As I was saying...

I was so shocked to see that someone besides my wife or Kara actually posted a comment on my blog, that I'm now going to finish my earlier tale of the stage check gone wrong. I'm in a bit of an awkward situation in the flight program, because my flight instructor is the school's assistant chief flight instructor, one of only two people who work on campus who could perform my stage check. Since I flew my long IFR with her, she couldn't serve as my examiner on the stage check (it would look shady). The chief flight instructor is the only other person here who could do my stage check, but he's going to be the examiner on my check ride, so that wouldn't work, either (it would also look shady). What's the solution to this horrible dilemma? Why, ask Dr. Bob to come down from Tucson and fly the stage check, of course! Dr. Bob is the chief flight instructor of our Tucson satellite facility. He took up flight instruction after he retired from his position as CEO of some company (read: old). So Dr. Bob flew down on Thursday morning. I'd only met him one time before that morning, and my first impression of him was that he was very quiet... and old. My experience with him on Thursday pretty well solidified that impression in my mind. He struggled to think up questions to ask me on the oral and, I think because of our age difference, we had a really hard time communicating. He'd ask me a question that I wouldn't understand. I'd give him an answer that he wouldn't understand. Then he'd tell me I was wrong and proceed to give an explanation that I wouldn't understand. It was frustrating.

After an hour, Dr. Bob looked at his watch and said, "We've been here about an hour, right? Let's go fly." So I went out and did my preflight inspection. Everything looked okay (though I admit, I forgot to check the fuel tanks. It should probably be stated at this point that I sometimes flake out pretty badly in stressful situations) so I went back in and told him I was ready to fly, but that I needed to use the restroom first. He said he'd meet me outside, so I ran to the bathroom. When I got outside, Bob had the right wing untied and he was in the process of untying the tail. Since I always untie the wings one after the other, I just assumed that he'd already untied the left wing, as well, since he was working on the tail. Keep in mind I could have just looked at the chain, since it was on my side of the plane and everything. But I didn't. So we got in the plane, I went through my checklist, and started the plane. I made sure everything was up to snuff, then attempted to taxi out of the shade hangar. We got about three feet before there was a horrible sound and the nose jerked hard to the left. Apparently, that's what happens when you don't untie the left wing. A mechanic came running out and made sure the wing wasn't broken, then helped me untie the wing. I started the plane back up and we taxied out to the runway. I got most of the way through my "before takeoff" checklist. In fact, I got to the part where you tune your radios and make sure they're all working properly. I got so frazzled by the thought that I was taking too long, that I forgot to finish the checklist. The only two items I missed were turning on the lights and setting the flaps at 10 degrees. See, a Cessna 182 requires you to have 10 degrees of flaps out when you take off, so you can get sufficient lift. Yeah. I took off without my flaps. I noticed that the plane really didn't want to leave the ground, but I got it off and then proceeded with my climb checklist (yeah, planes have checklists for just about everything). When I got to the "retract flaps" part, i realized my mistake. It was going to be a long, long ride.

I feel it's necessary, at this point, to state for the record that Dr. Bob was pretty weak in his role as stage check examiner. The point of the IFR check ride (and, accordingly, the final stage check) is to make sure a student can function in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) under an instrument flight plan. A HUGE part of that is maintaining proper communications with Air Traffic Control. Since neither check takes part under an actual instrument flight plan, though, the examiner is supposed to pretend to be the Air Route Traffic Control Center and give clearances and stuff to the student. I actually had to ask Bob to give me clearances. And then, when we got to Sierra Vista, which has a control tower (and, logically, controllers), Bob took over the radio and made my calls for me, so then I basically had to ask him if I could do the talking. I did two instrument approaches at Libby (Sierra Vista Airport is also Libby Army Airfield; it's a joint-use, so we usually just call it Libby); one was pretty good, and one was not as good. Then Dr. Bob had me fly direct back to Bisbee Douglas International (it's a non-towered airport about 7 miles northeast of the college) for one more approach. I was about 5/6 of the way done with the approach, when Bob told me to break it off and head for home because some yahoo was flying around over the airport and Bob couldn't spot him. Keep in mind that I made the entire flight without being able to see outside the plane, so Bob had to watch all the traffic to make sure we didn't hit anyone.

When we got back to the school, I made a decent (not good by any means) landing and parked us back in the shade hangar. We got back inside and Dr. Bob proceeded to critique my flight. The problem was that I had to tell him which things I'd done wrong, because he couldn't remember. Then he started filling out my logbook (his entry is nearly unreadable because it has to be written kind of small and, again, he's pretty old), and asked me if I had any questions. (This is my favorite part of the whole thing.) I said, "Did I pass?" And he very casually replied, "Sure." Then he ate a hamburger and I walked out.

I told all of this to my instructor on Monday, and she decided that we would unofficially redo the flight portion of the stage check, since it's virtually identical to the flight portion of the check ride. Unfortunately, we were going to fly that do-over today and possibly again tomorrow, as well, but since I'm sick I didn't go to my flight period today and, unless I'm back to 100% tomorrow morning, I'm probably not flying tomorrow, either. Very, very frustrating.