As requested – I arrived at the camp on Monday at 8:30 sharp to begin the clean-up for my checkride. I’d planned to fly until I got tired that day, and get some advanced work in there if I could. Even just repeated flights for practice would be good.
No fog this morning, but also no flight instructor. Dave was to be my instructor for the day, but as I found out later, he had driven over his cell phone while he was out doing other projects. I was practicing patience and hanging out dock-side when the examiner (Chuck Brown) for Charlie’s ride arrived. He saw my Twin Comanche sweatshirt, and we had a wonderful discussion about those airplanes. Nice guy. Animated about the airplane I love at this point.
Charlie and Chuck launched for the local checkride while Brian and I reviewed ground work to prepare me for the oral. We waited to hear from Dave as the morning went by. Killing time, I pumped out the floats again and pre-flighted the airplane. This time I closely inspected the pilots seat, based on Tristan’s criticism that I was relying on the attitude indicator during the landing flare yesterday. He wanted me to use my eyes, but the seat was so low I could only see the panel at the flare. I’m used to this in tail-draggers, so I thought that was normal. For the record – I thought my landings were good, but he saw something he didn’t like. Raising that seat can’t hurt.
Chuck and Charlie came back to clean up the paperwork for Charlie. He had earned his seaplane rating, and is awaiting delivery of his new-to-him Cessna 206 on floats.
Brian and I still didn’t quite know what happened to Dave, so I got to go fly with someone else for practice on Lake Pierce. Moving the seat up nailed it. All my landings were good from this point on. Nothing rattled or wet that shouldn’t be. After the second landing, we heard from Dave on the docks without his phone, so we taxi-stepped back and did some docking practice to exchange instructors and restore the plan.
