August 23rd. Flying skills test. My instructor said I was ready, I was not so sure.
The night before I was all furrowed-brow concentration. Plotting my course, reviewing emergency checklists, replacing headset batteries, gathering up a mountain of paperwork, compulsively checking the weather.
Before turning in I laid out a sea of forms that needed to be completed before heading off to the airfield in the morning. I set the alarm for six, crawled into bed and utterly failed to fall asleep. I’m an insomniac at the best of times and the stomach-tightening anxiety that come before a PPL skills test is hardly a state of mind conducive to relaxing slumber.
I was up before the alarm; immediately checking the Met Office GA weather reports on my iPad. Looking good. Winds from the SW, broken clouds at about 4,000’, 15kt winds aloft. I filled in my pilot’s log (PLOG), calculated my heading, groundspeed and time estimates. With deliberate care I packed up my flight kit, saying aloud what each piece was as I put it away.
“Mass and balance sheet, completed”
“Log book up-to-date”
“Passport for ID”
“Headset batteries checked, noise cancelling checked”
“Diversion sheet completed; divert compass and airspeed ruler in knee-board”
“Stopwatch”
On and on until the table was clear and my bag was stuffed.
I was alone in the house. My partner had gone to Devon to visit her family so there was no one around to offer encouragement or even say “good luck.” I took a look around. When I returned in the evening it would be, as the Greeks said before battle, “with my shield or on it.” I would be a pilot or I would not and if I were not, better to suffer that indignity in isolated silence than try and explain the failure to disappointed eyes.
I donned my jacket, put on my cap, locked the door and was gone.
08:30, Stapelford Flight Centre. The mist was still rising off the grass when my taxi pulled in. We weren’t scheduled to be wheels-up until 11:30 but I am compulsively early, besides, I wanted to do the pre-flight checks and fuelling without feeling rushed.
The receptionist greeted me as I walked in, “Big day today. Here’s Lima Oscar’s tech log, Alan’s not in yet.” I accepted the binder from her and filled in the forms, listing myself as Pilot in Command and Alan, my examiner, as my passenger.
Alan Turner is a Stapelford institution. He’s been with the flight centre almost as long as there’s been a flight centre. He looks and sounds like your retired uncle, a bit wide in the middle with thinning grey hair and a predisposition toward wearing the same shabby ball-cap every day. He is instantly likeable and too easily dismissed as a soft touch. When I found out he was to be my examiner I relaxed a little.
Two-days prior to my skills-test I went to Alan’s office for a briefing. “Allow an hour,” he told me; I only brought a single sheet of paper for notes. Three hours and half a notebook later I walked out feeling unsteady but strangely elated and reminding myself for the millionth time, never to take anyone at face value.
The first hour was all business. He detailed what would be expected of me and in what order. He told me what constitutes passing and failing; warned me of some of the most common, and uncommon errors students make and, reassuringly, said that just because I screwed something up didn’t mean I would fail the whole test.
When he finished with the syllabus he leaned back in his chair and said, “I’m going to be writing a lot when we’re up there, taking a lot of notes. This gets some people rattled. I don’t want you to even think about it. I have to put ticks in boxes and scribble a lot for the CAA. The real thing I am testing you on, the one standard I will hold you to is this, ‘would I send my grandmother up in a plane with you?’”
“Is she still alive?” I asked.
“Nope.” He said and laughed a hearty uncle-type laugh.
I spent the next two-hours being impressed by Alan Turner’s comprehensive knowledge of everything with wings and engines. I also saw that this seemingly mild-mannered man had a distinct edge to him. It came out whenever he was describing particularly moronic stuns pulled by pilots that made them look idiotic, or dead, or both. This is a man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and I knew then and there that any thought I might have had that getting Alan as my examiner meant that I would have an easy time of it was misplaced. He wasn’t going to be looking to see if I could perform the tasks correctly, he was looking to see if I could fly.
With all this in mind I handed the clipboard back to the receptionist, grabbed the keys and walked out to pre-flight my aircraft. As I was going out the door my instructor, Sam, was coming in.
He smiled broadly, stuck out his hand and said, “I’d wish you luck, but you don’t need it.”
“Thanks a bunch!” I said. The truth is, that gave me a massive confidence boost. Sam believed in me and I’d be damned if I was going to let him down. I strode a bit more purposefully out to the airplane.
Pre-flight checks done and Lima-Oscar all filled up, I still had over an hour before we were scheduled to leave. I grabbed some breakfast in the café and waited for Alan to show up.
About ten minutes after I finished eating Alan walks in carrying his kneeboard, a headset and a stack of charts.
“All checked out?” He asked.
“Yep.”
“OK, let’s go.”
At the aircraft I had to do all the checks again for him. He asked me questions as we went around the plane.
“Why do you check the static port?”
“If you lose vacuum pressure in flight what should you do?”
“What’s the purpose of the raised strips along the ailerons?”
“What’s the procedure for an engine fire at start-up?”
I managed to answer everything but the strips along the ailerons question. I had never noticed them before. Alan used it as a teachable moment and told me about counterweights to prevent instrument flutter.
We strapped into the aircraft, I went over my pre-ignition checklist and started her up. I called the radio room to get airfield information and then I moved her forward, tested the breaks, and taxied to the power-checks area.
The very best advice I received regarding the skills test was from a student pilot friend of mine who did his a few weeks before me.
“Follow your checklists and then do what he asks.” He said, “You know how to do all this stuff, don’t think about it, relax and do as you are told.”
Turns out he was exactly right.
I proceeded down my checklists, taking perhaps a bit more time than normal and making sure I called out each item as I did it. Alan made notes. By the time I had eased the plane back onto the apron and stopped at the holding point for 22L I was only dimly aware that he was there. 500’ off the runway and he was just a shape in the other seat that made it harder for me to reach the flap lever. When I levelled off at 2,200’ I had completely forgotten that this was my major, huge, scary, skills test. I was flying an airplane and that’s all that mattered.
I turned onto my heading and for once remembered to mark the time down. I checked in with Southend to get a Basic service and settled in for the cross-country part of the test. Alan and I chatted; he scribbled.
The cross-country bit was a breeze, pun intended. I knew that sometime after my first turn point I would be told to make a diversion so I made sure I had my diversion calculator and airspeed ruler handy.
“Alright,” said Alan, “Your primary destination is fogged-in, divert to Clacton.”
Excellent! I actually knew where Clacton was. I picked a decent reference a few miles ahead as my turning point and plotted the diversion on my chart. In case you are ever called upon to do the same, here are the steps:
1. Figure out where the hell you are
2. Decide where you are going to turn onto your new course
3. Draw a line on your chart between your turning point and your new destination (make sure to mark the half-way point)
4. Use a cool little tool called a diversion heading calculator to figure out your new course
5. Using a handy wind-velocity cheat sheet that you prepared earlier determine your actual heading and ground speed
6. Calculate your new ETA using a speed/distance ruler
7. Turn onto your new heading, make a note of the time and your ETA to the next waypoint
8. Hope for the best
Keep in mind that you must do all of the above while actually flying the aircraft, usually with your feet. Spend too long looking down at the chart and by the time you look up again a nasty surprise could be waiting.
I did all that and got us turned toward Clacton, I could even see it about 10 miles ahead.
A few minutes passed.
“You think you might call Southend?” Asked Alan.
Oh shit! I forgot to tell Southend RADAR why I just deviated off course and was heading back toward them.
I put in the call and told them what we were doing. Damn, my first mistake (that I knew of).
We reached Clacton on time but I had trouble finding the airfield. I knew where it was supposed to be but a grass strip in a grass field surrounded by other grass fields isn’t the easiest thing to spot from 2,200’. I banked right and left to get a better view.
“What are you doing?” Said Alan, sounding annoyed.
“Looking for the airfield. I know it’s here somewhere. I bet you can see it huh?”
“Yep.”
“Damn, damn, damn!” I thought. Thankfully by about the third “damn” I spotted the field and pointed it out to Alan. I wondered if that counted as a mistake. I got us there on time and the reason I couldn’t see the field was that it was directly underneath us. Good navigating, mediocre observing.
Alan had me turn toward Blackwater estuary and climb to 5,000’ in preparation for the general handling part of the test. I took a moment to relax a bit and wait for his instructions without trying to anticipate what would come next.
He gave me headings to fly; I flew them. Speeds, levels, sharp turns, stalls, slow flight, fast flight, recovery from a spiral dive, instrument flying, one after another he told me what to do and, with as little thinking as possible, I did as he asked.
Once or twice I heard the heading wrong and he growled at me a bit but, truth be told, it was kind of fun playing around with the aircraft.
After all the various stalls and dives we’d worked our way down to about 3,000’. Alan reached over and pulled the throttle back to idle, “OK, he said, your engine just quit, land and try not to kill us.”
About the only things I ever did well from the get-go were practiced forced landings (PFLs). I have no idea why but I seem to be able glide an aircraft into a farmer’s field without too much trouble. This is one skill I really, really, hope I’ll never have to use in real life.
Thankfully this time was no exception. I picked a nice big field, did the engine failure checks and dropped us down, nice and easy until Alan called “go around!”
500’ up on the climb out from the go around he kills the throttle again. “You’ve lost your engine on take off, land it.”
No problem. Pitch down to 65kts, look for a field 45 degrees on either side, secure your harnesses and hope for the best. Flying involves a lot of hoping for the best.
Convinced that we’d make it to the field in one piece, mostly, Alan told me to climb back up to 2,000’. Once at altitude I had to use the navigation radio to track a VOR signal back to Stapelford. Along the way I used the second nav radio to cross-reference our position.
We’d already been flying for two hours by the time we joined the pattern at Stapelford. Two-hours of uneventful flying behind the controls of a small plane can make anyone tired, sore and more than a little bit anxious to see a nice smooth runway in the near distance. I’d just had two-hours of manoeuvres, emergency drills and navigation exercises and I was flat-out knackered.
Normally when you are in flight training the trip back to the airfield means that the hard part is over for the day, during the skills test, the worst is yet to come: four different types of landings and a go-around. My back was killing me and my headset was stuck to my ears, yet the most physically and demanding 40 minutes of my fight training still lay in front of me. No more putting my brain on autopilot and simply doing as I was told. From this point on it was all down to me.
My first landing was a standard touch and go that lead directly into a bad-weather circuit: a short, oval-shaped, pattern at 800’ instead of the normal 1,200’. There is no real base leg in a bad weather circuit, you make a smooth arch from downwind onto a short final all the while dropping flaps, doing your landing checks and making your radio calls.
From the bad weather circuit I rolled into a glide approach. This is another short final circuit only this time about halfway through the base leg you cut the power and glide in to land. It’s very similar to the PFLs I tend to be pretty good at, my only concern was judging when to cut the power. Too early and I’ll never make the field, too late and I’ll be too high over the threshold. I erred on the too-high side but managed to pull it out in the end.
The next circuit was a go-around and then I was back up in the pattern for my final challenge, a flapless approach. These have a bit longer finals so that you can settle into a good glide speed, 70kts in a C172 and angle. The wind was on my side that day, meaning it wasn’t too strong and there wasn’t much of a crosswind. You always drift long without flaps but I still managed to bring her down well before the end of the asphalt.
I put on the breaks, pulled off the runway and stopped to raise the flaps, push in the carb heat and assess the situation. I was buzzing. I wasn’t even thinking about how I’d done, I was so happy to have simply done it. I actually felt good to put into practice everything I’d learned over the past nine months all in one shot. I’m pretty sure I was smiling.
I taxied along to the parking stand, pulled the mixture out to stop the engine, turned off the radio, avionics, removed the key and turned off the master switch. I removed my headset and let out the breath I had been holding in for the past two and a half hours. My bum was melted to the seat. I looked over at Alan.
“I think you know how you did. Let’s get some tea.”
“I’ll bet I’m buying.”
“You better believe it.”
I gave Lima-Oscar a thankful pat on the fuselage (how many times had she been a part of this right of passage?) and didn’t so much walk as float to the clubhouse.
That was some great tasting tea.