Stage Check Two
Stage checks scare me. It’s a test, and no one wants to fail a test. I had put a lot of myself into the training thus far, and after my stage 1 failure, I was fearful that I would fail every stage check at least once.
To recap, stage two focused on a bunch of things: performance takeoffs and landings, navigation, cross countries, night flying. I’d have to demonstrate everything other than the night flying, because the stage check would occur during the day. When I finally finished all of stage two’s required flights, Troy sent a note to the powers that be that I was ready for the stage check. This needs to be done in a timely fashion, because I’m blocked from moving forward, specifically on solo cross-countries, until I’m signed off on stage two.
Luckily, the stage check got scheduled quickly, with the oral happening on a Friday morning and the flight the next day. The instructor for the oral portion would be Mark, and the flight would be Natalie, the same person who did my stage one. I was instructed to prepare a flight plan to KHQM - Hoquiam, the same airport Troy and I flew to in our dual cross-country. On Friday, I was up early to get the latest weather to use for my flight plan, and headed to the airport. Mark met me and we grabbed a briefing room. Mark is a tall, easy-going guy who is clearly nerdy about flying. My type of guy. We started the oral with me showing him my flight plan. We cross-referenced the plan to a paper chart. He asked me about the various symbols on the chart. Then we looked through the math of the flight plan. You have to calculate wind correction angles, magnetic variation (it turns out that magnetic north and true north are about 1300 miles apart, and depending where you are on the planet, the correction you apply to the true course changes. Check out “isogonic lines”), ground speed, fuel burn, and estimated arrival times at each checkpoint. The math is fairly simple, and I knew this part cold. Maybe too cold, as Mark told me afterwards that I was over-volunteering information, which is a bad habit to get into ahead of my actual checkride. We then dove into night flying issues and then some of the health factors. Did you know there are four different kinds of hypoxia? I didn’t this day, but I do now. Fun fact: the kind of hypoxia you normally think of, where there’s not enough oxygen in your lungs, is called “Hypoxic Hypoxia”. Seems a bit redundant and unoriginal. Mark also was the first person to tell me about Windy, which is a ridiculously cool website, even if you’re not interested in aviation.
I passed the oral with little trouble. The next day, I came in for the flight. I knew what to expect. We’d go fly the first couple waypoints of my flight plan to HQM, then we’d do a diversion, then I’d do the performance takeoffs and landings. I was pretty nervous about those, as I didn’t feel like I was an expert in them yet. That said, I was told the standard is broken down into three parts: your approach (the right speed, stabilized), the touchdown, and the rollout. If I did 2 out of 3 well, they’d pass me. I was pretty sure I could do that.
Natalie and I took off to the south where I hit my timings and waypoints more or less correctly. When we were about 3 minutes past Auburn (S50), the 3rd waypoint, she told me that I had an electrical problem (simulated), what would I do? I went through my troubleshooting steps. She told me that unfortunately none of those worked. I said I’d put in the ground ASAP. “Where?” she asked. Well, we just passed Auburn, let’s go there. I quickly figured out a heading, an estimated time of arrival, and a fuel burn, and we headed back to Auburn. Once we positively id’d the airport, Natalie instructed me to start going through the landings and takeoffs. They actually went pretty well. She coached me through the soft field takeoff, and let me do it twice. My short field stuff went pretty well, though my touchdown on the landing was a little long. In short, it all went much better than I expected and I passed this too.
I had an airplane booked for 3 hours the next day, assuming that if I passed and the weather held, I could go do my first solo cross country. I didn’t think about it too hard, not wanting to jinx myself. But now that I passed, I could look forward to actually going places by myself! Stage three, the final stage, was next.