Multi-Engine Commercial Rating
After an exhausting weekend of studying & lots of instruction by CFI-ME Ken Mazzola I got My Multi-Engine Commercial Rating. Ken sent me all sorts of things to study before I drove out to San Diego. He even created his own checklists for the BE-76 Duchess. I joined up with the Golden Wings Flying Club and few their Duchess N6076Y all weekend. The airplane was a real junker, for $160/hr I would have expected a better airplane for the money I spent on it. Ken would have normally taught out of Plus One Flying Club, but I didn't want to pay membership fees for 6 months. We settled with Golden Wings because it was a good compromise.
My first impression of the airplane was bad. There was no aircraft status sheet in the airplane, the radio display on #1 was broke, the ADF was Inop, #2 Nav was inop, and there was a pretty good ding on both props. However I was only going to fly the airplane a couple of times & for my checkride. It was airworthy legally & practically, however it was not to the standard I would like a expensive rental to be.
Day 1 started with a long drive. I left Phoenix, AZ at 3:00 AM and drove to San Diego. I got into SD about 8:45 AM, grabbed some breakfast, a Monster energy drink & started preflighting the airplane. Ken met me shortly afterward and we did a 1.7 hour long flight. During this time we did everything in the PTS. By the end of the flight I was sweating and my nerves were racked from the number of simulated emergencies that Ken put me through. Ken did a real good job making my flight time as efficient as possible. I went home then took a nap. At 8 PM I woke back up went & met Ken at Twiggs Coffee shop for a two hour ground session where we went into Systems & Components of the BE76, Vmc Factors, Regulations, Etc...
Day 2 was another early rise, 6am and a lot of studying. I went into my ol' ERAU books & read up on my BE-76 Systems. I did another flight with Ken later in the afternoon. Again going over every Item in the PTS. This time Ken said that I was ready for the checkride. We took care of all the paperwork and did some "dry-flying" in the evening right before sunset. Will, my o'l college roommate & best man, sat in the back seat of our BE-76 while we "pretended" to fly. I've really got some great wingmen! Who else would sit in an airplane with the window cover still on and with the chains still attached to the wings for two hours?!? I thank them both for their time & effort in making me a gooder pilot.
Monday I spent doing some last minute cramming. I was lucky enough to get the day off from work, my boss was nice enough to pull some extra hours to cover my flight for the day. I had breakfast with my Mother & the B&B Deli and got all dressed up for the checkride. Everything was perfect! The airplane was full of gas, the weather was excellent, my performance charts were computed and I was ready! At 1PM I showed up @ my DPE's office with Ken. The DPE looked at us and said "I'm not doing this checkride today!, I've got Vince scheduled tomorrow!" My jaw hit the floor. Drool dripped onto my shoes. Oh Shit I Thought. My boss is going to kill me. After a brief phone call to my boss he told me that it was ok and that I can take my checkride on Tuesday. That was really reassuring. So I spent the rest of the day studying.
I didn't sleep well Monday night, a low pressure system flew through San Diego that was caused by a hurricane off the coast of Baja Calif. Lightning stuck, car alarms went off, and I didn't sleep one bit because of stress. However come Tuesday morning I got up early, had donuts & coffee and computed new performance data for the checkride. The weather was pretty marginal all morning long but lucky for me it cleared up by noon.
The oral part of the checkride began at 10AM. We briefly covered Vmc, performance data, & Systems of the Duchess. All went well and I learned a lot through the oral part of the checkride.
The flight started a little bit after noon. The person before me got in a bit late, and I was pretty stressed by the time he got back. We did a quick preflight inspection then fired up the motors for a departure to the northwest. Dave gave me some time to get situated and let me fly the airplane up to altitude along the coastline. When we reached Del-Mar he told me that I had an engine fire. I went through my checklist pretty quickly but hesitated in shutting off the gas to the simulated burning engine. When I asked him if he really wanted me to shut down the engine he told me "You're betting your checkride on it." So I crossed my fingers and shut the right engine down and was relieved when he did not yell "You fail! Go home." I started to put the aircraft into an emergency descent and he told me that the engine fire was out. I continued toward Palomar airport and he gave me my engine back.
Next was the VFR maneuvers all while heading eastbound. Steep turns, then Vmc demo, and slow flight with a 500 fpm descent and turns with the stall horn going off. Then we did a power off stall followed by a power on stall. All without any problems. Next came a few landings Ramona Airport. First came a short field landing to a full stop. He gave me a generous area to touch down in and I thought he wanted me to land and stop within that area (Which was possible.) I hit my point on speed then started to apply firm breaking. He then told me "Go GO!" which I misstook as do a go around. He just wanted me to let go of the breaks and pull off the runway. It made for a few confusing seconds, but we discussed what happened and continued with the checkride.
Next came a short field takeoff followed by a normal landing and a normal takeoff. We then departed the pattern southbound and contacted SoCal Approach for an ILS back into Montgomery airport. I had both engines all the way until intercepting the localizer. I stuck to the ILS the whole way down and continued to a full stop landing on one engine. No problems. After landing checklist, park the plane and checkride passed. It's always such a relief when the examiner shakes your hand and says "congratulations, You've just passed your checkride."
