Ok - runway 09 it is then. Now, if you'll excuse me, I left my flashlight in the trunk of my car. And I may as well as well open the hood and check the oil, and put in some gas, while I'm there....
Day 16 - Tuesday 25 November
My "passenger" for my practice test today was a photographer, working for The Sun (aka one of the school's managers). He'd heard that Fergie was sun-bathing topless on the runway at Tailwinds, which is a private airfield a few miles north of West Palm Beach, and he wanted me to take him there.
The flight to Tailwinds is fairly short, so I planned it with just a half-way point, no 1/4-way points. Today, I had to do more than just produce a plog. I had to produce a folder which contained all of the documentation for the flight - the plog, weather and Notam information, copies of my license and the aircraft's insurance documents, weight+balance and performance calculations, and so on. Most of this is just a photo-copy of a master copy which EFT keep for that purpose, but obviously the weather, perforance, route and so on will be specific to the flight.
After take-off, we set heading for Tailwinds. At the half-way point I made a small heading and ETA correction. Shortly after that, my passenger told me that he'd just received a phone-call - Fergie is not at Tailwinds any more, but she's been spotted at Okeechobee, so he'd like me to take him there instead.
This was a change from the previous diversions I've had. Until now, I've had to plan the diversion whilst completing the flight to the original destination. But today, we didn't need to carry on to Tailwinds - we just had to head directly for Okeechobee. I chose a nearby road junction as a set heading point, and began planning. Once the planning was done, I manoevred (not very elegantly, it has to be said!) to overhead the junction, and turned in roughly the right direction. Then I looked at the instrument panel to check the heading... but wait, something's not right. Why has the AI toppled??? I checked the vacuum guage, it was reading zero. I checked the annunciator lights, and the vacuum light was on.
I quickly scanned the entire aircraft to see what my instructor had done to disable the vacuum pump. But he hadn't done anything - we had experienced a genuine vacuum failure.
The attitude indicator was now useless, so we covered it up. The RMI and HSI are vacuum-driven, too, but they are electrically slaved off of the flux detectors in the wingtip. Given time, they will find the correct heading automatically - the gyro is only there to keep them reading correctly during a turn. So I was still able to use them, but only with extra caution, especially during turns.
I started heading for Okeechobee, and got some way before inadvertantly entering IMC. I was wondering if my instructor would do this to me, given the vacuum failure - but he did, and I had to work with it. I ran through all the standard checks, and continued the flight under the foggles, partial panel. I got several fixes, made appropriate heading corrections, and when I took the foggles off I could see Okeechobee a few miles ahead of me.
So far so good! We moved on to an engine fire (I forgot to check the heater/defroster was off, but it was ok apart from that), and then stalls, steep turns, unusual attitudes, VOR tracking and so on. Then I had another engine fire. This time, after running through the checks, my instructor started coughing, as if he was breathing in thick smoke! I got the hint then - once again I'd forgotten the heater/defroster. But he'd made his point, and I recovered from the emergency descent without having to do the PFL.
We headed home, and did a normal and a flapless landing, before taking the Arrow to maintenance to have the vacuum pump fixed.
During the de-brief, the instructor only had very minor points to make. His main comment was that he could see that I was in charge, which is exactly what he wanted to see. I only let my captaincy slip once, he said, and that was on the steep descending turns. He asked me to reduce the power to idle, set up a glide descent, and then turn at 30 degrees of bank. So I did exactly what he said. But he didn't say it needed to be done immediately - as captain, he wanted me to clear the area ahead and below me first by making a couple of small turns. Other than that, I did everything at my own speed, and did everything pretty much correctly.
I think I'm ready for the test tomorrow. It still seems only a very short while ago that I was really struggling. But today's flight, although not perfect, was very close. The vacuum pump should be fixed by tomorrow, and hopefully, as long as the weather holds out just a little longer (there's some crap to the north-west right now that I'm hoping doesn't come this way) tomorrow will also be the day that I peak.
FFF
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PS - In case anyone else was wondering what I did on my day off, I'll tell you that this afternoon, after the practice check-ride, I went to finish what I'd started. And, as of this afternoon, I now have an Airplane (sic) Single Engine Sea class rating on my FAA PPL
