great!!
Can't wait to see the checkride report!
Haha yea I suppose that would be in order.
We were originally supposed to start at 8 Saturday morning but the examiner called Friday and bumped it to 9 because she had just finished flying a Conquest out to Florida and back. I finished up all my XC planning to Colorado City (T88) and headed to bed. Woke up the next morning and drove all over Lubbock looking for a donut shop with kolaches(sp?) because that is apparently the fastest way to her good side. After that I arrived at the flight school about 8 to recheck the weather for the XC. Everything looked good and she got there about 8:45. We started right at 9 and man was I caught off guard by the oral. We were only in there for about 1.5 hrs but spent what seemed like a lot of it talking about her trip in the Conquest and everything else with the occasional question about me and the oral. I'm sitting here thinking okay, now we are about to get into the grilling oral I was expecting, and she tells me to go preflight. ?!?!?! Alright!!! Made it through the hard part with no problem!
While we were doing the oral the winds had picked up to about 22G30 and I didn't want to have to worry about fighting that for something this important. So she went to run some errands while I waited to see if the winds would calm down. They never did so we rescheduled for Tuesday at 8.
Tuesday FINALLY arrives and I show up to discover my plane has developed and oil leak from the quick drain valve over the weekend and EVERY mechanic decided to call in sick on the same day.
Louie, the owner of the school, decides that he will send it to the FBO around the corner to get it fixed. They get the drain changed out but discover why it was leaking in the first place, there were little steel wire rings that were causing it to leak. After a good hour of what are these and why are they in the oil they determine that they most likely were in the funnel when someone added oil without cleaning it. They cut open the oil filter to make sure it was clean and decided the plane was okay to fly. I make extra sure they fill out the logs and taxi it back to the flight school keeping a close eye on the oil pressure. So we're finally ready to go at about 12. We take off and begin the cross country, get the the first checkpoint and divert to Crosbyton. Once all of that was finished up we moved into the hood work and do all of the fun things with that. While we were doing that she tuned to a VOR and told me to track to it and Iget the plane turned and heading that way. Then I get to thinking, something really doesn't feel right here. DOH!!! I'm tracking away from the VOR.
I say real fast I"M GOING THE WRONG WAY and immediately turn to head towards where I need to be. She told me that I was lucky to say that when I did because she was about a second from busting me on it. Whew. So naturally we did ALOT more VOR stuff and since I now had my head out of my butt it all went great. Finished up the rest of the maneuvers with no problems at all and headed back for my normal, short, and slip to soft field landings. I could probably not make three landings like that in a row ever again. Every one of them was glass right at the captain bars. We then taxied back and, after giving me one last joking hard time about the VOR issue, finished up all the paperwork.
It was definitely one of the most informative, frustrating, fun times I have ever experienced.
Sorry for the book but it was a long few days.