CPL Diary?

[Miektila]

Firstly, I would like to congratulate FFF for his first time CPL pass.
FFF has impressed me with this post, it is informative, well written and will be a valuable resource for other CPL candidates.
The diary has left you with no illusions about how much effort is required to obtain a first time pass. The ability to fly an aircraft well and accurately is not enough to pass this licence. By the time you start the CPL course you should be almost capable of performing all thats is required on the course. The skills learnt at PPL level should have been honed and refined during the required hour building and new skills learnt from the ATPL writtens and various other ratings should have also been incorperated into your resume of abilities as a pilot. However, as FFF grew to learn and has pointed out in his diary, all these skills need to be utilized, developed, performed to a high standard and placed under one hat, the Captains hat.
It was very satisfiying to see FFF change from the 'accomplished' private pilot, to the 'I need to get the hang of this!' student pilot and then eventually develop into the 'I am the Captain' Commercial Pilot.
However, unlike the rest of you who sat eagerly awaiting the next update of the diary, I already knew what was going to be in it, although it was only towards the mid/to end of his course that I actually started reading it. Yes, I am the spiteful sod who kept pulling the power on him. I was the annoying 'photographer' who always wanted to go somewhere else. I was the poor Instructor who had to put up with FFF's self induced unusual attitudes, his attempts to PFL into tennis court sized swamps and ignore the perfectly good fields/private strips that I conviently pulled the power over, his bizarre 'Bermuda Triangle' position fixes and the X-wind landings that will take me years to pay for the dental work I required after. ---Ha ha, he knows I am only joking!
Joking aside, FFF did very well on the course, this was mostly due to his attitude towards flying, his continued effort throughout, his ability to accept critique without sulking and his open self assessment of his mistakes.His candid self assesment allowed him to identify most of his mistakes and acertain why he made them. The other mistakes I pointed out and/or explained. There was only one lapse in this, when we did the initial IMC position fixing, when his fixes were inaccurate he thought it may have been the instrument or the navaid that was wrong. I took over the flying whilst he made a position fix, resulting in a perfect fix. So, Navaids work, Instruments work, FFF inop. The need to repeat part of a lesson only occured once, this was not due to a lack of learning or understanding, it was because he needed practice in multi-tasking whilst in a difficult situation- i.e. flying aircraft and maintaining instrument scan whilst tuning/identifiying navaids and accurately fixing his position. However, after an hour or so of practice we were fixing positions like we had a GPS! (hmmm- mental note to self-check students flight bags for hand-held GPS's).Importantly, he learned from his mistakes, analysed what I said to him, sat down and thought about it and came to the next lesson with a determined yet positive attitude.
I take my students performance in any Skills Test very personally, so after over two hours of pacing like an expectant father, no one except perhaps FFF was more pleased or proud when the very nice gentleman in the loud(ish) shirt, stepped out the aeroplane and gave me the thumbs up, closely followed by a beaming FFF.

So, once again, congratulations to a well deserved and well earned CPL, I shall raise a toast to you from the bottle of whiskey you kindly bought me, (all future students take note!! ; ) .
It was a pleasure flying with you and I wish you the best of luck .
Happy Landings,
PK

p.s. Keygrip, I never taught him runway 9, he picked up that bad habit on his own.

p.p.s. My last act as your instructor- What are the runways at KOBE???