Fredbob711
Pre-takeoff checklist
So, over the weekend I had a mock checkride to help prepare for the real deal. Overall it was pretty tame, the instructor was someone I'd only talked to a handful of times and had never flown with. He initially told me it should take about 2-3 hours total for the oral and practical. And of course he was going to grill me on everything in excess of what a DPE would do that way the actual would seem simple by comparison.
So we started around 1 PM, and we go through 3+ hours of back and forth, a small amount of BS'ing in there. Actually a DPE came in with a student for his actual checkride about an hour into our mock oral and left before we were done. The only thing I didn't do well on was weather, specifically fronts and pressure systems. So I get to review that with my instructor.
We finish the oral and go to see if there is a plane available. But first I have to check the weather because there are thunderstorms forecast for the area that evening. The briefer says we should have about an hour and a half of good weather in the area. So I go in, and we get the keys to one of the school's 172's, one I haven't flown in since probably October because my usual is being used by another student. But hey, a 172 is a 172, I'm just not familiar with the avionics which he understands.
So he watches as I do preflight, he approves of everything I do, including not removing the tie-downs until preflight is complete. I blanked and had to look up oil requirements in the operating limitations, but he was ok with that. He gave me a couple suggestions on the preflight (leaving the engine access open so I remember that I need to verify oil level, etc.) So we get in, I give a very abbreviated safety talk since he already has his seatbelt on and off we go.
We do our runup at the hold short and everything checks out. We wait a minutes or two for a couple planes in the pattern to land (one of them being the above checkride student), and then he tells me to do a short field takeoff. I pulled back on the yoke a bit abruptly and chirped the stall horn on rotate, but otherwise had a good takeoff.
We flew off to the practice area, towards the thunderstorms that are coming in so we know it'll be an abbreviated flight. We do slow flight, power on & off stalls, steep turns, and then he has me put on the foggles. We do unusual attitude recoveries, he gave me a couple pointers on that then gives me a couple headings and altitudes to fly.
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Here comes the fun part. As I'm flying along under the foggles, I have a general impression of where we are, based on where we started and the headings we've flown, but I'm not entirely positive. Then out of nowhere I start to smell something, and it smells terrible. My first thought is "it wasn't me, was it him?" which I quickly realized wasn't the case because it wasn't that kind of smell. My next thought was "what in the world are we flying over?" And then the smell intensified so I spoke up and asked him what the smell was. He paused for a second and then said "I have the controls, take off the foggles." Oh crap. He then gets on the radio, "Smartt Airport, skyhawk 12345, coming in for immediate landing, suspected electrical fire". Oh ****, but I'm feeling oddly calm, probably because there was someone with so much experience in the plane with me and no smoke or visible flames. I waited for him to finish that transmission and then shut off the master & avionics switch as instructed. He proceeds to shut off each individual component of the avionics stack and flips back on the main radio only so we can make sure everyone stays out of our way. He dumps the flaps in case we have to shut off the master again or we lose power, and drops the plane from about 800' directly above the airport onto the runway for a pretty nice landing.
We shut down completely once we're off the runway and the FBO sends out a line guy with a fire extinguisher in the cart. Thankfully the extinguisher wasn't necessary and we got towed back to the FBO.
Talking with my instructor inside, he said I did very well on the oral, just need to review the weather stuff. And the practical portion (what we got done) I did very well. During the emergency he said I did the right thing by immediately asking if the master should be shut down and remaining calm throughout. Though he was tempted to have me finish the landing when he realized there wasn't any immediate danger.
So I'm meeting with my regular instructor this week for some ground review on weather and we're going to go up for one or two flights and then hopefully get my checkride scheduled.
So we started around 1 PM, and we go through 3+ hours of back and forth, a small amount of BS'ing in there. Actually a DPE came in with a student for his actual checkride about an hour into our mock oral and left before we were done. The only thing I didn't do well on was weather, specifically fronts and pressure systems. So I get to review that with my instructor.
We finish the oral and go to see if there is a plane available. But first I have to check the weather because there are thunderstorms forecast for the area that evening. The briefer says we should have about an hour and a half of good weather in the area. So I go in, and we get the keys to one of the school's 172's, one I haven't flown in since probably October because my usual is being used by another student. But hey, a 172 is a 172, I'm just not familiar with the avionics which he understands.
So he watches as I do preflight, he approves of everything I do, including not removing the tie-downs until preflight is complete. I blanked and had to look up oil requirements in the operating limitations, but he was ok with that. He gave me a couple suggestions on the preflight (leaving the engine access open so I remember that I need to verify oil level, etc.) So we get in, I give a very abbreviated safety talk since he already has his seatbelt on and off we go.
We do our runup at the hold short and everything checks out. We wait a minutes or two for a couple planes in the pattern to land (one of them being the above checkride student), and then he tells me to do a short field takeoff. I pulled back on the yoke a bit abruptly and chirped the stall horn on rotate, but otherwise had a good takeoff.
We flew off to the practice area, towards the thunderstorms that are coming in so we know it'll be an abbreviated flight. We do slow flight, power on & off stalls, steep turns, and then he has me put on the foggles. We do unusual attitude recoveries, he gave me a couple pointers on that then gives me a couple headings and altitudes to fly.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Here comes the fun part. As I'm flying along under the foggles, I have a general impression of where we are, based on where we started and the headings we've flown, but I'm not entirely positive. Then out of nowhere I start to smell something, and it smells terrible. My first thought is "it wasn't me, was it him?" which I quickly realized wasn't the case because it wasn't that kind of smell. My next thought was "what in the world are we flying over?" And then the smell intensified so I spoke up and asked him what the smell was. He paused for a second and then said "I have the controls, take off the foggles." Oh crap. He then gets on the radio, "Smartt Airport, skyhawk 12345, coming in for immediate landing, suspected electrical fire". Oh ****, but I'm feeling oddly calm, probably because there was someone with so much experience in the plane with me and no smoke or visible flames. I waited for him to finish that transmission and then shut off the master & avionics switch as instructed. He proceeds to shut off each individual component of the avionics stack and flips back on the main radio only so we can make sure everyone stays out of our way. He dumps the flaps in case we have to shut off the master again or we lose power, and drops the plane from about 800' directly above the airport onto the runway for a pretty nice landing.
We shut down completely once we're off the runway and the FBO sends out a line guy with a fire extinguisher in the cart. Thankfully the extinguisher wasn't necessary and we got towed back to the FBO.
Talking with my instructor inside, he said I did very well on the oral, just need to review the weather stuff. And the practical portion (what we got done) I did very well. During the emergency he said I did the right thing by immediately asking if the master should be shut down and remaining calm throughout. Though he was tempted to have me finish the landing when he realized there wasn't any immediate danger.
So I'm meeting with my regular instructor this week for some ground review on weather and we're going to go up for one or two flights and then hopefully get my checkride scheduled.
