Skills Test

I was supposed to take my skills test this Tuesday (4th), but it got moved to Wednesday due to some problems with another plane. The plane in question was in a field... after an emergency landing. So I arrived at the school and plotted the route, which was Sheffield VRP to Drifield then to Louth.

We set off and headed towards Driffield, it went badly wrong, I was about 10 degrees left of track, I ignored what my di was telling me and headed towards the power stations where Goole should have been, wrong power stations ... DOH!

I realised and corrected by flying east until overhead Goole and then resumed the correct track, I was a little off track when overhead Market Weighton, at which point I was asked to divert to North Moor, which is just south of Scunthorpe, I plotted the line and headed south checked the 3 things and couldn't see it, after a few orbits I realised that we were directly over head it, which made me feel both better and stupid !

We then headed into Sandtoft for a couple of circuits which went well, apart from the first landing as I was a little slow and there was one heck of a crosswind, the second landing was spot on. We then climbed out of the circuit and did a engine failure after take off, basically just pick a good field, which I did then carried on climbing. I performed two stalls, the approach stall and a clean stall, both worked quite well. Then it was the forced landing, again I used an unorthodox method to descend, but it would have worked and as the CFI said, if your engine fails you need to land, how you land doesn't matter providing you do it as safely as possible.

Then it was steep turn time, first one went okish, lost a little too much height, but then did another couple, 1 to the left another to the right and they worked well, then it was a flapless approach into Sheffield which went well, very gentle landing.

Taxied to the appron and was told that I had passed!!!

You can only imagine how relieved that I was and how elated, so much more than when I passed my driving test.

Only thing left now is the comms practical, which is booked for Tuesday lunchtime.