I’ve lost track of what number sim out of how many. I suppose I could figure it out, but that’s not important right now. After this morning’s session, we have one more ‘beat up’ session, then the final session before the checkride, which is supposed to basically be a mock checkride. And then, it’s on to the checkride (assuming they think we’re ready).
Though I think I could probably pass the checkride now, today’s session was kinda rough. It wasn’t all totally disastrous, but it was definitely higher pressure and rougher performance than we had earlier on. It was a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly (in a couple cases, the really ugly).
On the bright side, I started to feel quite a bit better about my stick and rudder skills, particularly with an engine or two inoperative. The last couple sessions we’ve been doing engine inop work and, though it hasn’t gone poorly, I just haven’t felt comfortable. Today, I suddenly did. There were also some other bright spots along the way.
Then there were the bad spots, like continuing to miss a couple of habits I need to develop that, though they aren’t super critical, should have been in place by now. And then there was the ugly… There were a couple of cases where I made some bad choices with respect to continuing approaches and/or not navigating to where I should have been, mostly because of feeling rushed and/or having (continued) difficulty balancing the so-called realism factor with the training objectives. We want to get things done, but we also need to take the time to do them correctly. And at the end I made a real bonehead error which I’ll omit from the record here. Chalk it up to frazzlement of the sort that, frankly, would never happen in the real world. Really, under what circumstances would we do 4 hours straight of multiple engine failed approaches paired with other various malfunctions? Only in the sim, of course…
But enough excuses. Tomorrow’s session is late, so I have time to digest it all and get ready. It seems like in most every training program where at least one session near the end just doesn’t go so well. Hopefully today’s was the one. It’s time to get it together now…
V-