BAK exam.

Well, I arrived at the airfield about 30 minutes early, to find the a/c
tied down ready to go.
Sky was overcast, but no rain, and visibility was easily 10k +.
Today was a dual session, with the intent to knock off some of the as
yet uncovered training. We started out with a normal take off, and
circuit, with a short field landing to a full stop on the runway. We
used 17, although there was practically no wind to speak of.
Taxyed back to the runway, and did a short field take off, and repeated
the previous circuit with short field landing. Nothing to comment on so
far, except to say that on the second one, I nailed it right where
instructed to, so I was pretty happy with that.
Taxyed back again, and another short field take off. This time out into
the training area for a few steep descending turns. During the first
one, I was a little too gentle on the rudder, but subsequent turns were
much improved, until by about the 5th one, they were as they should be,
and we headed back to the airfield, after rolling out of the last steep
turn right on course.
Maintained 2500 on the way back towards the field, and after checking
the sock on the flyover, descended to 1000ft on the dead side to join
crosswind, and flew the circuit to a nice normal landing on 17.
Total flight time was only 0.7 today, but it all adds up. Refuelled the
a/c, and put it away in the hangar.
Once back in the office, I was told I needed to think about my BAK
soon, to which I replied that I wanted to do it now.
I was given a pen, and the exam, and locked away.
50 multiple choice questions, with 70% (35 questions) being the pass
mark.
I went through and answered all the questions I was certain about
first, and left all the ones I wasn't sure on for a second look after.
Before I did the second run though, I counted up all the questions that
I had answered confidently, to see if I had already answered the
required 35 correctly. I was disappointed to find I had only answered
33 questions, meaning I had 17 questions that I was unsure on, and I
HAD to get at least 2 of them correct in order to pass.
The second run through yielded about 8 more answers, with a third run
through only getting another 4.
This left me with 5 questions that I really had no idea about.
Unfortunately, these were all questions relating to things like
magnetic variation, and true heading tracks and such things that I had
not covered at all, as I have not yet done any nav training. 1 of them
even asked about formation flying limitations. Strange considering there
is no such endorsement for ultra lights apparently. I certainly never
saw ANY reference to it in any of my texts. I pretty much guessed these
last 5, and hoped for the best.
I left the exam room not feeling very confident at all.
We went through the questions with the answer sheet, and by the end of
it all, I had 40 correct answers, giving me an 80% pass. The incorrect
ones were the last 5 I mentioned, plus 5 mixed throughout the questions
I did in the 2nd and 3rd runs. All the 1st run answers were correct.
There were 2 that when I explained my reasoning for my answer, I was
told that yes, I was correct, based on the fact that the questions were
not worded completely correctly, but I was happy to still have them
marked as wrong. I may have been reading them a bit too literally.
So, it's another dual session next week, to do advanced stalls, which
covers stalls in a turn etc, then 2 hours solo, then the flight test.
Total time now 20.4.

Crash Lander

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I'm not always right,
But I'm never wrong!