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It is as Gann titled a book: 'Fate is the Hunter.' You should not worry about the friend to beat, or the government minimum standard to meet; this is a long game of solitaire. You must not stop if you have beaten the other student or have passed a test. The real exam will come when you are alone.
Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with the saying, "The way of the sage is to act but not to compete." Sam showed me that we should blend with the energy and flow of the universe to make the perfect flight, not butt heads and compete in false contests of ego.
There may be few visible flying competitions -- especially outside the military and college crowds -- yet pilots create tremendous internal competitive pressures. To solo in ten hours, to make the flight without turning back, to make the runway the first time. We can turn flying into a competition. Unfortunately many make the completion standards way too low. People pass the flight test, then relax and get complacent. We may compete with the sky, or the operating manual, or a friend -- instead of working with them.
The only real test will come alone. Maybe in the dark. Certainly unexpectedly. You might fail the test before you even know you are sitting an exam. In controlled flight into terrain accidents -- CFIT is the industry term -- pilots fly a perfectly good airplane into the ground and don't even know what hit them.
Talking with an NTSB investigator about human nature one day, he mentioned that the most dangerous thing he know of to a new pilot was a video camera. The pilot feels the almost irresistible need to show-off, to look not just competent, but great. Consider the F-14 going vertical (up then down) while the (proud then horrified) parents filmed below. Or the C-150 buzzing the girlfriends house then stalling. Showing off in front of airshow crowds has wasted a perfectly good Airbus airliner and a B-52, along with lots of lives.
The video camera can kill you -- and a bunch of innocent Italian skiers enjoying a nice day in the mountains. You have to resist the pilot ego. Make your way to be the quiet controlled pilot who does not show off. When others (the boss, the passengers, ATC) or yourself (your schedule, your pride, your ego) push you to go faster -- you go slower.
We know it unconsciously. The panicked pilot is frantic, rushing out of control. The commanding captain of the ship has the deep slow voice. He or she has time for everything. They have mastered the routine giving them the time to look at the big picture. During one flight with Sam when I was rushing to do everything he reached over and smacked me on the shoulder. "Relax or you will die all tensed up," he said. You can do more by going slower.
U.S. airline captains, in addition to simulator checks and recurrent ground training, have to have a 'line check' at least once a year. A check airman sits in the cockpit and observes a normal flight. Very few people fail line checks, but the possibility is there, and everyone wants to look good to the examiners. It's a follow-every-rule-exactly-by-the-book kind of an event. A couple of years ago, at the end of a four-day flight sequence, I had a line check flying from Chicago O'Hare to Madison, Wisconsin. (Smart check airmen choose short flights that get them home in time for dinner.)
Thanks to a sharp first officer and good weather the line check went well. As a courtesy I offered the Puerto Rican check airman the left seat for the flight back to O'Hare, but he preferred to sleep in the passenger cabin. We taxied out on time only to hear from ATC that O'Hare had a ground hold due to traffic, and that no estimated takeoff time was available. Arghh. We pulled to a stop on the only convenient taxiway, and shut down an engine to save gas. We talked to the flight attendant. We talked to the passengers. We waited.
Parked with a tailwind, ATR aircraft have an occasional bad habit of giving an amber caution alert 'NAC OVHT,' meaning that the engine nacelle is starting to overheat. You change the airflow over the nacelle (by say bringing the 13-foot propeller out of feather) and the caution normally goes out in 20 seconds or so. No big deal. We knew we might get this alert sitting with a tailwind. We sat together in the Wisconsin sun, the three normal occupants of an airline flight deck -- captain, first officer, and boredom.
In the calm warm cockpit we heard an aural alert. I put the yesterday's USA Today newspaper down to deal with the NAC OVHT caution. But if it's a nacelle overheat why is the red engine fire handle lit up? Strange, that sounds like the fire bell. Engine fire? Engine fire! I slowly struggled through the syrup of clichéd confusion.
Simulator training and mental review reasserted themselves. The first officer was fully aware. We called out the 'Engine Fire - Ground' checklist from memory like a couple of drill sergeants. It started weird because the checklist expects you to be taxing, but we were stopped with one engine shut down. However we worked the problem. Soon I was firing the explosive squibs that release halon gas into the engine to starve a fire of oxygen. My crew were evacuating the passengers. I was talking on the radio to gentlemen in bright yellow trucks wearing silver spacesuits. I fired the second shot of halon gas. The (as it turned out very small) fire finally went out.
Entering the empty cabin, a captain alone on a crippled ship, I saw the rows of seats were not quite empty. The check airman was sitting in the back row. Grinning. "You never know when the real checkride gonna happen."
He was right of course. It was not my real test, but it was a wake up call. None of us know when the real test will come. I doubt it will happen with an examiner -- or a got-to-impress-girlfriend -- watching me in the right seat. It will come alone.