Last lesson we had discussed a brief ground lesson to cover some things that the examiner had asked on a recent check ride. Due to scheduling issues, I had scheduled a shorter amount of time than I thought would be necessary to do any decent amount of flying. Naturally, I had assumed we would do the ground lesson. Instead, when I arrived I was given a choice between ground or flying. It took all of 2 seconds to choose flying.
It was still light outside and I was glad of it because my last flight had been at night and the dark really complicates a good preflight. The plane looked good and we were ready to go. I had gotten the frequency for the VOR and a radial to follow to McMinn County Airport (MMI) so I programmed in the frequency and set in the radial while on the ground. We had a normal departure and I put on the foggles about 200 feet off the ground. The plan was to wipe out the rest of my hood time while there was still light. This was pretty easy to do considering all I really had to do was track the radial. It got more difficult and required more trust the closer we got to MMI because MMI is not right on the radial, so there was a bit of vectoring required. Once we got closer to MMI, Josh had me intersect a number of radials and we discussed best practices for doing so. Then as we got close to the airport, I had to point out the general direction of the airport and then I was given some vectors to set me up for a short final. I was nervous, because I new we were on final and that we were actively passing 500 feet agl. I was set up for landing, but I was still under the hood. Finally, at 300 ft agl I removed the foggles and found I was perfectly set up for landing. I landed the plane came to a full stop and we took off again.
I did 2 trips around the pattern at MMI. Each landing was pretty good. They weren’t the best landings I had ever made, but considering my first landing at night, these were perfect. The last landing I made was really good by any standard. My pattern was perfect, I was on center-line on final, and I touched down nicely. If all my landings were that good, I would be happy. We did a short field takeoff and headed back to McGhee Tyson.
The rest of the flight was pleasant until we got to Fort Loudon Dam. At that point, we radioed where we were and that we intended to land at McGhee Tyson. They vectored us around a bit. Fedex was bringing in its big load and there were a bunch of other aircraft in the area, so we were just going to be pushed around a bit. After about 10 minutes, we were sequenced and switched over to tower who promptly cleared us to land. We cleared the runway and headed back to secure the plane.
After we settled all the rest of the overhead, we discussed the next couple of lessons. At this point, Josh is looking to have me finished before Christmas. That’s completely finished too, check ride and all. I hope that is the case.