No, I didn't pass my checkride

Let's get that out of the way right now. I failed my checkride. I will have to do it again.

I arrived at the airport extra-early, giving me time to update my weather briefing and finish up my "homework." Stephen showed up shortly thereafter, and we left for Santa Rosa early to do some last-minute patternwork at the Santa Rosa airport. Stephen arrived with bad news about the airplane, though. Since this is a public blog, I won't go into details, but basically, I was left with two choices: I could be 100% perfectly legal, but take a course of action which would add unnecessary difficulties to my checkride ... or I could skirt the law a little without risking my checkride performance. Given that the risk was very minimal and I wasn't doing anything immoral (like cheating on the checkride or such), I ultimately decided to take the former course.

We departed IFR even though the sky was clearing up. Oakland's radar is out of service today so they constantly ask you where you are to keep track of everyone.

Stephen showed me a few things I could expect when I pursue my IFR certification. As we climbed through the thinning cloud layer, he said, "Your 0.1 hours of IMC is about to begin." The airplane passed through the clouds in a matter of seconds. "Your 0.1 hours of IMC is now over." Quaint.

I arrived at Santa Rosa and entered traffic for 19, where Stephen had me do some touch-and-goes. I feel like my soft-field landings are fine, so I made all of them short-field. They got progressively better and better. When we were satisfied, I landed, refueled the plane at the same place I sprained my ankle, and brought it to the Sonoma Jet Center.

We had initially planned on getting a lunch, but with only 30 minutes until my checkride, Stephen suggested we just wait in the lounge. So I bought a snack and passed the time, waiting for Steve to show up.

He did around 1 pm. Steve is a talkative fellow who has a habit of going on long tangents, making it hard to follow his train of thought. He brought me into a room where he finished up my paperwork, then had me retire to his office to begin the oral exam.

The oral was straightforward and easy. I got a few questions wrong here and there, but on the whole, it was clear I had done my reading. Steve was satisfied. He then spent a short time talking about a person's inability to judge his own actions. He mentioned a pilot he flew with today, who, during the oral, had sworn up and down he was a careful and safe pilot, but when the checkride came, ignored warnings that could have compromised his safety. He used this as an example: You can say you're safe, and you're attentive, but your subconscious mind has an interesting way of conveniently missing key pieces of evidence when it doesn't want to believe. The trick to really being a safe pilot is to be able to step back and realize when you're purposely convincing yourself that everything is fine.

It sounded straightforward at the time, but as I now know, saying is easier than doing. If you read this blog entry to the end (foreshadow time!), you'll see how his advice couldn't have come at a more fortuitous time, for I myself will have fallen victim to this same trap before the end of the day.

He watched casually as I preflighted the plane. We entered the aircraft together and he gave me a bit of a pep talk, then had me depart the area. I was nervous, and it was obviously preventing me from thinking straight, but I told myself to focus and take things one step at a time. It seemed to help.

We departed runway 14, and as I was climbing, I realized I hadn't prepared myself for the fake cross-country flight at all. Steve noticed this. "So ... what navigation are we using for this flight?" he asked.

"Umm ... dead reckoning," I said, while I scrambled to find my flight plan in my kneeboard. I took it out, unfolded it, and read off the first heading: 120. I turned to 120 and continued climbing.

"Excellent. You're on course and you're climbing to altitude. That's all I need to see: It tells me you can do dead reckoning. Now show me VOR navigation."

OK, my mind switched gears rapidly. I tuned, identified, and twisted the Scagg's Island VOR. He told me to use Santa Rosa instead. This got me mixed up and I turned the wrong radial in, but eventually I noticed my mistake and corrected it. This is all he needed: If you make a mistake, it's fine, so long as you correct it. Saying that you know you did it wrong isn't good enough. You have to make it right. (You can guess why I'm being so emphatic here...)

So, at 3,500 feet, he had me do slow flight. No problem. Stalls? Fuggedabout it. Steep turns? Well, I made a mistake with the trim wheel, but in the end I managed to salvage it, and I think I was within parameters the whole time. Either Steve didn't notice or didn't care, because he said my airwork was great.

He then had me divert to Petaluma. I dialed it into the GPS. He said GPS navigation is like "fish in a barrel, but it's equipment in the plane, so you can use it. Would have been nice to see you find your way using a sectional, but still ... There's a GPS in the plane, you can use it. End of story."

Over Petaluma he told me he wanted to see that I could make a safe entry into the Petaluma pattern. Stephen had always told me to overfly the field at 500 feet above pattern altitude, but on my last checkride Liz said I really should be doing it 1,000 feet above, so I overflew the field about 1,000 feet above the pattern altitude. I noted the windsock, picked out some traffic, and then began my descending turn to enter a right 45 for runway 29.

Petaluma was particularly busy today, so much so that the radio was a constant stream of chatter. I turned the wrong direction to enter my 45, and I was rushing it, so I made it very close to the field. Steve was listening intently to the radio and looking all around the airplane. Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed: He was scared. He knew I was coming up on another plane (heard the other guy over the radio) and I didn't, and he was scrambling to find that guy before it was too late.

I made a shitty turn to enter the 45, and since it was in the wrong direction, I was too close to the field, completely in the wrong place, and since I wasn't listening to the radio, I had no idea that I was coming right into the path of another airplane.

"Maybe I should have made a left turn," I said. This was it. This was the last moment I could have saved my checkride. Had I fixed it, instead of saying it, I would have gotten another opportunity. But since I continued my right turn, Steve drew the line.

"Climb to 2,200 feet immediately and depart the area," he said. Either I didn't believe or didn't want to believe that this was the moment my checkride ended (or my subconscious mind was choosing to ignore the evidence), so I simply followed the instruction as if it were part of the test.

"Look behind you," he said. I did. Another Cessna was passing behind us, uncomfortably close. "You cut him off! I was listening to him over the radio, I knew he was coming right for us. I was hoping you heard him too. You gotta stay sharp around uncontrolled airports, they're very dangerous. And you were right. You should have turned left -- why didn't you? I don't mean to pick on you, I really don't ... this is a learning experience."

Steve has a way of going off on tangents that made it seem less bad than it was. When he launched into another story, I settled back, still believing the test was on. He had me return to Santa Rosa, where he said we would practice short and soft-field landings. I found it odd that we weren't going to go to Petaluma after all, but I just put it out of my mind rather than think about the implications.

Back at Santa Rosa I demonstrated my ability to work in controlled airspace, and got my landing clearance. Steve told me we'd be doing some short- and soft-field landings on 14. He asked me to make a short-field landing for my first one. I did so, and it went well, and the plane touched down without a hitch.

"Alright, take me back to the Jet Center."

It still hadn't gotten through my screen of denial, the implications of this statement. "I thought we were doing touch-and-goes?"

"You didn't pass the checkride. You know this." I guess on some level I did, but now every fiber of my body knew. He continued talking, leaving no pause, no opportunity for these words to hit me upside my head, and it worked somewhat. I brought the plane back to the Jet Center, already telling myself that it's done, there's no sense going on with the woulda-coulda-shouldas ... it's already over.

"You know," he continued, "it's somewhat luck too. If that plane hadn't been there, and you had made the mistakes, you'd have gotten your license. I would have said, 'Now, Tim, what you did back there was unsafe and I'd strongly recommend you brush up on your pattern entry skills,' but you would have gotten away with a warning. It's just bad luck there was a guy there. He scared me, and that's the end. Your examiner gets scared, checkride over."

We secured the plane and Steve went in to debrief Stephen. I collected my things (and myself), and made my best effort to not cower in front of Stephen's aura. I sat and listened to the debrief as professionally as I could, and tried not to look at Stephen's facial expression.

Once Steve had finished up, I apologized to Stephen for adding additional paperwork. "It's all part of the game," he said, though I detected some insincerity.

Stephen and I prepared to depart back to Oakland and call it a day. I was to schedule one more lesson to practice entry into uncontrolled airfields, then another checkride. As we walked out to the plane, I asked him: Why not do the practice now? I still have the plane for a few hours. He said sure.

I started the airplane's engine when an attendant for the jet center tried to get my attention. "He wants you to cut the engine," Stephen said. I turned the ignition switch to off. Stephen shook his head. "That's not how you shut down the engine," he said, pulling the mixture back to idle.

The engine stopped and the attendant began to reach beneath the plane to remove the chocks. As he did so, the engine sputtered back to life momentarily, and the propeller made a few more swipes through the air, then stopped. The attendant quickly withdrew his hand.

"What did you do?" Stephen screamed at me. "You nearly killed that guy!"

I immediately removed my hands from the controls. "I didn't touch anything!"

"Tim, calm down, take a breath, and do it by the checklist. Let's get out of here." His words stung, and I struggled to maintain composure while restarting the engine and departing the field.

"Are you sure you want to do this lesson?" Stephen asked, concern in his voice.

"I don't know. Let's go to Petaluma for starters and see how I do."

"Alright."

Stephen had me fly to Petaluma, where he talked me through an entry into the pattern. I overflew the field at 1,000 feet abovve, and Stephen said I really should do it at 500 feet above. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Petaluma was still very busy, so it was difficult to squeeze my way into the pattern, but I managed to nonetheless. I made a poor landing, and the airplane bounced its way down the runway.

"So where to now?" I asked. "Gnoss?"

"I'd like to go back now," Stephen said. Since you don't argue with your instructor, I simply complied and took the plane back to Oakland. On the way back, as we passed over Berkeley, I began to think about what Steve had said, about complacency and ignoring evidence. It was at that time I noticed I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. This is about when it all fell together: I was exhausted, and it was impacting my performance. To you, the reader, this might have seemed obvious: I nearly killed someone starting the plane, I made a terrible landing at Petaluma, and I couldn't even keep my eyes open. But to me, I had no idea I was worn out until this very moment, because I was ignoring the evidence. I had a mental picture in my head, and having a picture in your head is so powerful that your subconscious will discard any evidence that works contrary to that picture.

Steve was right -- you can say this sort of stuff to a pilot... You can ask him on the oral what he would do in this situation and he would immediately say, "I would turn back and land. It's unsafe to be flying when you're that fatigued, and I put safety first." And you know what? He would believe it too. He would believe that, faced with that situation, he would make the right choice, and put safety first. Everyone does. It's not until you actually are faced with that situation, like I was just now, that you realize: Making that choice is harder than you'd think. It's an easy choice if you're given all the evidence, but your subconscious mind has a nasty way of withholding evidence you don't necessarily want to see.

While the thoughts pertinent to this epiphany were raging through my head, I said to Stephen, "You were right. I am worn out. I should have just headed back."

"I'm glad you realize that now."

We talked a bit about this sort of complacency, and Stephen's general opinion is that it's impossible to know yourself so well that you can make these kinds of decisions with total accuracy. The best you can do is try, and hindsight is always 20/20. I got my landing clearance at Oakland, made another shitty landing, fueled the plane, and returned to the Old T's.

Another day. For now ... I feel like people at work really miss me, taking all this time off. With so many aircraft down for repair, it's basically impossible to get a time slot that's not 3 weeks in the future, so my "finish-up" (as Steve calls it) might be a little while yet. A break would be nice, and some time to convince people at the office that I'm not completely off the map.

But I haven't given up yet.