What a day.  What a day.

Woke up at 6:00 A.M.  I'm not used to this at all.  I was up even before the sun.  That usually happens about two or three times a year for me.  But I woke up with a mission.  Today is the day.  I slept fairly well.  Woke up by the helicopter and woke up a couple times in the night...probably just nervously excited!  But when I woke up, it was only 3:30-ish.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had a few more hours to sleep.

Finally 6:00 hit, and I sprang out of bed.  Ate breakfast, hit the shower, then woke Van up (he had stayed here).  I did a flight plan out to Goodland, Kansas, and printed off all of the appropriate information regarding the trip (altitudes, course headings, winds, updated weather, NOTAM's, etc.).

I rounded up everything.  Made sure I had EVERYTHING!!!  The last thing we need is to leave something behind.  Photo ID, logbook, airframe logbook, engine logbook, POH, A/FD, charts, and on and on and on.  Alan (the owner) had shown up bright and early to give me the required documents and fuel up the plane.

Venkat woke up early to send me off, too.  I really appreciate that guy!

And finally, after a thorough check of everything, Van and I hopped in the airplane about 7:30 A.M.  We were off.

Or so we thought.  Right as I rotated off the runway, the alternator went dead.  DEAD!  We reset it.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  You have got to be kidding me.  The alternator is a required instrument for IFR flight, and though wishful thoughts had me thinking otherwise, Van and I both knew that we wouldn't be able to do the check-ride without it.

I can't even describe the feeling.  Surprise, frustration, nervousness...could it be fixed?  We stayed in the pattern, then circled back to land at Chanute.  Hopefully Alan could figure out the problem real quick.  We ran up the engine on the ground, and the alternator worked fine (just as it did in my pre-flight run-up).  So we taxied out again and took off again.  And shortly after departure, the ammeter was goin' crazy.  Up and down, up and down, and we had some squeaky noises in our headsets.  You have got to be kidding me.  I flew 4.3 hours yesterday.  Venket flew 2.5 hours before me.  We've had an entire 20 or so hours with no problems with this thing after a part was replaced!!!

This can't be happening.

I knew what needed to happen, and I just flatly accepted it.  Frankly, there was nothing else I could do.  We circled to land again.  By this time, Alan was gone.  I was more than frustrated, but I've (mostly) learned to just take that stuff in stride.  I was powerless, but I've been there so many times before.  Just have to accept it.

We called the examiner and let him know we weren't goin' to be able to make it today.  His next availability?  April 15.  Nine days away.  That's when it hit me.  Up to this point, I was still thinkin' in the back of my head that Alan would get it fixed, and we could leave.  But now I would have this over-hanging burden for more than a week.  Not what I was lookin' for.  But what could I do?  Absolutely nothing...

It was now about 9:15 A.M.  I was supposed to be in Topeka by 9:00.

"I'm goin' to church."  I told Van I was out of there.  I didn't want to hang around there!  I wasn't mad.  I wasn't frustrated at any person.  I just needed to get out.  No sense sittin' around.  Well, that, and I'm not goin' to lie.  When I learned that my check-ride had been post-poned from Thursday morning to Sunday morning, my first thought was...aww, that means I'll miss church!

So Venkat and I headed for church.  Van and he were both tryin' to keep my spirits up after the news, and I wasn't overly dejected...just frustrated.  But again, there was nothin' any of us could do.  Life happens.

Quite amusing to me, the sermon was entitled "First Things First."  To sum it up, the message was on puttin' God before family, before friends, before fun, before passions.  ha.  Well, there ya go!  I guess this was a lesson in puttin' God first!  "Don't fly before Me, boy!"  ha!

Right after the service, Venkat and I headed downstairs for some coffee and cookies.  We were talkin' to a guy (Venkat was actually introduced to the entire church [they love callin' people out!] as a flight engineer on Saudi Arabia's royal family's jet, so he was an interest to several people) when I received a phone call.

Hmm...I looked at my phone.  It was Van.  What could he want?

"Hello"?

"Can you get here"?

"Say what"?

"We've got it.  It's workin'.  Let's go."

"Um, yeah, um, ok!  Be there in 10 minutes!"

And just like that, I grabbed Venkat, said some quick good-byes, and we were gone!  Oh, this is crazy!  I had totally just accepted the fact that the flight was goin' to have to happen later.  It was frustrating, I'm not goin' to lie.  I remember sittin' in church thinkin' about how tired I was.  About how I woke up at 6:00.  About how I got the weather, about how I planned somethin' out, about how I was mentally ready to go...only to have it flop.  The longer the day was progressin', the more frustrated I was gettin' on the inside!

But it was a go again!  Ah, how to enter that mindset again?!  I was fully engaged...then the bad news came.  And now I had to engage fully again!  But I was totally excited and ready to hit it.  C'mon!

I don't know how to accurately describe it.  I guess with the tourney goin' on now, it's like preparin' yourself for the Big Game.  You physically and mentally prepare for the NCAA Championship game...you get everything in place, ready to go.  You focus on it for weeks, then prepare for it even more as it gets closer, then you hone in on it the day before and especially the day of.  And you wake up and Coach says, "Oh, um, by the way, we won't be playing today...the game has been pushed back a week."  WHAT?!!!

It's hard to enter that mental mindset again.  Would I be prepared in a week?  Sure.  Would a team be prepared in a week?  Sure.  But it's the mental part of it that counts.  You get yourself so ready for something, and you want it to go as planned!

But it looked like it was back in order.  I guess Van and Alan had stayed there trying to figure out the problem.  They finally found it...a wire had become loose and was not functioning like it needed to be.  They tightened it up, and it worked perfect.

Let's go!

Headed back to the airport, and Van and I were off shortly after.  The winds were out of 170, and our groundspeed was phenomenal on the way up to Topeka...even hittin' 134 knots!!!  The flight was bumpy in some places, but even the wind wasn't goin' to be bother me now.  I was ready to go.

We landed at Topeka, and almost faster than I could take it in, it all started happening!  I met the instructor, we went to the room, I filled out the application, and then it was just me and him!  And not much small talk was made.  He told me what he expected, what the FAA expected, and what the next few hours would look like, and then we started in on the test!

And out of the two parts of the test, I think I was more concerned about the oral part.  Seriously.  With so much information to be responsible for, I was just a bit nervous with this.  I knew I could fly the airplane.  I just didn't know what he would ask.

But I was calm.  Overly calm.  I felt more than prepared, and that was a good place to be.

Well, we went through quite a bit.  He started out with my flight to Goodland, Kansas, askin' me about everything from the weather to the fuel to the course to who I would talk to in getting there to how high I could fly to how low I could fly to where I would land if I couldn't make it to Goodland and on and on!

He asked me about the low-altitude en-route chart.  He would point to something and ask me about it.  A couple of times I wasn't sure what he was lookin' for, but I asked him to clarify, and after re-wording the question, I found myself bein' able to recall the information so clearly!  I was confident!  Now I will say that there was at least one and maybe two questions that I really wasn't sure about, but I let him know.  I knew the bulk of the information about the question, and I shared that, but sometimes he would point to something on the map and ask if I could land there...in VFR...or in IFR...or without communications...and I wasn't entirely sure on one of the airports!  But I looked up what information I could, and he tried to help me find the answer myself.  So that was nice.

We talked about the instruments, about our particular plane, about approach plates, about STAR's.  And my studyin' had paid off!  The knowledge was there!  It felt good.

And after about an hour of oral, he told me to get ready to go fly.  Sweet!

He told me the specifics, too.  We would start headin' out to Goodland, Kansas, and I would have to intercept the V-4 airway without using the GPS.  Then we would do unusual attitudes.  Then we would come back and shoot several approaches, and he gave them to me...

ILS Runway 13 to missed approach holding pattern.  VOR Runway 22 to missed approach.  DME-Arc on VOR 22.  GPS Runway 31.  And that was basically it!  I wrote the approaches down, then prepared myself!  It was go-time!

Well, we went out there, and we did just what he had said.  I took off, then started headin' towards my 258-degree radial off of the Topeka VOR.  And probably because I was a bit nervous (normal!), I was anxiously awaiting that needle to start moving!!!  And it wasn't for some time!  I was wonderin' if I was doin' it correctly (started to think that maybe I had not tuned something correctly, etc., even though I saw that everything was right), and so after several minutes, I turned the VOR indicator to see what direction I was off of the VOR, and I was thrilled to find out that I was only about 20 degrees away from my radial.  I turned it back to 258 and just waited.  Voila!  Ok, I said, I do know what I am doing!  Don't panic, silly!

I flew the radial for a short time, and I communicated with him as if though he was the Flight Service Station.  We did a lil' role-play.  After that, he had me close my eyes and turn to the right.  After a while, I had to open my eyes and put the airplane back in straight-and-level flight.  He then took the airplane and had me close my eyes and then put it into some crazy pitch and turn.  I was to open my eyes and figure out what was goin' on.  I handled both pretty well.

From there we did a turn to the south using only the compass (he covered my vacuum instruments), and I overshot 180 by 30 degrees in the turn.  After leveling out, I was headin' due south.  Perfect.

And from there, we flew back for the approaches!  And I was just feelin' good today.  I was on top of things.  I was more than ready for what was comin' ahead, and I knew it, too.  Not at all arrogant.  Just prepared!  I was thinkin' way ahead, and I had the airplane configured at the right time, I had my next step ready, I had my talking down, I had my stuff together.  (And let me just say that it turns out that flyin' is quite a bit easier that way!).

I flew the missed approaches, I flew the tear-drop in the hold, I flew the DME-arc.  I just did the elements as they came.  Well, on one occasion in particular, I was gettin' a lil' behind.  We had some thermals today, and the plane wanted to bump up 150 feet pretty quickly.  Once it did that, I would have to correct right away.  And one time, I was kind of slow on that...but the instructor was kind and acted like the tower, "N98014, maintain 3000."  Right.  So I hopped right back on it.  Thank you, sir!

My only other real mistake was that I forgot to change the GPS unit from GPS to VLOC on my DME-arc (and at one other point), but I realized somethin' was wrong.  I didn't know what it was at first, but my needle just wasn't centering.  So I ran through my instruments, then finally realized my mistake.  I corrected without his intervention, and it was at the beginning of the arc (in the turn from the entry-point), and I came out only about one dot off-line, so that was good.  But still...I wanted to nail it!  Oh, well, I had corrected...

But I flew the approaches well.  Down to the missed, then back up to the holds.  Everything was goin' well.

And at one point, I'm thinkin' to myself, "Ok, man, you've got two down!  Don't go screw somethin' up now!  You're soooo close!"

And the last approach was a GPS 31 approach with a circle-to-land if I wanted it (on Runway 18 or 22...winds were out of 250), but i was more than happy to set it straight-in on Runway 31.  Let's wrap this baby up!

And just like that, it was over.  The flight was about 1.5 hours.  And the examiner never really said much after landing.  He never said anything bad, but he didn't give me a confirmation, either!  You're killin' me here!

So finally, after walkin' inside, I had to ask...

"So you're not sayin' anything too bad.  That's a good sign, right"?

"Yeah, you flew well."

Ha!  I still didn't have the confirmation for sure, but it was good enough for me!  I saw Van outside the door, and he did the thumb-up or thumb-down thing, and I gave him the thumbs up!

woo hoo!

Ah, what a relief!

Lookin' back on it now, it's so funny.  It seems like it was so long ago.  This day has been quite long!  Actually, the past two days have been crazy long.  So much stuffed crammed into two days!  I came back and crashed this afternoon.  I was so tired.  I slept for an hour only to find myself wake up, walk around, then crash for another 25 minutes.  ha!

But I made it.  I am now an Instrument Pilot!  I can fly through clouds!  I can land in IFR conditions!  I don't have to wait for the clouds to move out of St. Louis!  I know it's not the end of my ratings, and I know that this is only the beginning to more learning, but it's such a great feeling!

What a day!!!

Well, Van and I came back with favorable winds again (the winds out of 250 were very welcomed as opposed to the straight head-wind we would have had earlier in the day!), and we had a gorgeous 109-knot groundspeed.

After wakin' up from my nap, I headed into Chanute to hang with some friends and enjoy some ice cream.

All in all a fantastic day that I'll surely remember!  It didn't have the start that I was hopin' for, but that's life.  It all ended up workin' in the end, and that was all right with me.  I am just thrilled to death that I was able to do it today.

Thanks to Alan and Van for stickin' with the plane this morning!  I really appreciate that!

44 days.  Several with no flying involved.  Countless hours of watching videos, reading books, messin' up and learnin' from the mistakes, and goin' over everything over and over...

It has all paid off!  woo hoo!

It's a pretty sweet feeling.  Went to bed at 1:30 A.M.