One Step Away

This has been a big week for my training. I passed my 6th sim run on Monday at 7AM after having a delayed flight to Nashville from STL then having to drive 2.5 hours to Savannah from there. I got back to the apartment around 12:30, then woke up and went in. I was a bit short with the instructor when he was hammering me with questions but it was probably more funny than anything. Needless to say, I was relieved after I finished and passed.

The following day we had a written exam for which the only option was to pass. I was hitting the books pretty hard throughout Monday night since I was a bit unnerved by the thought of failing a written exam and then getting the boot from the program. Fortunately all the questions on the exam were the questions we were quizzing each other with prior to starting. When I started to get rolling through the questions the weight quickly lifted. When I found out that I had passed I immediately began preparing for the next obstacle, my FAA Private Pilots Knowledge Exam.

I had been looking over the materials for this exam for sometime up this point. However, I hadn't thrown myself completely into it until after my Tuesday written exam though. This one was a bit worriesome too because you only get 2 chances and then you have to wait a month to retake it. On top of the FAA exam, I also had my 7th simulation today.

It was the same as 6 but there is less and less hand holding. Well I rocked the hell out of SIM7... There's an emergency procedure called a GPS failure where the aircraft loses its ability to know where its at. So the operator needs to cross reference the real-time video with the satellite imagery on the map and fly the bird home. It took me about 5 minutes to cover 30 nautical miles... I felt pretty good about myself... But of course after this I still had the FAA exam to bring me back down to earth.

The FAA exam is pretty much an exercise in memorization. There is a pool of 4000 questions from which 61 are taken. So as long as you memorize all 4000 you're good, but if you don't you only need to score a 70% to pass anyway. Most of the people around here took the week long class, I had 1 night of full out self study. The exam took me 25 minutes out of the 2.5 hours you're allowed. My score was 87%... I knew I was going to pass, but I thought it would be more of a problem than that.

So now there is one more step before we go up to Bingen, WA, SIM8. There is no instructor assistance, which I guess I haven't needed for a while and any comments are usually more irratating than anything. But it's still the last simulation we get here before flying the real thing. One thing I need to remember is that this is just training, the real thing starts when I step off the plane in the sand. That's when the fun really starts, this is just the preparty.