This Is For Real...

We've been flying in continuous night IMC now for more than 20 minutes, and after a long series of short vectors NorCal's just cleared me for the Oakland runway 27R ILS a few miles outside GROVE. I can hear on-frequency that he's sequenced a Gulfstream behind me; apparently there's a Citation ahead of me somewhere. I can't see a bloody thing outside. Boyan -- my sometime flightshare partner -- is in the right seat, following along as he contemplates starting his own instrument rating. He's been briefed to double check the altitudes against the GPS waypoints I'm using as backup (he has some useful experience over the years as a passenger in actual). NorCal asks me -- again -- to maintain current airspeed (120 KIAS) until at least FITKI (the FAF). Oakland's ATIS is reporting 500' broken, 1100' overcast, light rain, mist. I sit there thinking -- this is it. This is for real. I can't just put up the hood if something goes wrong, or have someone else recover a botched attempt.

Strangely, it feels good. The plane and the approach are set up properly; both are going smoothly; Boyan appears to be relaxed and enjoying himself; and I'm on very familiar ground. We intercept the glideslope at 1500', cross FITKI maintaining 120 KIAS, and switch to tower. Cleared to land, 27R.

At 1,000' we still can't see anything. I slow down to about 100 KIAS, put in one notch of flaps. At 800' I start noticing lights on the ground immediately below us through the clouds and rain. We slow to 90 KIAS; another notch of flaps and trim. We're tracking the localiser almost perfectly, deliberately one dot high on the glideslope. There's a slight left crosswind, but the air's otherwise fairly still. At 700' we start seeing enough lights on the ground to fly visually, but we can't see more than a mile or two ahead of us through broken cloud and light rain. I keep watching the ILS. At 600' we break out for real -- and there it is, Oakland's 27R, dead ahead. Woohoo! We land a few seconds later in the drizzle. Tower asks us where we're parking; I tell him the Old-T's. "27R, taxi down 2SP then 33... uh, 2SP you know what I mean... taxi down 27R then 33 for the Old T's...".

This feels great. Now if only I could get things going so smoothly in the rest of my life... :-).

* * *

It's one of those very rare things for the Bay Area: a day with sustained, widespread, benign IMC. No thunderstorms. Icing levels well above 10,000'. Layered overcasts all the way up to the flight levels, reaching down to below 1,000' around Oakland, but not much below about 4,000' in the Central Valley. Ideal for training and confidence building. I've had 2SP booked for this evening for weeks anyway, but this seems like a great chance to go out and fly some actual. I call John who's apparently lounging around down in the pilot lounge of his "California Coastal City", just to get a PIREP on the real weather out there and to see if there wasn't some obvious thing that I'd missed (it all seemed too good to be true). He confirms the weather's actually fairly benign out there -- go for it! So I do.

Taxiing out to Kaiser to get fuel before departing we see first one, then another, SouthWest 737 landing on 27R a few hundred metres from us. And then another... I ask Ground what's the deal with the 737's -- is 29 closed or something? (Note: Oakland's airline and heavy freight traffic uses runway 29 -- all 10,000' of it, a mile or so from the 27s -- and its ILS almost exclusively, leaving the shorter runways 27R and 27L to the rest of us. Oakland is also one of SouthWest's main Left Coast hubs, so the vast majority of airline traffic into Oakland is SouthWest 737s). Ground says 29's localiser suddenly went belly up a few minutes ago and since the ceiling's way too low for the visual, they're using the 27's with 27R's ILS. The results are pretty interesting, much the same as you see at John Wayne / KSNA -- lots of noise, heavy braking, clogged taxiways, spray, all sound and fury from where we are on taxiway delta. Quite a sight. But I can't help thinking this can't be good news.... We'll be coming back down that same ILS in about 90 minutes in night IMC and the thought of wake turbulence in IMC, and all the damn vectoring for traffic we'll get on the way to the ILS as the result of losing 29, well... I have visions of holding for 40 minutes in actual, miles from SUNOL, or ground holds at Stockton (our filed destination), but hey, it's all flying, and good real-world IFR practice, so off we go.

* * *

The flight out to Stockton (KSCK) itself is uneventful -- we enter actual IMC at about 500' and don't see the ground again for the next 15 minutes or so out towards ALTAM. I lower the Cone Of Stupidity when we start getting clear of clouds a bit later. I do the ILS 29R into Stockton with the autopilot coupled, mostly to keep in practice, and to test it (in VMC) after repairs last week (it started rolling slowly to the right in roll mode last week -- every other mode was fine, though). The repairs seem to have worked, and it tracks the localiser within a dot or two from quite a distance out. Nice to know I have it if I need it later this evening...

We land normally, then pick up our clearance back to Oakland. There's a few minutes' ground delay for us before tower lets us go, then we're off again. Back under the Cone of Stupidity and handed off to NorCal, we get an almost immediate clearance direct SUNOL (a slight short cut), then NorCal says (sounding quite apologetic) that we should expect "extensive vectoring" (his words) for sequencing closer to SUNOL due to the Oakland 29 ILS being out of action. No problem -- I'm up for it.

We enter actual IMC after about 15 minutes and don't see the ground -- or anything much else outside the cockpit -- again until breaking out for 27R. As with the flight out, the flight back is uneventful, but getting closer to SUNOL we start getting vectored all over the place, with several changes in altitude. We get handed off to 125.35, the final NorCal sector for OAK approaches from this direction. The frequency is non-stop talk; I don't get a chance to check in before the controller calls me and vectors me to my left for sequencing ("2SP if you're on-frequency left turn 210 vectors for sequencing climb maintain 5000", or some such). 29's localiser is still out, and there's a stack of SouthWest 737's on frequency all probably struggling to learn (or remember) how to program KOAK 27R into the FMS rather than 29, and to cope with the much shorter runway. A few miles from SUNOL the controller tells one of the 737's that 29's ILS is back in action, and asks whether they want it instead of 27R. The reaction's immediate -- "Uh, yeah, sure, that'd be a relief..." and within a few minutes it sounds like a general resequencing has happened, and the 737's are (mostly) back on 29. We get a few more micro-vectors, then we're approaching GROVE...

* * *

This was a great experience, a really enjoyable confidence builder. I guess I knew I could do it -- I'd done similar things with John in the right seat -- but it's great to have it confirmed, and to have things go so well the entire time without an instructor sitting there.

As with training, flying in actual wasn't much harder than under the hood -- it's just the stakes are (obviously) much higher. The hardest part for me -- predictably -- was entering actual at about 500' departing Oakland, where the transition was abrupt, and was combined with a hand-off to NorCal and a new set of headings and altitudes. I handled it OK, but for a minute or so the headings were a bit rough as I struggled to get into the groove. I'd have grave misgivings about entering actual any lower immediately after departure -- at least I'd stabilised the climb by that point.

2SP's autopilot is also a great resource for times like this (but I didn't actually use it extensively this time except for the Stockton ILS, as I wanted to brush up on my IMC control skills). I'm (not surprisingly) strongly with John on this -- as he puts it, the autopilot's a resource, a second-in-command, a very effective tool for keeping you ahead of the game. As with GPS, there's no excuse for not knowing how to use it effectively if you've got it -- and it's hardly cheating (as some people seem to view it) to use it to decrease pilot load, especially in single-pilot IMC situations like this. It's just another (albeit important) tool -- and if it's there, use it. I'll shut up now.

* * *

As I'm tying 2SP down in the darkness and drizzle of the Old-T's, I reach up and grab the pitot tube to start putting the pitot cover on. It takes a second or two, but suddenly I'm aware that a) the tube's bloody hot, and b) it's burned three of my fingers quite painfully. The pitot heat was on the entire flight, and I forgot to turn it off after landing -- and it only just went off when I turned the master switch off a few seconds ago (as I've said countless times, with things like this I'm really not the sharpest tool in the toolshed...). I now have a burned left hand that's going to require a lot of working around (I'm naturally slightly left-handed). That's about the only thing that's marred the evening.

What's In A Name?

It's not that I haven't been flying in the last few weeks -- I have a bunch of new hours under the Cone Of Stupidity between here and Monterey, Sacramento, Rio Vista, etc., and one flight in particular brought home to me (once again) just how dangerous circle-to-land maneuvers can be at night -- it's just that life's been too damn hectic and all-over-the-place to blog it all down coherently lately. Plus I have a bunch of other blogs to bring up to date, too, of course (a few under some obvious pseudonyms...). So nothing new under the sun here in YAFB-land for a while. My apologies.

And someone who shall remain nameless (but whose blog details his experiences becoming a Part 135 pilot 'round here :-)) asked over dinner a few weeks ago what the significance of the name "Yankee Alpha Foxtrot Bravo" might be. D'Oh! I always thought it was obvious: Yet Another Flying Blog would probably be the polite form....

Woohooo!

So it finally turned up today -- that little piece of plastic that officially says that the FAA really thinks I'm OK to fly IFR in single engine light planes. I'm impressed by the new license (sorry, certificate): the old one was just a pathetic bit of cardboard that wouldn't impress anyone and that you had to laminate if you wanted it to last more than six months; the new one's a plastic card the same size as my driver's license with some rather nice-looking artwork on it. Cool. Maybe people will start believing I really am a pilot when I wave this one around :-).

My Father Knew Tom Driberg

I've been going to the same AME (Airman's Medical Examiner) for my medicals now for years, a locally well-known guy who's mostly well-known for his, erm, eccentricity (in the best British sense). He's the sort of guy whose father was friends with Tom Driberg (the title of a recent bio: "The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw") -- and who'd actually know how much that name might mean to a Briton older than (say) 30. Although he -- the AME -- is a fair bit older than me, we share enough background (Britain and Scotland, mostly) to talk at length about UnAmerica, especially Scotland and the area around Tighnabruaich, one of the places I'm from. He's also unrepentantly anti- almost anything to do with Imperial America and its attendant bureaucracy, and isn't afraid to say it out loud. And he has this ... thing ... about bureaucracies -- lots of odd little notes and hand-written annotations on the various forms, etc., spread around the walls of his waiting room. The medicals are always an amusing and entertaining experience for me. No names here, but most people in the Oakland aviation community probably have at least some idea who I'm talking about....

Anyway, as always, he's late, and I share the corridor (and, later, the tiny waiting room) with a younger guy who works charters out of Hayward. We gossip about the various mutual freight dog aquaintances and associated companies and aircraft, especially the windowless AmFlight Metroliner on the Oakland ramp nicknamed the "death tube". That plane's always looked sinister to me, but he hasn't actually flown it (he hasn't worked for AmeriFlight for years).

Oh, and the exam? Well, the FAA has certified that, once again, I'm alive. Whew.

(Tom Driberg, as described with characteristic understatement in the blurb for Francis Wheen's biography: "wit, parliamentarian, serial cottager, alleged communist spy and friend to the Kray brothers. There are few people for whom marriage was so ill-suited yet well attended: at Tom Driberg's were cabinet ministers and mobsters, Betjeman and Waugh, but it was Osbert Lancaster who commemorated the sheeer extraordinairness of the occasion, and with it celebrated the social life of Driberg, and an era of Englishness now passed into history when the Brideshead generation sang the Red Flag." (from Amazon).

Busted.

No, not me -- the turn coordinator in 2SP. It's early evening and I'm rather mindlessly returning IFR from Monterey (KMRY) on my own in basically VMC weather: a thin cloud layer below me which peters out a dozen miles ahead, and a solid layer of stratus thousands of feet above me, with a few isolated rainshowers over the South Bay (i.e. very atypical weather for the area, just like the rest of this year so far...). I've just engaged the autopilot with the GPS for direct BUSHY then V301 to SUNOL for the ILS back in to Oakland to see how the autopilot copes with the upcoming route dogleg when I simultaneously notice that the autopilot's suddenly disengaged itself and the turn coordinator's flagged. All this happens as I'm receiving new instructions from NorCal and I'm starting the turn at BUSHY.

My immediate response? A quick scan to ensure everything else seems to be working and that the plane's still under control, a quick report to NorCal basically just saying I've lost my turn coordinator but I'm currently VMC so no big deal but I don't want any routing into IMC, then... not much, to be honest. It's VMC, I can see Oakland (the city, not the airport, at any rate) way up ahead, the rest of the panel is still there and working, and I'm now flying (manually) straight and level towards SUNOL after the brief turn. In IMC it'd be very different -- an immediate emergency -- but the first thing that comes to mind this time is "why do they make the TC flag so bloody innocuous? It ought to be a flashing annunciator somewhere up there with the others or on the unit itself", then "why didn't I hear the autopilot disconnect itself?" (probably because I was talking to the controller and missed it). But over the next few minutes I also can't stop thinking "this would be a major challenge in IMC...". On the 172s I prefer using the turn coordinator for keeping the wings level to using the AI, since it's easier to see the TC. Yes, this isn't true of the vast majority of planes, but that pathetic little AI in the 172s I fly just doesn't give you much to go on compared to, say, the PFD in the Cirrus 22. And yes, I have no trouble just using the AI -- it's a convenience thing mainly.

My other response? Amazement at just how quickly the turn coordinator went belly-up -- no warning signs, none of the usual bearing noises, nothing -- just a flagged TC in the space between scans. And this with a new TC that replaced the previous one that failed a few months ago. Yes, the TC still appears to be working -- well, it reflects turns correctly -- but it's sitting there effectively useless for real flying or for the autopilot. And distracting -- way too easy to see out of the corner of my eye. So I scrabble around in my flight bag for the covers, without much success. Another lesson -- keep the bloody covers truly handy, not just buried in your flight bag somewhere (I knew that!). An emergency wouldn't quite be the right time to be digging into your flight bag in the backseat looking for these things.

A sobering experience, for sure. It seems to be starting a tradition of sorts: a few years ago, on my second flight as PIC after getting my complex endorsement, I had a gear failure (a total non-event in the Arrow, thankfully -- the simple emergency gear mechanism works wonderfully compared to the contortions needed to crank the gear down in some other models...); the second time I fly IFR after getting my rating... well, I'm sitting here with a broken TC. One more memento mori for the collection.

And the rest of the fight? Scenic, relaxed, easy, enjoyable. But somehow I was still quite nervous beforehand -- my first completely solo IFR flight -- which (again) seems ludicrous, but there you are.

Another lesson in real-world IFR flying -- following John's lead I ask for direct BORED as I depart Monterey but get direct BUSHY instead after a minute or so, an even better deal (either will save more than 90 nautical miles compared to the standard routing over Panoche VOR (PXN)... I idly wonder what'll happen if I ask for the ultimate, "direct SUNOL", but decide not to push my luck). On the way down in the early stages of the NEUVO5.SHOEY departure from Oakland I get direct MUNSO (the ILS LOM at Monterey) from a little past San Francisco (KSFO), which seems a stretch -- why not direct Salinas VOR (SNS) which is a feeder route point for the LOC/DME 28L I'd just asked for? No big deal in 2SP, a /G, but just one of those ATC mysteries...

* * *

Take a look at the Monterey LOC/DME 28L approach sometime. One of the reasons I did this flight was to try that approach in daylight VMC to get some practice with it before having to do it at night or in actual someday (Monterey's a popular destination for friends of mine, an easy hour's flying away from here, but a dreadful three hour drive). Terrain clearance is the issue here. Done visually, it's an eye-opener -- I was routed over a shallow saddle near some peaks at or above my altitude, then descended over sloping ground towards the airport. The ground slope basically mirrors your glideslope nearly all the way down, so you never seem to be more than 1,000' AGL at any point in the procedure, and you have rising terrain only a few thousand feet laterally. Not a difficult approach, but there's not a lot of room for lateral or vertical error on almost any part of the procedure (like the nearby Salinas ILS 31 approach, with that same range in the picture).

The Monterey ILS 10R is more likely in really bad weather, but it has a note that prohibits coupled approaches. I'm not sure what the thinking is here unless they're concerned about the unusability of the ILS after the middle marker (see the other approach note). Why the lack of reliable ILS after the MM? I'm not sure about that either, especially since in that direction terrain isn't a factor, and there don't seem to be any interesting buildings or reflective problems in the neighbourhood.

Freight Dog Tales

In the absense of any actual flying to report (two cancellations in the last two weeks due to weather), and having been stuck behind desks and computers for most of the past few weeks, let me just point readers at my ex-instructor John Ewing's new blog, Freight Dog Tales. I've watched John progress from newly-minted PP-ASEL through several years of full-time instructing to being a newbie freight dog, and his new blog documents the latest progress really nicely (and explains why I had to cancel a trip a couple of days ago to the same "Northern California coastal city" as he's flying to at the moment -- ice, dammit. He at least has a nice Cessna Caravan to do it in; me, it would have been one of the 172's at night, meaning not bloody likely...).

And what other aviation blogs do I read regularly? Well, there's David Megginson's excellent Land And Hold Short, a rather thoughtful perspective on flying in a much colder climate than I'm used to (Canada...), and there's Aviatrix's snappy (and sometimes nicely snippy...) Cockpit Conversations, a throughly readable counterpart to John's blog, with (another!) Canadian view on climbing up through the (lower) ranks of the commercial aviation industry. Other than that, I think I rather fitfully read my old acquaintance Philip Greenspun's "Philip Greenspun's Weblog" ("an interesting idea every three months; a posting every day", as he says...), which has aviation entries every now and then from the point of view of someone who made enough money in the 90's to be able to afford to do all this without too much effort (it's how the other half live, I guess ;-)). There are more, I'm sure, but I can't say I read them regularly yet.

Moose Stalls

Aviatrix's reliably bright and sarcastic Cockpit Conversation blog has an article peripherally about "Moose Stalls" -- that often-fatal stall that happens when you lose control of the airplane in a steep low altitude bank while you're fixated on something interesting on the ground. In Canada, that'd be a moose, apparently.

In Australia I heard them called "'Roo Stalls" (Kangaroo stalls) -- my instructor while I was there on a short visit a few years ago had to explain the term to me after warning me not to Roo stall over the practice area while I was fixated on trying to identify a reporting landmark. I've been using the term ever since, often metaphorically and way out of context, to describe any sort of fixation leading to a (usually virtual...) loss of control. Needless to say I get a lot of blank looks around here. Oh well. Now I can use the term Moose Stall and point 'em at an authoritative explanation...

Dirty Socks Springs

I think it finally hits me as I'm standing in the High Desert glare at Dirty Socks Springs near Olancha, watching a California Air National Guard C130 doing exuberant-looking low passes over the dry lake bed a few miles to the north -- hey, I have an instrument rating! Finally...

* * *

A few hours later I'm standing in Bishop's Mountain Light Gallery, looking at a bunch of Galen Rowell's Owens Valley and other photo landscapes. Galen and his pilot wife Barbara -- both well-known in the Bay Area -- died while landing at Bishop (KBIH) late one night in 2002 in a locally rather infamous incident (Barbara was not the pilot). From long-time local knowledge, Bishop's not the sort of place you want to do a lot of late night moonless landings, let alone circling approaches at minimums. Take a look at Bishop's approaches (VOR or GPS-A, VOR/DME or GPS-B) -- and those minimums. It's one of the three airports in the US where the lowest approach minimums are higher than the standard minimums needed for filing an alternate (2,000'). As the FAA rather drily says somewhere in relation to these airports, don't just assume the old 1-2-3 rule about alternate minimums with this airport -- you may need an alternate for real with the ceiling at 3,000' -- and this is the sort of airport where even a 3,000' ceiling might cause you problems if you don't know the local terrain (it's in a long valley ringed by sharp 14,000' mountains, and subject to some pretty rough weather, and any local alternates are in similar weather and terrain). Having said all that, it isn't clear quite why Bishop's minimums are so high -- the immediate vicinity of the airport is fairly benign, at least by Californian standards -- but I presume it's due to the excessive descent angle required for lower minimums after the initial legs of the approach needing to be so high.

It's not too clear what a small plane like the 172 gets from IFR out this way -- it's been my ambition for years now to fly from Oakland to Bishop via (say) Minden or Reno, and I still want to do it, but Bishop and its approaches, and the various victor airways and feeder routes to them, are a classic example of where the various minimum climb rates, altitudes, and procedures all make flying something like a 172 IFR in even VMC pretty much too close to the edge to be really comfortable (for another relatively close-by example, take a look at South Lake Tahoe's Richy Five departure procedure -- that anodyne little note, "This SID requires a minimum climb rate of 400 feet per NM to 10,000’" rules out the average 172, especially in summer. I guess it pays to read these little side notes (this was actually a question in my orals -- "would you accept the Richy Five SID in a 172?" No, not bloody likely...)).

A First...

A leisurely trip in 4JG through the twilight to Modesto (KMOD) with Boyan (my sometime flight-share partner) and back. I fly out, under a proper filed IFR flight plan -- my first as a certified gen-u-wine IFR-type pilot thing -- and Boyan flies back VFR. Boyan's curious about what a Real IFR flight's like, and I do it without the Cone of Stupidity so I can answer his questions. Everything is utterly straightforward and predictable, but I'm still somewhat nervous -- which is ludicrous, but there you are. A severe clear VMC evening, little-to-no traffic outside the main airways, a bunch of laid back Northern Californian controllers doing their competent thing with humour and grace, and a flight through Yet Another Boring Bay Area Sunset.

Flying 4JG again after 2SP brings home just how much better the Garmin 530 can be than 2SP's KLN 94 -- not just the bigger display, but the interface still seems friendlier, or at least less prone to inducing user error. It's still not friendly -- will there ever be a GPS unit that's as simple to use as an OBS or HSI? -- but somehow I make fewer errors setting it up and changing it on-the-fly (inevitably we didn't actually fly any of the original clearance beyond the initial departure vectors -- we got cleared direct Modesto within five miles of Oakland...).

I have to say I'd miss 2SP's autopilot on long flights or high workload segments, but it's not the big deal I sometimes think it could be. But then I wasn't under the Cone of Stupidity, was I? Makes all the difference...

Reflections

A few thoughts in the aftermath:

It's hard to believe that suddenly, as a result of the checkride, I'm actually allowed to fly approaches to minimums in IMC. A 200' decision height on even a familiar ILS is scary enough under the hood in VMC with an instructor sitting impassively in the right seat, but single pilot IFR in IMC? No way. It's tempting to impose at least an airport's highest circling minimums on myself for any approach to that airport in actual, regardless of what's legal; I certainly wouldn't fly a non-precision approach in IMC to anywhere close to minimums (except in an emergency). Perhaps the only ILS I'd fly to close to minimums would be Oakland's 27R, an approach (and surrounding terrain, etc.) that I'm utterly familiar with -- but even here I wouldn't want to go below (say) 500' in IMC (and, luckily, probably would almost never need to, given Oakland's weather). And I doubt I'd do any serious IMC flying without a certified GPS for positional awareness at least. And a decent single-axis autopilot would help too...

As both John and Mr Batchelder have said, I need another bunch of hours just flying the system and getting better at everything without the unreal stress of checkrides and instruction before I attempt any real sustained flying in actual. I guess I already knew this, and plan on flying IFR in the system -- with or without the hood -- pretty much wherever I go for the next year or so anyway (I have a long-planned trip to LA (KSMO or KBUR) sometime April or May which will be ideal for this). And then a slow transition through small amounts of coastal stratus actual to the real thing. I'm actually looking forward to this, with a whole long Northern Californian summer full of coastal stratus just about to start.

As with the private pilot certificate, basically nothing went wrong -- so once again, this isn't a Triumph Against The Odds sort of story, just a rather more realistic diary of trying to get an instrument rating in Northern California while also trying to keep a full-time business going. I didn't experience any major existential crises, any real problems in understanding procedures, any problems at all with disorientation in actual or under the hood, etc. -- i.e. nothing that would make this diary / blog really interesting.... The main problems were (predictably) external: getting time away from my business, and, towards the end, having to be ruthless about my finances. Nothing insurmountable, but if you're committed to getting the rating, having a life that's constantly changing around you probably isn't the best way to arrange things (understatement).

Was the rating the hardest thing I've ever done? No, not even close. Nothing has so far been harder than the honours year of my undergraduate degree, or sustaining some of my relationships over the years. Even the checkride wasn't as intense as doing the honours exams (oral and written), or as difficult as the stand-up graduate studies interview in front of the committee at the LSE all those years ago. But both the checkride itself and the year or so of training were definitely draining and difficult, and a fair bit harder in some ways than my initial private pilot license experiences.

The rating took pretty much the amount of effort and time I expected it to -- I'm no prodigy or over-achiever, and didn't do it in minimal time -- but I'm a little disappointed not to have been able to get it all over and done with last year before I had to go to Australia. No big deal, but it would certainly have made the last few months a lot easier by not having to cope with the rating as well as a new job, growing business, etc. etc.

I'm glad I did the past few months mostly in 2SP -- the combination of a stable, well-rigged and powerful (180HP) plane with a GPS and autopilot made it a great platform for learning some real-world IFR. I thought that maybe I was biting off more than I could chew, or that maybe a DE would mark me down for having all the extras that any Real Pilot would do without. Quite the contrary -- Mr Batchelder said he cut me some slack for turning up in the sort of plane that you really might fly single pilot in IMC, and for knowing how to use the GPS and the autopilot on the fly and with changing clearances (he has a gentle rant about some of the planes he's seen being used for instrument checkrides and the unreality of learning in something like them). The extra effort and time to become at least somewhat fluent in both was definitely worth it, and I'd recommend it for anyone out there wondering about the issue.

And finally -- my choice of instructor turned out to be excellent. I'll have much more to say about John in a separate article, but for now, let's just say I've generally been blessed with good instructors, and John's obviously the main reason I got through it so smoothly.

The Long Version

Yes, I passed the instrument rating checkride last Thursday, first time through. A close thing, though -- throughout the checkride my flying was mostly pretty mediocre, and several times I thought I must have failed after that little screwup or this major blunder. I should feel elated, but all I still feel is a huge sense of relief -- finally my life is going to return to normal. No more late nights or long drives back up Interstate 880 for a hurried flight under the Cone of Stupidity. No more relentless practice flights to Sacramento or Stockton through fading light or indistinct grey skies (that I can't actually see anyway). No more anxiously checking my bank account to see if I can afford another week's flying...

* * *

I meet Richard Batchelder, my Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE, or traditionally just DE), as he comes across the apron from an earlier checkride. He's pretty much what I'd been told to expect -- friendly, affable, larger than life. And late. I've arrived at Concord airport (KCCR) in 2SP at least 30 minutes early; he's returning from the previous checkride late, and by the time we get going on my checkride, we're maybe 90 minutes late. So I get to sit around the apron in the sun and watch the little Schweizer 300's from Helicopter Adventures hover and flit around a few metres away (these things are loud), and talk with the previous candidate's instructor. That candidate -- a full-time student from Sierra Academy -- has just failed his instrument checkride, which doesn't make me feel so good, but his instructor's a nice guy, and very encouraging. Over the years I've had a bunch of personal connections to Sierra, but I don't really know anyone there now, especially since they moved away from Oakland airport.

We start the oral after a whole bunch of paperwork, and proceed pretty quickly. No surprises here, just the usual menagerie of questions, most of which I get right(ish), some of which I should get right but in the heat of the moment say the wrong thing, and some of which (mainly things like the minutiae of weather charts), I just get plain wrong. Oh well. At least that part's over and done with satisfactorily; now on to the checkride itself...

Mr Batchelder's checkrides are notoriously intense workouts -- as I'd been told, just one damn thing after another, with barely space to breathe -- but he tells me that even if I do something really badly, I should just keep pressing on unless he tells me to stop.... If I need to redo a checkride later, I'll only have to do the things I failed. Sounds good to me.

So after the preflight we get in, and the blur begins: depart runway 32R VFR, a simulated Buchanan 7 departure with the REJOY transition, two times around an impromptu hold at REJOY followed by some unusual attitudes and other airwork in the vicinity, then straight on to the ILS RWY 2 into Sacramento Executive (KSAC), then go missed back to Sacramento VOR, then straight on to a partial panel VOR-A into Rio Vista (O88), then a circle-to-land for runway 25 at Rio Vista (luckily there's no one else in the pattern), a quick touch-and-go on 25, vectors from Mr Batchelder to a DME arc to near the final approach course for the GPS RWY 19R approach back in to Concord, then an autopilot-coupled intercept and approach (the GPS RWY 19R) to full stop at Concord. Or something like that.

Several times duing the flight he barks at me -- "what do you think you're doing?!" or "where the hell are you going" -- things like that -- but this seems to be mostly an attempt to see if I can cope with being rattled, or to see how well I can articulate what I'm trying to do (and, in at least one case, it was because I'm about to make a stupid blunder...). I feel bad about it at the time, of course, but it's pretty effective. At other times he just sits back, looks out the window, and muses about the birds down there in the Delta or why we Brits (and others) call an autopilot "George".

Departing Rio Vista he explains what he wants for the DME arc, and what follows is a comedy of errors as we both argue about how to set up the GPS to do what he wants. Basically, I say that the damn thing really can't quite do what he's asking for, and suggest setting it up for a much simpler method; he more-or-less agrees but still thinks it can be set up his way anyway with a bit of effort. After a minute or so of to-ing and fro-ing 3,000' above the Delta like this I finally tell him we'll have to do it my way or we'll probably be out over the Pacific before we have anything set up at all. He basically agrees and lets me do my thing, which has the advantage of simplicity -- and workability. Again, it sounds bad now, but while it's happening it's actually quite funny, and he's gracious and good-humored about it as it's happening ("Hey, you're the boss!"). Similarly, he's quite happy to let me do my (non-standard) thing with the autopilot a few minutes later after I explain what I'm going to do, and why.

* * *

So what went wrong? A lot of things... my altitude control was just terrible, I did two really bad landings, I circled the "wrong" way at Rio Vista (never mind -- there's really no "right" way there, given the stringent noise abatement rules, and I made it up on the spot as I came out from under the Cone of Stupidity), I got quite a bit to the left of course on the early stages of the partial panel VOR-A approach into Rio Vista (but corrected OK and kept -- just -- within PTS standards), I did a poor job of briefing the approaches, I was pretty rough with controlling airspeeds, and I really confused Mr Batchelder several times about what I was trying to do -- apparently it was far from clear what instruments I was relying on to identify a fix, for example (GPS? DME? VOR cross radial?), and he thought several times that I'd made a mistake when I had basically changed instruments on the fly without informing him (that sort of on-the-fly change is not a smart thing to do).

And what did I do right? Apparently, Mr Batchelder didn't have too many doubts about my basic safety, or that I knew what I was doing (or what should be done...), and that I had reasonable positional and situational awareness. That is, the basics were OK, if a little rough -- and when I got something wrong I apparently recovered quickly and smoothly. My radio work was also OK (as it should be at this stage...). Headings and clearances and the approach procedures themselves all went fairly well. The hold entry and the hold itself went OK, if a little rough. Despite the comedy of errors surrounding setting up the DME arc to the GPS approach back into Concord, I actually flew the DME arc just fine (no more than about .5 miles off the required distance), and I apparently did OK at staying on top of the GPS and the autopilot on the approach.

* * *

So it's all over (at least until I start the Commercial -- I give myself a while before I want to start that...). There'll be a few more postings here about the event and associated musings, but in the meantime I want to again thank John Ewing, CFII for getting me through it all with such good humour and teaching skills. The last couple of months have been less than than ideal for me learning anything, let alone something as difficult as this, but John got me through calmly and successfully...

The Checkride

The short version of the story: after two weeks of nonstop stressed-out work, work, work down in Silicon Valley -- and a bit of hurried flying when I could get the chance -- I pass the checkride with some of the worst flying I've done in months. I don't feel anything much other than very relieved -- I guess the sense of accomplishment will come later. And I'm grateful to John for getting me through it all, especially the last two weeks when I've been really cranky due to things at work getting utterly out of control. Too many 7am meetings and all-weekend work shifts to make flying an easy thing...

The long version will have to wait for the weekend, at least. I have a long day's real-world work to do tomorrow...