Simulator #9 -- Wow, I really might be a real pilot afterall!

4:39 AM - Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005
Simulator #9 -- Wow, I really might be a real pilot afterall!

It’s with a certain amount of relief that I report tonight that I FINALLY flew this plane as if I deserved my commercial pilot certificate. It’s a good thing – I was feeling like I’d never have a warm fuzzy about going into the checkride. But tonight I felt comfortable with nearly everything. Maybe it really is falling into place?

Tonight’s instructor was originally going to be our examiner. Thankfully that didn’t turn out to be the case -- he’s a hard-ass, and we were immediately grateful (after our first hour’s break during the pre-briefing) that we didn’t have to take our checkride with him! (We knew via the rumor mill that he would be “tricky”). We still may end up with him again in a few more days, but with any luck, when they get the ride rescheduled, we’ll have someone else. He was helpful, more so for me than for Steve, and we both learned a lot. But he’s really a stickler for stuff, too. “High standards” might be a polite way to phrase it? I’m willing to take our chances that we’ll get someone less “difficult” in the future…..

Unfortunately, our future isn’t so certain. Steve had his worst flight ever tonight. I’m not sure why, but it really did suck. And the more it sucked, the more I tried to help him out and pick up the slack, but then Karl jumped all over me for not letting him learn. Great, up until now I’m told by one instructor to “act like a crew, help your right-seater!”. So I do, and then I get nailed for “not letting him learn”. So I don’t, and I let him get into all sorts of muck some days. But when it snowballs for him things get bad for us both, so I try to help just a little bit. But then I get zinged again for “bailing him out”. I even got negative comments written on my training forms by the last instructor for NOT helping him out, not acting like another crew member, and for not knowing what the hell was going on! I knew what was happening but had been told to let him make mistakes! I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t! So tonight I tried to pick up as much slack as I could, knowing that it was our last chance to show that we were ready for our checkride, but it wasn’t really helping Steve. His 2 hours as pilot flying went quickly from bad to worse, and having giant ol’ Karl yelling at us from the back wasn’t helpful. The first time I tried to prompt Steve and try to help him get ahead of the plane (he was still sitting, dazed and confused on the runway 20 minutes after we took off!), Karl whacked my arm and told me to “leave him alone and let him hang himself – that’s how he’ll learn!”. Ugh. Everyone has a bad sim – tonight was Steve’s.

Thankfully, Steve was able to pull it together just enough to not get me into too much trouble when I flew for the last 2 hours. He was obviously frustrated and distracted by his really poor performance earlier in the night, but for whatever reason I was right on tonight. (Thank goodness or we’d have become a smoking crater!) I was not only able to fly really well, stay ahead of the plane for a change, and fly the maneuvers and procedures properly, but I was also able to keep an eye on poor Steve over in the left seat. A few times he just blanked out and did something stupid (or started to) but I had eagle eyes. It was really quite astonishing how I flew tonight – like I’d been abducted and replaced by someone who belongs in a CRJ…. Thankfully, because we’ve only got one more shot to pull it all together. I want this damn checkride behind us – the stress is really starting to take it’s toll.

So, tomorrow night’s checkride has now turned into another training session, in which we’ll both pull it together and prove to the next instructor that we deserve to go up for our checkride. Which they’ll hopefully schedule on our day off so we can just charge through and get it the heck done. As the schedule stands now, we’ll knock out the checkride in the next few days, then get the QLOFT out of the way (point A to point B as a “normal” flight in the sim to teach us about ATL operations) and then we’re scheduled to have about 6 days off before our first real flight “on the line” in the airplane. The longer we take getting this checkride done, the less time we’ll have to go home and relax…..

I guess that what everyone’s been saying is true – there comes a day when it just all sort of falls together. It seems like today was that day for me. May tomorrow be that day for Steve (who suggested he’d actually probably be hanging from the rafters by his sheets come morning)…..