In the past, I've never had problems with Friday the 13th. In fact, in recent past, they've been good days. Not this time, however. I started off early in the week by asking the accountant at my office if I could get a check to pay for the checkride. Normally, our instructor pays the $300 checkride fee ($250 for the examiner, $50 for a cool plaque of the license), and then bills my company for it and they reimburse him. Not this time. He didn't have the cash so I had to hit up the company first. No biggie, they gave me a check Thursday. I'll just get up Friday morning, stop by the bank on the way to the airport, cash the check and all is well. Or so I thought.

My company used to use Bank of America (the McDonald's of banks...one on every corner), but recently switched to City National Bank of Florida. I saunter into my branch of Blank of America, wait in line, and endorse the check so I can cash it. Oooops!! Skank of America can't cash the whole thing because, even though it's a corporate check, it's not on a Crank of America account and they can't verify the amount. Yeah, I can't cash a check for $300, but 4 tellers down, some butthole is cashing a personal check and getting "$1000 in 50's and $1000 in 20's..." Go figure. What now? I need all $300.

Well, I needed to stop by the office to make some quick photocopies, so while there, I ask the accountant where the closest City National branch is. She calls her contact and, unfortunately, there's not any branches north of the office, on my way to the airport. The closest one is 2 miles back the way I just came, but I need the money so off I go. I find it quickly, thank goodness, and they easily, without any bullshit whatsoever cash the check and I'm on my way. Bad thing is, it's 9:55 AM and I'm supposed to be at the Lantana airport, about 20 miles away, at 10:00. Oh joy.

Well, after breaking a few traffic laws (everyone else was too), I make it to the airport and pull into an open parking spot at 10:15 AM. Great, this is really looking bad. My instructor is shaking his head at me as I walk up to the little gazebo on the ramp side of the terminal where the "oral" will take place. Mickey, my instructor, just looks at me and says, "I thought this was at 10:00" and I just snap back, "My bank wouldn't cash the check so I had to find a City National branch." He just nods and says "Remember what we went over last night?" I hope so.

Thursday night, another of Mickey's students and I meet over at his house to go over what will most likely be asked in the oral. Mickey knows the examiner real well, and has a good idea of what he'll ask. Plus, Mickey's wife (who used to be one of his students) took her oral with Fred as well and she knew what he'd ask. So, over the next 2½ hours we went over every little speck on the sectional chart so that we knew what each little thing was. Now, it's time to put that knowledge to the test. Needless to say, I'm nervous as hell. Fred Joss, is the DPE (Designated Pilot Examiner) and he's a rather big guy. On top of that, he's an attorney and he goes over our applications with an eagle's eye. Three times he grimaces, hands my application back to me and says "That's wrong." Since Mickey was helping us fill out our forms the night before, he'd come over and help us find what we missed. After that, the oral started.

I wanna start off by saying that Fred is a great guy. Even though at times he was tough and at times he made faces like we were wasting his time, he was very patient with us and many, many times would crack jokes to try and keep the mood light. Everyone who takes their checkride is nervous as hell and he knows it. Since there were two of us, Sandra was the other student, he took turns asking us questions. At first, I started off shitty. I could study aviation weather for a week straight and on Friday still not know shit about it. I don't know why, I just can't grasp it. So, of course, the first set of questions were weather related. After stumbling blindly through them, I started picking up and nailing everything asked to me. Even answering quite a few of Sandra's questions. After the oral came the flight planning stage and we had to split up.

Basically, we each open our Miami sectional charts to the same area and hand Fred our plotter. He draws a straight line from one airport, to another airport, to a third airport, and then finally ending up at a fourth. He tells Sandra that he wants her to plot the course starting at airport #1 and so on to #4. He gives her wind direction, weights and altitudes. Then the marks the same 4 courses on my chart, but wants me to plot them in reverse order #4 to #1. He gives me weights, altitudes, and wind direction and speed. I head off to a nice air-conditioned room and plot my courses, double checking everything. Then, I dig around for the weight and balance information on the Katana and figure out if we can even fly in the damn thing or not (we can, but according to the data, we're way over weight). Then I wait...and I wait some more. I hate waiting.

After waiting about 30-45 minutes, they call me over, lay my chart out and he starts quizzing me. "What's your heading from here to here?" I check my flight planning and read it off to him. One of my courses takes me directly over a restricted area and he says "Can you fly through here?" I expected this and had checked it and I reply "As long as I'm above 4,000 feet, I'm legal." I think I kind of caught him offguard with that one. But then, he asked me, "If you need to contact anyone, who would it be." The chart said ZMA center, but I had no idea where ZMA was. He then proceded to point out various things on the chart, highlighting things, circling things and asking me what they were or what they meant. I answered all of them, I think, correctly. Then I did a stupid.

He said "You and Kitty are here", and draws an X near Ft. Lauderdale executive airport and then, "and she wants to go all the way down to Key West at 700 feet and not talk to anyone. Can you do that?" My problem is that I tend to answer before I've fully examined the problem. I say yes, but the answer is no. Key West is class D airspace and you have to contact the controller. So, after that embarassment, he asks me 4 VOR questions, all of which I tank. Then it's time to fly.

Without a word, Fred tells me to "go pre-flight the Katana", and I run over and get started. Bad move. My chart didn't get put back into my flight bag and this will turn around to bite me. As I'm preflighting the plane, Fred walks over and begins to worry. He's never flown in the plane before and he's worried about all of our weight. Just as I'm ¾ through with the preflight, he says he'd feel much better going up in Mickey's 150. Shit. I was hoping this wouldn't happen. I spent the past 3 days flying the wings off the Katana, and now, I have to go up in a plane I haven't flown for about 3 months. Arg.

We get the 150 started and I start taxiing to the runway. As we go Fred and I talk about my family and stuff. We get to the run-up area, and after a bit of worry over the engine, the gages start reading what we want so I take off. I'm supposed to do a short-field take-off, but he said "We're not going to use brakes, we'll pretend." A short-field t/o is done when you're not sure you'll have enough runway to get up to speed. You align yourself with the runway centerline, apply brakes and then add full power. Basically sitting in one spot revving the engine. Then, as the RPM's build, you let off the brakes, kind of like the catapult on and aircraft carrier. Problem is, I didn't use any flaps...and you're supposed to use flaps. That becomes a non-issue later.

As we head to the practice area, Fred quizzes me on a few things and then pulls the throttle all the way back, says "You've lost your engine, what are you going to do?" I verbally go through the checklist of pitching for best glide speed, looking for a suitable landing spot, and so on as I do them. I haven't really picked a spot to land, but started turning so as I get to "troubleshoot the problem" he interrupts me and says "You've lost me. Where are we going? Where are you landing?" Damn, he caught that. Thinking fast, but not fast enough, I look down and see 441 below me and say "the highway". Wrong answer! You never land a plane on a road, if you can avoid it, especially a busy highway. So, after taking the controls, he points out the grass runway directly beneath us and then tells me to land. I get to about 500 feet when he says to go around. So, I didn't do too bad, but it wasn't the best either. I've got to improve on this.

When we first started off, he told me to get my chart out. Oooops. I don't have it. Ok. Then he tells me to get my "foggles" out. They're the view limiting device we use to simulate instrument conditions. Basically, all you can see is the instrument panel. You can't see outside the plane. Oooops! I don't have those either. So, I'm not starting off too good, and then I pull the stunt of heading for the "highway". This isn't going well.

As we gain altitude, Fred tells me to turn to an easterly heading, whatever is comfortable, and do a steep turn to either direction. Once, E reaches the top of the directional gyro, I bank the plane over 45 degrees and hold it as we make a big circle in the sky. I started out at 1,250 feet or so and ended up a little above 1,000. Dropped over 100 feet, well hopefully he won't be to strict on that. The limit is +/- 100 feet. As I roll back out on a heading of east, Fred turns the yoke the other way, indicating he wants me to go the other way and I do. But I'm not paying attention and we're diving. We're ½ way through the turn and I've already dropped 400 feet. Damn. Fred takes over, and heads us out west, into the practice area. He lines us up over a straight section of canal and says "I'll do one S-turn to the right, you'll do one to the left and to the right." Now, this I can handle. Our altitude didn't drop a foot and I rolled out wings level right over the canal on each turn. Finally, I'm doing something right.

After that, we did slow flight. Fred slows the plane to 45 knots at 1,100 feet and says, "Hold this altitude and this airspeed." Which I do. He then tells me to turn south. I very gently turn to the south. At such slow speeds, with a high angle of attack and (usually) high power settings, if you turn too sharp, you'll stall the plane and get into a spin. Very dangerous. You have to be gentle and careful, and baby I was gentle. We then turn back the other direction. Then Fred calls for a power-off stall. No problem, I'm already slow, I just pitch up, keeping coordinated with the rudder pedals, and wait for the buffeting of the stall. But, instead of recovering, I hold it there, hanging on the prop until Fred tells me to recover. That impressed him. We do a couple more maneuvers and then head back and Fred lands the plane. Unfortunately, I already know I've failed.

Once we're back on the ground Mickey starts asking me how I did and when I tell him I failed, he asks what I did wrong. I start listing things. Fred adds a couple more, but Mickey talks to him about them later on and gets them straightened out. Like not using flaps on the short-field t/o. If you have an object you have to clear, then you can do the t/o without flaps. When all was said and done and I had received my pink slip, all I have to do is steep turns again becuase I lost too much altitude, and the basic IFR stuff that I couldn't do because I didn't have the "foggles". So, I'm going to go for a couple of quick flights with my instructor and then re-test. And luckily, all I have to re-test over is the stuff on the pink slip. Turns and IFR. No problem, baby!! So, another 20 minute test flight and I'll be certified baybee!!! Life is good I guess.

So, yeah, I was disappointed at failing, but I'm not alone. Even Fred the examiner, who's been a CFI (let alone Private Pilot) for 6 more years than I've been alive got pink slipped the first time. He told Mickey that I was a safe pilot, it was just too many "small things" that I did wrong at the beginning. And dropping 400 feet in steep turns didn't help. But get this. He wasn't going to fail me, but he couldn't really, in good conscience, pass me until we'd done the IFR stuff. And I don't want my certificate handed to me. So, one more quick flight and I'm official.

Anyway, that's why I haven't updated since Friday. I started the exam at 10 AM and got home about 4 PM. It took all day and I was beat. Then Saturday I lazed around and Sunday we went to the in-laws for Easter. I had to work Sunday night and then yesterday I was lazy. Plus, even though it doesn't bother me that much, I was kind of bummed about failing for a while. But, it's over and I know what I need to do. So, wish me luck.

Now, if I can just figure out this fuckin' web cam I bought, life will be grand.