Checkride

A few weeks ago, I met up with a wonderful lady named Rosemary. Her and I went into a room in the back of the school and talked quite a while about what were my privileges and limitations on being a private pilot. Then we discussed the Federal Aviation Regulations for a while. After that,she had me draw up a flight plan to Mineral Wells, TX. She sat there and scrutinize3d my flight plan wan was very impressed with it. We talked for a while about lost procedures, minor emergencies, and what I would do if I had to make a forced landing in the middle of nowhere. Then I got to go preflight the plane, and get ready for showtime. We started out as if we were going to go to Mineral Wells, then she told me the weather was getting too bad and we needed to divert to Sweetwater. After doing my diversion, she told me the weather had just gotten terrible, and we had flown into a cloud. (Out comes the hood, I hate that damn thing). We did some climbs, descents, and turns. I had to track a VOR and do some unusual attitude recovery. Not really any big deal. then, we headed to the practice area for maneuvers. Steep turns were great, then we did stalls. She had me do all of my stalls while turning at 30 degrees of bank. I've never done them while turning. It was really different, but wasn't really an event. We did an engine out emergency and got to scare a couple of cows that were in my chosen landing field. (That just never gets old) After we started to return to the airport, the wind had started to get up, and we decided to call it a day.

Fast forward two weeks. I met up with Rosemary again and we departed for a while to go do some landings. She had me come in and do a normal landing just for me to make sure I was feeling it. I stuck it right where I wanted it to be, and she was impressed. Next was a short field takeoff. I popped that thing into the air and climbed out nice and short, followed with a short field landing that was spot on to the inch! Soft field takeoff, the damn plane liked the runway, and I swear I carried that damn nosewheel a half a mile before that plane finally came up. Soft field landing was a good one. Nice and nose high, touched down right at 50 knots. I was on fire. We headed back to the school and signed that nice little Temporary Airmans Certificate.

It is now official, I'm a Private Pilot!!!