I've decided to slow down. I was pushing to finish up and do my checkride by Jan 26. Losing 4 days last week for personal reasons, and now not having quite as much daytime flexibility as I had hoped due to work obligations, plus with the unknowns of weather and DPE availability, it's just too much. I was stressing myself out, and that leaves open too much possibility for screwing stuff up.
So the new plan is as follows:
1 - Tomorrow night, finish up night training. It's supposed to be pretty windy during the day, but calming down into the evening. If it doesn't settle down as expected, that's ok, we'll postpone.
2 - Thursday afternoon, phase check with Dan. I'm thinking about rescheduling this for next week since I haven't practiced maneuvers at all in the last 5-6 weeks since I've been working on cross-country stuff. That would give me time to get in a little solo refresher time.
3 - Friday 2 pm, take the written exam. I took another test last night when I was sleepy, hot and not feeling well, and got a 90. I was alarmed during the test because I got several questions I had never seen before, not even the topic areas! But I'm good to go, have my "reread-just-before-test" list of facts, and just need to get some sleep.
388 will be MIA for the first two weeks of February, so I'll be planning to do my pre-checkride prep flights when it returns and then the checkride soon after. That gives me this week and next week to work in some solo prep flights in a non-rushed fashion.
Use the two weeks the plane is gone to start work on the oral prep! It's one thing to know the answers to a finite set of multiple-choice questions; it's something entirely else to have mastered material that you can cogently respond to an open-ended oral question.
ReplyDelete(Ask me about the air traffic controller who did a joint-oral exam with me and couldn't explain to the DPE the purpose of land and hold short operations....*gasp*)
Good call to slow down. Consider it a real-world test of "Aviation Decision Making" (AC 60-22), by evaluating external pressures which might lead you into make the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.
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