I failed the checkride again.
It was going fairly well through intercepting a radial, holds, a VOR approach with the autopilot on (harder, in my opinion, than doing it without the autopilot, so I would never do it in real life, but the test requires it). Then it was back in the hold, which I had some problems with this time, but managed to correct. The hold looks like a long racetrack pattern; several planes can be stacked in it at altitudes 500' apart. You fly around it until your turn comes, then exit it toward the airport on whatever type of approach you're doing. When I exited the hold this time for the ILS approach, I had put in the frequency for the ILS but hadn't hit the button to make it the active frequency, so I was still looking at the VOR indication. They're in line with each other, so there was no obvious difference except that the glideslope indicator wasn't coming in. (An ILS has two needles, a vertical one showing if you're left or right of where you should be and an ILS showing if you're above or below where you should be as you follow the glideslope down to the runway.) Someone had mentioned on the radio earlier that the glideslope was "bouncing around a little today" and had recently been down, so I thought maybe it had gone down again, instead of realizing that the error was mine.
Anyway, I've decided to quit. It's not out of pique; I realized that I have just too much going on in my life, with work, flying, and training for the marathon. Further, I know that intensive rowing tends to make me stupider, though one symptom of the stupidity, unfortunately, is that it always takes me a while to realize what's going on. But I think that may be a prime source of my stupid mistakes. I scaled way back on the rowing when I started this; maybe I'd have passed the test if I hadn't ramped up the training again, but the rowing training is going much better and I've been enjoying it much more than the flying.
I'm not stomping off in a huff and declaring that I'll never fly a plane again. Flying is something I can do as long as I'm in good enough health to pass a Class III physical; with luck I have decades and decades left. I didn't particularly miss it during the seven years between getting my pilot rating and beginning the instrument training, when I flew only a few times. Maybe a decade from now my life will be calmer and I'll decide to take it up again then. I won't need to redo all the training: just enough to refamiliarize me, and get me used to anything that's changed. I don't think the FAA reg requires me to take another long cross-country, but a smart CFI would make me take one. Still, I won't have to do that all those cross-country hours again, so it would all be a lot quicker.
So I'm feeling a lot more relief than regret right now.
Posted by dichroic at October 19, 2005 03:52 PM