Stage Check One
Training to become a private pilot is typically broken into three stages. Stage 1 is learning how to fly the airplane and the basic maneuvers. This includes straight-and-level, climbs, turns, descents, along with stalls (power-on and power-off), steep turns, and emergency procedures. Stage 2 is essentially “advanced” flying, which includes performance takeoffs and landings (soft (i.e. grass) fields, and short runways), navigation, night operations, and introduction to cross-country flying. Stage 3 is preparation for the checkride, which is the final exam, typically administered by a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE), someone authorized by the FAA to test pilots. This model is nice for breaking what could be a long slog of training into more achievable chunks. My flight school, and I assume most others, end each stage with a “Stage Check”. This is a mini-test to assert that you have the skills and knowledge necessary to proceed to the next stage. Successful completion of the stage check enables the big milestones of flying. Passing Stage 1 Check enables you to solo. Stage 2 Check enables you to go on a solo cross country. Stage 3 Check enables you to take the checkride.
It was time for me to take my Stage 1 Check.
I was to meet early on Saturday morning with Natalie. We had 3 hours booked. The plan was about 90 minutes of ground and 90 minutes of flying. Because I’m dumb, I was out the night before having a heavy dinner, and didn’t get great sleep. On the drive out to the airport, I could tell that I wasn’t at my best. I was confident, though, that with sufficient caffeine-drink (i.e. coffee), I would be fine. I hadn’t met Natalie before. She immediately gave an air of seriousness and competence. We weren’t going to have much small talk. We were going to focus on the task at hand.
The ground portion went relatively well. As you can probably tell by reading this blog, I have dived head-first into flying. I have all the books, the apps, the magazines. Not a day has gone by since I’ve started this back in June where I haven’t read the PHAK, or the FAR/AIM or some flying blog. All this made me feel reasonably well-prepared for the oral part of the stage check. Natalie and I talked about how you consider the risks of flying, using the PAVE checklist (Pilot, Airplane, enVironment, External Pressures), the IMSAFE checklist (Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotions). We talked about the required inspections that every airplane needs, the documents you have to have, and what equipment is required to fly. We talked about what would happen if the radios failed. This part went pretty well.
We then went outside to preflight the airplane. I talked her through everything I do when I preflight. As I talked, she’d ask me questions about various airplane systems. How’s the engine work? What’s a flap? I was able to handle all of these questions reasonably well too. Don’t get me wrong, at the same time that I was answering Natalie’s questions, I was learning too. She would point out a nuance that I didn’t know, and that was helpful.
Then we got in the airplane, started the engine, did the runup, and took off. Everything was going well until we got up into the practice area. She asked me to start with a steep turn. This is a turn where you bank the airplane at 45 degrees, do a 360 degree turn, level out, and immediately do a 45 degree banked turn in the other direction. I didn’t maintain speed and lost altitude. I knew it, too. It wasn’t great. The degree of difficulty was higher than normal; this was when there were significant numbers of forest fires in our area, and the visibility was obscured. It made it difficult to get a solid horizon reference. However, I still executed the maneuver poorly.
We then moved into slow flight, which went fine. We transitioned from slow flight to power-off stalls. This was fine too. Then power-on stalls, at which I am terrible. Power-on stalls require you to be at the ready with the rudder pedals for directional control (“to stay coordinated”). This is a case where all my reading and research gets me into trouble. If you do a power on stall, and you don’t stay coordinated, you can go into a spin. Spins are bad. As a result of this fear, I’m tentative. Natalie was a great sport here. She coached me through a couple, and by my 3rd try, I got in a good power-on stall.
From there we went into emergency procedures. Natalie said, “Engine fire, what do you do?” I told her we’d do an emergency descent, and she said, “Let’s see it”. I did it the way I was taught, 20 degree bank, push the nose down. When you reach the correct speed, ideally the fire is out, you level the wings and recover from the dive. I didn’t do this fast enough, and we exceeded the speed by 10 knots, which is reason enough to fail me. Then, Natalie and I had our only miscommunication. My assumption was that this part of the exercise was over, and I was waiting for her to tell me what to do next. She expected me to continue the scenario we had just started. When you have an engine fire, you don’t try to start the engine again. You put the airplane on the ground. She was expecting me to do the emergency landing procedure. Looking back on it, it’s pretty obvious that that’s what I should have done. She prompted me, and then I started that procedure. This went pretty well, but I didn’t use the final checklist to prepare for the emergency landing. Ugh.
We then did unusual attitudes. I put on the foggles, Natalie jerked the airplane around and said “Recover”. Given that I couldn’t see outside, I needed to look at the attitude indicator, and get us to straight-and-level immediately. I was able to recover, but I did it all in the wrong order. On a dive, you have to level the wings first before recovering. On a nose up, you have to get the nose down and put in full power immediately. I was sloppy with this.
Finally, we headed back to Renton to land. We were running late, so we didn’t have time for any touch-and-goes. My landing was probably ok, but Natalie felt I rounded out too late. The net result was that she failed me for the check. She was concerned with steep turns, my emergency descent, unusual attitudes, and landings. She said that to pass, we only needed an hour flight, where I could show her those things again.
Failing the stage check was tough to take. I have put a lot of myself into this. Even through all the different flight instructors, I felt like I was working hard and studying hard. Don’t get me wrong - I agreed with Natalie, I did fail! It just felt like a significant setback. I headed home. I got a bite to eat and rested and thought about what to do next. I had a flight scheduled for later that day with Troy McMillan. After some conversation with Chief Jim, he had assigned Troy to me. I was overly optimistic in scheduling that flight with Troy. I was hoping that I’d pass stage check, and Troy would then endorse me to solo. That wasn’t an option now. I had to decide whether to keep that flight, and ask Troy to help me through the stuff I failed. Or cancel, and deal with it some other time. In the end, I decided to head back and try to hop back on that horse. This was only my second flight with Troy, but he seemed ready to help. I told him what I failed. We went out and went through it all a bunch of times and then came back into the pattern to dress up the landings. Flying again that day was the right decision. I felt optimistic. As soon as we got back in from this second flight, I went to the scheduling computer, and saw that Natalie was available early the next day. I booked it.
The next day at 6:30, I got a text from Natalie. It read, “Rick, make sure the airplane is pre-flighted and ready to go for our 8am departure”. I took this as a good sign. She trusted that part of my knowledge, and we were only going to focus on where I needed help. At exactly 8, we hopped in the airplane and headed to the southeast practice area. We did all the things I failed, and I did much better, though still not perfect. We then went into the pattern at Renton for some touch-and-goes. She gave me some feedback that I was probably landing too nose low, but otherwise, I was doing ok. The end result was that she passed me on stage check. I’m now ready to move into stage 2!
As of this writing, I’m halfway through my stage 2 check, which I’m doing over two days. I’ll fill in all those gaps in future articles, but the spectre of my failures on stage 1 loom large. My stage check pilot tomorrow is Natalie again. I’m looking forward to flying with her again.
Looking back on it, I think I probably wasn’t as prepared for the flying portion of the stage check as I should have been. Since I had so much instructor churn, I had taken over my own training syllabus. I told every pilot that I flew with that I need to focus on landings. I was obsessed with it. This isn’t without reason, because landing is hard. However, I was probably too obsessed with it to the exclusion of maneuvers. I think I had practiced steep turns only one time before stage check. I knew I wasn’t comfortable with power-on stalls, and I did emergency descents once too. The stage check was a good reminder that you need to have a bevy of skills to fly an airplane beyond simply landing.
In any case, stage check one was in the rearview mirror. Solo would be next.