BlueLine
Those comments certainly make sense. I want to enjoy my skill test rather than dread it approaching. My FI has told me just to treat it like another flight with him. A friend of mine took his test last autumn and said he just scraped through. Instead of being a highpoint in his aviation training, he was on a real downer afterwards and didn’t fly again for several weeks. I’m feeling more relaxed about being able to do all the things I need to during the test, so as you say, the best time to ask any questions about the conduct of the test itself, will be on the ground during the flight brief. Thanks for that.
Saab Dastard
Glad to hear you nailed the PFL 2nd time out. From talking with PPL’s at my club, it seems to be the one thing they all dreaded and often fluffed during their skill tests. I suppose the answer is to practise it until it comes more naturally, so I’ll be trying to do that over the next month.
Miserlou
What you said really rang true last week. My FI took me on what he said was a difficult Nav route, which he had done during his commercial training. One of the waypoints was hidden in a tiny valley amidst hills. Although my track and time looked good at the halfway point, there wasn’t much in the way of ground features after that. With 2 minutes to go all I could see was hill after hill and I really thought I had gone seriously wrong somewhere. It wasn’t until I orbited at the ETA that I saw this small village underneath me. That really showed to me the importance of maintaining an accurate heading. I was quite surprised I found the place, but my FI says I really need to stop putting myself down so much, as I’m pretty self critical after my training flights.
Whirlybird
Well, I have learned to do the checks out loud and no-one has ever told me not to. I find it’s a good way of reaffirming what I’m actually touching, moving etc, so I guess I’ll take your advice and just keep doing things the way I have done during the test. I also found myself talking my checks out loud to my FI during my solo circuit consolidation flights (even though he was a thousand feet below me on the ground). A bit worrying, but at least no-one was there to hear. A fellow student told me about a time he had forgotten to release the PTT button after calling downwind and had then gone on to utter some obscenities i.e. "right. let's get this
landing nailed this time or my FI will cut my
off"..... Apparently no-one who had heard him could keep a straight face when he came back into the club after landing. When he found out, he was mortified.
Sorry for length of this post, but I wanted to reply to everyone who had taken the time to offer feedback. Thanks again
Paul.