the airport with time to practice. The weather was quite good with winds from 06 - 10 knots and clounds scattered at 3,500. The down side to this was that there were quite a few planes out.

Before leaving lansing, I declared my intentions of maneuvering over cedar lake approx 10 miles south of the field. While flying past Bult field, I switched to their CTAF and, again, announced that I was maneuvering over cedar lake. While flying down to cedar lake, I saw two planes within a few miles, so I figured I would error on the side of too much communication opposed to not enough. Cedar lake is approx 10 NM directly east of Bult, so I wanted them to be aware of me as well.

That turned out to be a good call because once I switched to Bult's CTAF, I heard someone point out that there was a plane over cedar lake. I then stayed on that frequency to make sure that I wasn't going to interfere with anyone on a long final or taking a straight out departure from the airport.

While over the lake, I practiced my steep turns, which I have been considering my weakest maneuver. I pulled them off quite well. I was able to catch myself slipping immediately and correct quickly. This certainly was due to my instructor's help on maintaining specific tolerances and not allowing myself to become complacent with close-enough.

While in the middle of one of my turns, I noticed another plane about 500 - 1000 ft below me and probably no more than one to 3/4 miles away. Even with clearing turns, it turns out that you can never assume you're alone up there.

The next maneuver I wanted to practice was minimum controllable airspeed. This was something that I really hadn't put more than 10 minutes in over the last year. So, perhaps because I was most concerned about steep turns, I forgot to work on some of the other maneuvers. I reduced airspeed, added full flaps (when appropriate), and kept pitching up until I approached 40 knots. At this point, I felt the ailerons mush and held control with the rudders. It took some power and constant tweaking, but I was able to hold tolerances here was well.

At this point, I was ready to head over to La Porte for the test.

I turned north from cedar lake to re-establish the route I prepared from KIGQ to KPPO. The visibility was much, much, much better than last week, but I didn't want to complicate anything by heading to La Porte from a different starting point than I originally expected.

While heading north, I noticed another cessna making a slow, wide left turn in front of me. They started at my 10 o'clock and were slowly listing across my path. I couldn't tell if they were heading to Griffith / Merrillville (05C) or if they were practicing or whatnot, but I wanted to keep them in my view if possible. Also, I scanned the frequencies for Lansing and Bult and Merrillville for any traffic. I reported my location and intentions on both frequencies before I flew over Merrillville. The plane I was tracking seemed to descend and continue its left turn (taking it back northwest), so I continued on my way.

At this point, I was clear of Gary's airspace so I tuned in South Bend approach. I could hear communication to and from SBA, but I couldn't get them to respond to me. So, I wasn't able to pick up Flight Following to La Porte. I did try three or four times, each about one minute apart, but I took the hint and went wanting. I did hear some traffic in my area and heard SBA advise them of my location, so I had that going for me.

I saw the La Porte lakes well in advance and still had plenty of time. I called my ten mile traffic advisory to La Porte and said that I'd be coming in for some touch-and-goes. My first landing was a bit high, but nothing that would be considered "bad", in my opinion. I went for another lap and practiced a soft landing. No problems there. I will say that most of my soft landings end up being pretty close to standard landings, but I think they're good enough. Another lap, then a no-flap landing. One more lap, and a short field landing, this is the one I'm most concerned about as the speed is a bit less than usual, and there's less tolerance to the landing point. But, I was able to make it happen... so, I taxied to the apron, departed, and went inside to start the test.

Continuing where I left off...

After reviewing the ADs, 100 hour inspection (which was done during the preceding week), and updated annual (done at the same time as the 100 hour), we were ready to head out. There was some time where the DFE was trying to make sense of some of the notes in the mechanic's log, but luckily everything worked out. We then reviewed my updated solo endorsement & the written-review endorsement which was missing last time. All good, so we were off.

Getting into the air...

We both went out to the airplane and as I did another full preflight, the DFE reviewed the AROW documents again. The preflight was probably unnecessary as I just preflighted and flown within the last thirty minutes and we already did the checkride preflight last week, but I wanted to be ultra-thorough.

I got the AWOS report from the airport, listened and looked for active traffic, and lastly checked the windsock to find the best runway to depart. The windsock differed from the AWOS and I decided to listen to what the sock was telling me. I believe this was a proper decision as the DFE noted that I shouldn't pay that much attention to what AWOS was reporting.. This was probably because it still takes me two or three times to get all of the pertinent information. Instead of writing the info down, then thinking about it, I find myself thinking about each and every detail of the AWOS report as I hear it.. that makes me miss some things, therefore I have to listen again and again... But, after telling the DFE that I take into account multiple variables to determine the best runway, I believe I satisfied him.

I was a bit tense at this point. I don't know how I came off or appeared, as I believe I don't really shut-down or outwardly panic in these types of situations, but I was doing my best to be as consistent and thorough as possible. I also focused on vocalizing everything I was thinking while I was taxing. This turned out to be a bit tricker than I thought as there are a lot of disassociated things going on at once. For example, while taxing to runway 20, I talked about the wind and holding correct controls, stopping before the intersecting runway, making the radio call to cross that runway, checking to see if the wind changed on me, looking for left and right pattern traffic, making sure the instruments in the plane read nominal. And, the entire time I wanted to make sure that I was moving my head around to let the DFE know that I was situationally aware outside and inside the plane. All the time, also, trying to make sure that my talking didn't get me into trouble by saying something that would hurt me and my talking didn't make it appear that I wasn't paying attention to the basic requirements of controlling the plane.

After my runup, I asked what type of takeoff he would like to see. I was told to preform a short-field take-off. I configured the plane as needed, made my radio call, set my VORs for my first checkpoint. I almost forgot this step, as I didn't think out far enough to realize that I was supposed to be departing on my scenario trip. I was too focused on figuring out what type of take-off I would be performing instead of taking the entire test into account.

While climbing out, I wanted to ensure my airspeed was pegged to Vy. On this day, it was quite hot and humid. This caused some thermals and therefore turbulence on my climb out. I was still talking a lot at this point and I noticed that the airspeed kept dipping down to 70 and perhaps below. I was trying to hold 75 knots or higher, and I was afraid of breaking my tolerances right away so I was talking about how I had to keep changing the attitude to change the picture to compensate for the fluctuation in wind. Turns out this was not only incorrect, but notably so. I noticed something about how he questioned what I said, and I took that as a note to stop rambling. I surely didn't want to say anything else that would jeopardize the checkride.


After reaching about 300 ft below pattern altitude, I turned on course for my first checkpoint. I was considering calling ATC at this point for flight following, but I decided to focus on making my first checkpoint. My first checkpoint was Starke County (KOXI) airport. I wasn't to fly over it, but I was expecting to see it off my right hand side. I had a few things causing me issue here:


1. While scanning the instruments, I noticed that I was being blown east by the wind even though I was holding my correct heading. The reported winds aloft were not matching actual. They were actually off about 180 degrees. This had me off course to the east. Not by much, but enough to cause me some test-anxiety.


2. There was some haze in the air so I couldn't see very far. I could see well enough, but still an issue for me since I didn't know *exactly* where the airport was.


3. This airport is actually quite small & I've only flown into it twice, so I really wasn't sure what the airport would look like from my vantage.


So, due to all of these things, I figured that I'd missed my checkpoint. I was not liking my situation at this point... I could see my DFE looking at a fixed point off the right wing.. I had a feeling that he saw OXI, but I just couldn't see it. I believed that I saw him continue to look off to that same point; as I continued southwest, he would keep looking further and further behind me... once he started looking to the three o'clock position, I checked my clock and it was just past the time where I should be passing OXI...


This was when I decided to tell him that I believe I'm at my first checkpoint & I can't visually find it. I tell him that it could be just a bad checkpoint, so I'm going to find alternates. I found the intersection of two roads and found some power lines & train tracks to figure out fairly precisely where I was situated. He didn't respond one way or another and I continued on my way.


In the distance, I could see some lakes. I knew that I was to fly between two sizable lakes, the smaller being Bass Lake to my west and then another lake with an adjacent city. I wasn't 100% about my location due to missing my previous checkpoint, but I was fairly sure that I was east of my expected location.


At this point, the DFE asked me what my exact location was on the map. I pointed to what I thought was my location.


One way or another, we went to the next phase of the test.


We started by turning to a heading of 270 then we started with the MCA maneuver. I had just practiced these before heading over, so I thought I could handle them without issue. But, the extra few pounds in the plane made a difference. I smoothly reduced power, added flaps, increased my attitude in order to hold altitude. At the appropriate airspeed, I increased power to maintain this picture. However, regardless of power, I kept losing altitude. I ended up having to use full power to hold my altitude I just barely  held my -100 tolerance, but I did it. I could have used 20 deg flaps instead of full in order to help out..

We did the standard power-off stall after the MCA, then we did a power-on stall. pretty standard stuff there.

After this, we did some unusual attitudes, which were quite straightforward.

We went directly into some instrument procedures while under the hood. Tracking to a VOR, turns, ascents, descents, and the standard maneuvers were all tested.

After the hood work, I was asked to take off the hood and determine a path back to the airport. I was able to use the landmarks below me to get an initial fix on my location. There were intersecting railroads with power lines. I was able to determine a path back using these landmarks.

I made my approach with all the necessary calls to the airport. Then we did some landings. I can say that I hit each of the soft & short landings best I ever had. I was told to stop short of the runway intersection for the short landing. I was able to do that w/o issue. For the soft landing, I was able to keep the nose wheel off the ground for a good amount of the rollout. I believe it went quite well.

After the last landing, I was told to taxi back and park at the ramp.

I passed.