I got to the Old T's late but Liz was still patiently waiting for me. She chatted with me a bit during preflight, informing me that she has a habit of writing things down throughout the examination -- it can appear ominous, but she writes good things down as well as bad.
The winds today were unusually strong -- 18 gusting to 26 at Oakland. Despite this I never used any sort of crosswind takeoff procedure; it had simply slipped my mind. Liz would ding me for this later. A fire in the San Jose hills blanketed the South Bay with smoke, visible even from Oakland. The wind was coming from a very unusual direction, 160 degrees, so I got clearance to runway 15.
We took off for the Mt. Diablo practice area where Liz had me do some simple hood work holding headings an altitudes. My ability to maintain an altitude has clearly gotten rusty, but it was within standards so she didn't note anything. She had me do some steep turns and other basic maneuvers over Livermore and south of Mt. Diablo. We climbed well past 6,000 feet, the highest I'd ever been in a club aircraft.
Liz had the most issue with my stalls. Stephen had apparently never taught me to keep my hands off the aileron, and it was my habitual use of ailerons for correction that was causing my stalls to be so ugly. It took several stalls to work it out of me, but by the end I had nearly kicked the habit, and I was using strictly rudder coming into and out of the stall.
Periodically Liz would tip her attention down to scribble a note on her kneeboard. I know she had said earlier that she writes both good and bad notes, but you can't shake a subtle feeling of failure each time she does it, like you're being "written up" for some infraction you made.
Next came the unexpected (but unavoidable) simulated engine failure. I had remembered what Stephen told me about making my turns as if I were flying the pattern. I picked a landing spot right alongside I-5 and began pattern turns as I lost altitude. Liz, however, did not like this approach. She later insisted that I should position the airplane at the 45-degree entry point and make tight circles there, so that when I reached pattern altitude I simply had to fly the base and final legs. This is completely different than what Stephen suggested, and I felt like I was being pulled two ways. Now, frankly, if I really do have an engine failure at high altitude, I'll have no idea which of the two strategies to use.
With all our altitude now gone, Liz had me set up for ground-reference maneuvers. First was S-turns along a country road out east of Mt. Diablo, then turns around a point. The point in this case was a large gray barn. With the wind so strong, my corrections were very obvious, and it was clear to Liz I knew how to perform the maneuver. Flying so low to the ground on a hot day meant the plane was constantly buffeted by strong turbulence. My stomach can usually handle turbulence just fine but this was trying even for me.
Next we headed to nearby Byron Airport for patternwork and landings. This was a very unusual experience: The wind was over 20 knots fast, and shooting nearly straight down the runway. The result of this is that the plane came into land at basically a crawl -- I felt like I could hover the plane at a standstill above the runway, the wind was so strong. Another airplane without a radio was in the pattern with me: Watching him land was like watching a helicopter land, inching excruciatingly slowly to the touchdown point.
Liz had me do some soft-field landings (short-field landings weren't really necessary with the wind; I was able to stop the plane in only a few hundred feet anyway). She critiqued my pattern as having gotten sloppy. Although the unrelenting wind and turbulence was partially to blame, it's true I've started cutting corners on my base and final legs.
Following that we returned to Oakland. I had to climb up above the mountains south of Diablo to get a signal. Cresting over the peaks, I was greeted by an East Bay shrouded in low-level clouds. I was worried, but Liz had me listen to the ATIS one more time, which remarked "few clouds" over the airport. Liz assured me that this meant that while most of the Bay was covered in this marine layer, the airport, at least, was clear enough to land at.
So, I weaved between the clouds on my way to Oakland, picked out the 27R runway, and landed. Liz remarked my crosswind landings were perfect. Lots of practice, I guess. I taxied to Kaiser and refueled alongside a Decathlon painted in stunning shades of blue and green:
I wouldn't immediately call the livery beautiful, but it was certainly a refreshing change from the usual yellow-and-black scheme. Parked nearby was N612SP, Stephen's personal aircraft, and he had his head inside the cockpit. We walked over to chat with him a bit. After I left to fuel the plane, Liz had a private chat with Stephen, no doubt about my strengths and weaknesses.
I took Liz and I back to the clubhouse where she went over her thoughts, point-by-point. It was a lot to take in, so I asked her for four or five things I should concentrate on for my next two solos, to improve my checkride performance. She gave me her top picks, and I wrote them down. I have two solos to iron out these bugs, then it's checkride time.
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