Did my stage check today with another CFI. Pretty windy today, but everything went great.
Start off going over the flight plan I did the day before. Questions parts of it, why did you choose that altitude, how did you come up with X, stuff like that. Went over the sectional and quizzed on air space, symbols, etc. Then down to the plane for the flight.
The flight starts off on the flight plan, then we deviate from it to go cover some other things. Once he's confident I'm on track and my timing is pretty accurate, he takes controls, hands me the foggles, and then gives me the controls back. Fly with those on for about half an hour or so. Making turns, climbs, descents. He makes me do a TON of turns to get me disoriented and far away from the track I was on (and away from where I can easily see landmarks I know). Then lets me take off the foggles and we simulate being lost and what I would do. Grab the sectional and look for landmarks that might show up. Between a high point on the chart and a road/railroad nearby I found where I was easily and estimated it on the chart. He verified it with Foreflight and I was damn close just by eyeballing it. So did good there.
Then we head back to the airport to do the performance landings (short field and soft field). It's blowing harder now, 17kts gusting to 20. Pretty far outside what I'll be permitted to go on solo for now, but with the CFI it's fine. First landing he asks for a soft field. Did ok, but when I was holding the nose off I ballooned up a bit. Not great...
For the next take off we did a soft field take off. And now for the short field landing. With the wind at me and 20 degrees off my left, he said "let's see if you can hit the number and stop before the first turnoff". The first turn off is right past the 1,000 footers. So in essence, land and stop within 1,000 feet. I've never tried that before. But, came down, NAILED the landing dead center on the number (runway 8) and stopped the plane within 500 feet. It's was cool as hell to see that I could do that!
Next are the solo cross country flights. What SUCKS is I got bumped from my plane on Monday for a student that is going to take his check ride. So I can't fly again until a week from Tuesday. But I'm confident everything will go well. I can't wait to go back up.