Getting Prepared

I flew again yesterday. It was mostly review for the checkride, which was awesome. I have to prepare a flight plan for the check ride. I don’t actually know where I have to plan it to, but the flight examiner will tell me in advance and then I’ll plan it and bring it with me. This plan will then be utilized for the beginning of the checkride. We’ll fly to my first point, then do some maneuvers. These will include stalls, steep turns and ground reference (probably turns around a point). After that I will do some flying under the hood and then after doing that for a while, I will take the hood off and have to determine where I am and then fly back to the home airport. At the airport we’ll do some performance take-offs and landings and then it will basically be over. He may actually pull the power out while in the pattern and make sure that I make it to the runway. That can be challenging if you don’t act immediately. But the 172 has a 9:1 glide ratio, so I can glide 9 feet forward for every 1 foot I drop, which means if I am 1000 ft above the ground (pattern altitude), I can glide for 9000 feet. This about 1.75 miles, so I don’t have a lot of room to work with. Of course, when you turn you lose more altitude, so I’ll have to make an immediate turn for the field and hope that the wind doesn’t pick up. Crazy right?

So, yesterday I did the following:
Flew from Eagle Creek to Metro to pick up Nate
Took off from Metro north
Stalls – power on and off
Steep Turns (they are looking better!)
Performance TOLs. I think I have these pretty much down now.
Ground Reference Manuevers – S-turns and turns around a point. These are difficult because you have to change the angle of bank on the wings in order to keep a constant distance from a point.
Normal Landing at UMP
Fly back to Eagle Creek

It was good. Another day or so of this and I’ll be ready.
Totals:
Solo 0.9
Training 1.4
Landings 7