Flying Mickey


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PRIVATE PILOT - CHECKRIDE! Written: 09 SEPTEMBER 2003
2 months and 1 day after the school started, or 1 month and 29 days after my first flight here at NAIA, the day had come for me to complete my first checkride. The distance between the different milestones in my education has decreased continuously the last couple of months, though it seems like it's going to be quiet for a while now. For those of you who are not familiar with the expression checkride, it can be compared to the practical test you preform to get your drivers licence. I found out some time last week that I was supposed to have the checkride today with Fred, also knows as Fast Finger Freddy (more about that later), and I got a cross country flight to plan. It was a bit hectic last night, cause it's easy to get the feeling that there's something I've forgotten and should have read about. I showed up at school 0700 to print out the lastest weather and do the final planning. The winds I used last night for my planning had changed completly, but since they were still valid I continued my planning with the old winds (it only resulted in a higher ground speed). At 0800 the oral exam started which me and Kristian had together with Fred. Every other question for one hour. Not a big problem really, though he had some tricky questions (ex. How much does the paint on the airplane weigh?), and some silly questions (ex. If you take your mother/sister/girlfriend up flying, what will she most likely suffer from: Hyperventilation or Hypoxia?). Kristan and me used the rock-paper-sissors method to figure out who got to go first, and I won. A little before 1000 we took off and staret the planned cross country. After 15 minutes the cloudcoverage got quite low, so I diverted back to Conway.	Satisfied with my temporary certificate. It's by the way shirt and tie style when doing a checkride! My temporary certificate. The premanent one will be in the mail soon!

He said he wanted so see some stalls, so I went to practicearea Bravo and preformed the stalls to the best of my knowledge. Then I did steep turns and simulated instrument with "the hood" (prevents you from seeing outside). First a little normal flying under the hood before Fred took control of the airplane to put it in unusual attitudes (while I had my eyes closed) which I had to recover from. We did this 4 times before he told me to head back to Conway. This is where Fast Finger comes into the picture. He likes to mess around with the Directional Gyro (which works as a compass, only without the compass errors) trying to get me lost. He also messed around with my mixture control on the way back and the radio on the way out. When we got back to Conway he pulled my throttle and said: "Ooops, you lost your engine". I just pulled out my emergency checklist and prepared for an emergency landing, which I did without any problems. Then I was told to do a soft field touch and go and a normal landing. And that was it... 1,3 hours in the air. I asked him how he think I did and he told me I'd passed, so I was happy! We went back into the briefing room where he wrote out a temporary certificate and handed it to me. Mikkel is now officially a PILOT!