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Scott,
Every time a CFI sends a student to the
examiner, the pass or failure is counted against that CFI. A CFI who has
too many failures loses his license or has to do retraining or something.
I’ve got to agree about helicopter
student pilots. They’re accustomed to weird airport departures and
arrivals.
You should look up the procedures for
missed approaches for traffic. I seem to recall that there’s a
procedure – something like paralleling the runway to the right side so
you can keep him in sight (or is it the left side?). At any rate, you
have to go to full power and climb out as soon as you see the conflict whether
the incursion is a helicopter, a C-152 or a B-747. Your CFI will help you
research and clarify that detail.
It’s good to practice missed
approaches. It’s good to have your CFI surprise you at various
stages of the approach so you are used to doing a missed approach at any point.
Too many pilots get fixated on landing. I’ve done it and been
chewed out for continuing the landing over the top of another plane that was
taxiing.
You can always go around. (Well,
there are a few exceptions but you shouldn’t be allowing them till you
are really good. i.e. mountain airports, bad weather.)
Practice those crosswinds. A 10 kt.
direct crosswind should be no sweat. You should be practiced enough that
a 15 kt. direct crosswind is no sweat. Practice it up to the demonstrated
crosswind component of the aircraft – my vague memory says a C-172 is 16
kts or something. Get comfortable with it. Your Coupe will be much
easier in a crosswind than the C-172 – in the Coupe, with a strong
crosswind, you just land in a crab, nose high and a light touch on the controls
so the nose wheel can swivel. It’s more complicated in the C-172
but you CAN master it.
Finding where you are after the hood work –
confirm your location with three (3) landmarks. If there’s a town
down there check three different roads on the map in relation to the
town. Then cross check it with the next town looking for three landmarks.
Or, if allowed, be comfortable with using the GPS or VOR to confirm your
location. Let the examiner see that you are using three landmarks to
confirm the location then cross checking it. You start by guessing, but
then you confirm.
The sooner you binge on this final
training, the less expensive it’ll be. Stretching out training is
the most expensive way to do it.
You have successfully done the hard
stuff. Practice it all again and again and go for it.
I GUARANTEE it’s worth it!
Ed Burkhead
http://edburkhead.com
ed -at-
edburkhead???.com (change
-at- to @ and remove "???")
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