My Flight Journal

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 7:24pm

Last night I met with a guy that just took and passed his checkride last week with the same DPE I'll be using. I figure I should use every advantage I can get.

Did 2.0 of dual today, and that'll be my last flight before my checkride Friday morning. I tried to do the same initial flight path I expect from the DPE. Started out on my XC to FMY with a short-field takeoff. Made sure I knew where the turns and class B shelves were. Aborted that over Lake Apopka to do slow flight, stalls, and steep turns for a bit. Steep turns weren't all that great at first, but after a few repetitions they were clicking.

From there I flew to Orlando Country, and did a few T&G's there. There was a direct 90 deg crosswind (washing over the pine trees that line the first 1/3rd of the approach end, no less). Did acceptable landings. On the second one, right as I was flaring into the landing, I reached a point in the runway where it drops down a few feet. Ended up landing a bit hard on that one because of that.

Left there and made straight back for SFB. Did a bunch of short and soft field landings till I felt pretty confident I could put it down where I said I would. There was a Bald Eagle soaring around at about 600ft on the approach path. Was pretty cool to pass him each time around. He even dropped in behind us once and chased behind our wing for a few seconds. Wish I had my camera.

Tonight and all day tomorrow will be just relaxing and studying - not at the same time I'm guessing. Then I gotta get up way too early for a human being on Friday to go get examined.