Passed our commercial check rides today. Warning: Long post ;-)

We passed our commercial check rides today on St Patrick's Day. It
was probably with a bit of luck from an 'old Irish man', John Morrow,
our affable instructor based at Kingston, NY.

It was a long day with us leaving home at around 7am to fly from
Dutchess County airport in Poughkeepsie NY to Columbia County airport
in Hudson, NY for the check rides. The dual oral exams lasted over 3
hours with Rick and me taking turns answering questions and going
through our cross country trip plans. The most notable questions were
ones regarding recognizing dehydration and motion sickness symptoms
from passengers. I learned that one of the symptoms of motion
sickness was that of the passengers looking down instead of looking
outside.

For the cross-country planning, back in my primary training, I
used to laboriously fill out long cross country forms with check
points, winds, headings, distance, VOR radials, and estimate time en
route. This time I only printed out the AOPA flight planner and DUAT
information. We had the AOPA flight planner information for both VFR
and IFR. We explained that even though it was a VFR trip, since we
are instrument rated, we would bring along IFR information for sudden
weather change. For the AOPA enroute map, I drew in important
waypoints, obstructions, areas to watch for such as Kennebunkport and
important frequencies to call. I told Doug that we typically used
our hand-held GPS to monitor our route but with our Lowrance being in
the shop, I had to mark some check points on the map. While enroute,
I would make check the time to get the landmark and the distance to it
to cross check winds aloft information. We also showed Doug copious
DUAT printouts on weather, NOTAMS etc. along with surface analysis,
winds aloft charts, text etc. I told him that I also checked for
TFRs. He seemed to be satisfied with our planning.

We also took turns taking the practical tests first in our
Cardinal FG then in the DE's Cardinal RG totaling 3.3 hrs. We
finished the practical tests at around 6:15pm and did not get home
until after 7pm.

It was windy and gusty all day which made 8's on pylons a
challenging task. Doug Stewart, the DE commented that it felt as if I
was doing a lazy 8's looping up and down trying to keep up with the
strong wind. Next was the chandelles which had been one of my weaker
maneuvers due to lack of muscle power to keep the nose up but I
managed to get the stall horns blaring and did not drop the nose near
the end. The lazy 8's had been my favorite and best maneuver but I
messed it up a bit by pitching up too steeply in the beginning. Doug
asked me to repeat the lazy 8's and seemed satisfied with my second
try.

Next were the 720 degrees steep turns which had been my worst
maneuver. During practices, I tended to loose altitude in the left
turn and to gain altitude in the right turn. With concentrated
effort, I tried to lock on the horizon using just enough muscle power
and a touch of power. The way Doug wanted us to do the maneuver was
to transition to the right turn immediately after the left turn
without any pause. I caught my own wakes in both turns and was
surprised when Doug said it was a nice job. Next, he asked me to do
the power off stall and power on stall during a left climbing turn.
These maneuvers were over quickly and uneventfully since the
Cardinal's stalls were quite docile.

The reverse was true for the next maneuver which was slow flight.
I had never had any problems with slow flights before. Today was
clearly not a calm day with AWOS reported winds varied 330 to 010 at
around 13 or 14 gusting to 22 or 24kts but I had done slow flights in
similar conditions without much problem. Not sure whether it was my
nerve or not but I felt like I had botched the maneuver by not able to
lock in the airspeed and gained some altitude at the end, but Doug
seemed satisfied and did not ask for a repeat.

Doug asked me to spiral down around a waterfall and a tall tower.
I started the spiral a bit early and was off the one side of the tower
but managed to complete 3 turns and lost around 2000' which brought me
to airport pattern altitude.

With the airport less than 2nm away, I was told to enter the 45
for left down wind runway 3. Doug said I could do whatever approach
that I liked. I glanced at the windsock and found that it had
momentarily stopped flapping about like a crazy cat's tail and decide
to go for a full flap, short field without telling Doug of my
intention. After the touch down at just past the number, I raised
the flap up to 10 degrees, pushed everything in for a touch and go.
Doug told me to abort and head for the next exit. He said it was a
very nice short field and told me to taxi back for a short field take
off following by a soft field landing. I was kind of in a trance
and just followed the order, I sort of remember holding the brake
while pushing in the throttle, doing a left wind correction during
take off, executing a Vx to clear obstacles following by Vy. I did
not even remember whether I had looked at the windsock and just
concentrated on maintaining center line, dropped all the flaps down
for slow speed then added a bit of power before touch down and kept
the power in and the nose up while exiting the runway. Doug said
something like 'beautifully done' and told me the last landing would
be a soft field take off following by a precision 180 degrees power
off approach. The soft field take off also went well with me staying
in the ground effect for a while then pulling up for a Vx up to about
half the runway length before lowering the nose for a Vy. I don't
think Vx is required for soft field but recalling one of my
instructors had stated that it would be a good idea to think of soft
field also being short field.

The last commercial maneuver to do was the 180 degrees precision
approach landing. This had been my 'forte' as Rick often said.
However, I had some apprehensions about doing a power off approach in
gusty and windy crosswind condition. I tuned in the AWOS and vaguely
remembered something like wind 010 at 13kts gusting to 23kts. I had
discussed my concern during the oral exams and Doug said something
like if your engine failed, you did not have a choice. So I thought
to myself, what the heck, I would just do whatever needed to get the
plane down at the right spot. I pulled the throttle to idle abeam the
1000' marker, retracted the 10 degrees flap (which I normally used in
down wind to slow the slippery Cardinal down), trimmed for 85mph
glide, turned base a bit early to have plenty of altitude. On final,
sensing that I was high, I dropped 10 degrees flap, trimmed the nose
more up to slow down. Over the number, I was still high so I dropped
in 20 degrees flap then immediately regretted it. The headwind had
reduced significantly and the descent rate became much faster. I kept
the nose down to maintain airspeed and stayed in ground effect until
getting 10' or so from the 1000' marker. With a touch of flare, I got
the plane to kiss the ground smack on the marker. Doug exclaimed
"Your guys are just too much. Rick touched down on the marker too".
Guess that our flurry of practices the last two weeks finally paid
off.

The last part of the check rides were to fly the complex
portion. Rick went first and struggled a bit in the first pattern
since he had not flown the RG for months. With the check rides
schedules got pulled in early from Thursday to Monday due to weather
and the last minute notice, we just barely had enough time the night
before to plan for the cross country trips and totally forgot to
review the RG power settings etc. We also left the sheet of paper
with the settings at home. When it came to my turn, luckily I had
found a shortcut to memorize the numbers; the manifold pressure
settings were roughly 2 inches higher in the 200 hp RG vs. our 180 hp
FG. The first landing was a go around with imaginary deer on the
runway. The real deer was sleeping in the nearby bushes waiting for
twilights for their daily runway crossing game. I completed the next
two patterns and landings showing Doug that I remembered when to
retract the landing gear and when to lower it doing GUMP checks at
least twice in the pattern (down wind and on final).

Doug said that he had to hurry back to the office with a lot of
typing to be done. I told him that I knew the typing would not be on
pink slips since the cleaning lady had thrown all of them out. Doug
had a big laugh from the joke because earlier on why waiting for Rick
to complete his tests, I had wiped all the muddy tracks in his office
with some paper towels and water. Doug had joked before my flight
test that he could hardly wait to tell his girlfriend how I had mopped
up his office and yet he still gave me a pink slip.

After handing out our temporary commercial certificates, Doug
gave us a brief briefing. He said that we had similar weaknesses. We
both forgot to do a passenger briefing. During our primary training
days, we were drilled to give a passenger briefing on pretty much
every flight. After over 700 hours each and flying mostly with each
other, we only performed this briefing with passengers who were new to
flying. I don't recall whether I gave a passenger briefing to the DE
during my instrument check ride. It was indeed a serious omission
especially for a commercial check rides. Next were our chandelles and
lazy 8s. He said we both rolled out of the turn a bit late in the
last part of the chandelles, and forgot to push the nose down when
rolling out on the 180 on the lazy 8's thus gaining a bit of
altitude. He said the 8's on pylons were acceptable because we both
knew what we were supposedly to be doing in spite of the windy
condition. We both did the steep turns beautifully. About the
stalls, he said that Rick did not push the nose down firmly enough
during the power on stall and almost got into a secondary stall. He
did not comment on the slow flights probably because they were just
passable considering the mild turbulence. He also told us that if we
were to fly a complex or a new plane, we should review all the numbers
etc. Although Doug had said nice things about my landings, the
egotistic part of me wished that he would have commented us again to
balance the unflattering parts of the check rides. Oh what the heck,
he gave us the white slips, what more could we ask for? ;-)

I have no intention of changing my day job to aerial spraying,
banner towing or bird chasing. Getting the commercial pilot
certificate is just a part of my continuing aviation education. It
was a way to get us to sharpen our skills, to fly smoother and with
more precision. We definitely will not continue our weekly practice
of commercial maneuvers. Our next fight will definitely be an
instrument approach practice session. We have not done one in at least
a month. Once we feel that we are back to our previous instrument
skill levels, we will try to improve our lazy 8's, chandelles, steep
turns, slow flights and various kinds of approaches again. We many
never achieve perfection but trying is part of the fun.

Hai Longworth