Recently, I’ve been flying with another member of the club. For anonymity we will refer to this club member as Bob (why not, he’s your mother’s uncle after all). He is great to fly with, arrives early, performs a pre-flight, seems genuinely excited to be flying, and is a CFI! I really enjoy our flights, the advice Bob offers, our conversations, and the general camaraderie we share as pilots. I feel comfortable flying with Bob.

Maybe being comfortable with Bob is why I’m having problems landing?

If you’ve been keeping up, my recent flight to Emporia-Greensville featured a difficult crosswind landing and a fairly routine landing back at home base. The initial attempt at Emporia-Greensville featured a go-around, the second was a good imitation of a professional pilot. Later, at Manassas (KHEF), the landing was rather mundane and unremarkable. However, when flying with Bob, I’ve been… terrible! Not just bad, but to the point that he almost felt compelled to intervene. Maybe being comfortable with Bob is why I’m having problems landing?

As pilots, we have our routines, check lists, habits, etc… Often these habits and routines were built during training, initial (PPL) or commercial. When we are outside our routine, our “game” is… well, just not up-to-snuff.

So, with all that, I took 1.5 hours and 6 laps at Manassas on a 95° day (for those that have flown a PA-28 on hot days… you know) and worked out my landing issues. I spent lap after lap watching my airspeed. Each approach, double and triple checked the checklist items. Every time the rubber hit the tarmac, extra attention was paid to the centerline.

After the 6^th controlled crash into the earth, I was satisfied that I can land well and that my previous problems were something unexpected, but shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t paying adequate attention to the airplane during my landings with Bob. We would spend an hour or two flying to a destination chatting about life and family (occasionally talking with ATC) and when it was time to land, I was slacking off! It wasn’t an intentional slacking off, but one of those moments when you are flying with someone more experienced and you just expect that if you are missing something they will pick it up. It was worse, I was getting… Complacent.

I don’t have the experience to be complacent, hell, I don’t have the experience to pretend to be complacent, yet here I was, apparently (when looking back on it) acting as if I was so good that I could slack off and still butter the bread. It was this “ah ha” moment that I experienced on that 6^th and final landing of the day. It was the realization that I was a slacker.

Don’t be a slacker! Use your checklist. Verify. And give your landings (and all phases of flight) your full attention.

A few posts ago, I mentioned how during my private check ride, I was asked to perform a forward slip to landing. Pretty standard right? Well, this time it wasn’t standard. After plenty of practice with my instructor, this time was slightly different and it felt like my ride depended on executing this maneuver correctly!

So, there I was, flying a Cessna 172S on my check ride with the examiner sitting to my right casually monitoring everything I’m doing. After a 90 minute oral, I felt comfortable with the examiner and after some initial nerves, the flight portion was going fine. After doing some high altitude maneuvers, we started with the low altitude work. S-Turns, turns around a point, and engine out all went without mention or complaint from the examiner.

I was feeling good. Confidence was growing. It was a Friday the 13th, so I walked in with some anxiety, but now, I almost felt like I was a pilot! Well folks, that’s were you get into trouble, isn’t it…

Now, takeoffs and landings. Short and soft field landings and takeoffs went OK (I felt I could have done better, but they were within standards). Now I was tasked with a forward slip to land. Great, I got that. Or, well, I thought I had that. For some reason my brain got crossed and I stomped on the left rudder pedal and I banked right staring my examiner in the face as I looked at the runway coming closer. So, maybe you’re thinking, there must have been a left crosswind. There was no wind, it couldn’t have been more calm.

Now I was all twisted up in my head. I straightened out the aircraft and leveled off 100 feet above the pavement. I applied full power, and flew down the runway and climbed to pattern altitude assuming we’re doing that again. My examiner looked at me while climbing and asked: “What happened there? Did you mean to slip left?” No, I didn’t, in fact, I have never slipped left in all my training to that point. I was taught to perform forward slips right so you have a better view of the runway unless there was a crosswind. If there was a crosswind, it was better to go-around and set up a better approach.

We didn’t do that forward slip again, we left. That was the last maneuver I needed to perform and I failed to get even close to performing it correctly. Now we were heading back to Manassas (KHEF). I set up for a normal landing while approaching for a left base as typical for KHEF RWY 34. While flying base, my examiner tells me we’re going to try that forward slip to land again. However, he asks if I have ever done it from pattern altitude. I said no, to which the response was: “I want you to slip from pattern to the numbers and put us on the 1,000 footers.”

While we were flying back to KHEF (about 10 minutes) from Culpepper Regional (KCJR) I was sure I had failed, but I was PIC and kept my composure. So, when the examiner asked me to do the forward slip again, I got excited. Then the additional parameters registered in my brain and I got nervous. I had never done anything like this before, so how was I going to pull this off?!?! At that moment, I realized, this is my PIC moment, go big or go home moment, my… well, you get the point. If I can execute this maneuver, I will have reached my goal.

Here I am, 1,200 feet on final. The examiner told me to wait until about a mile out then begin. It was like time slowed, but my mind was racing. I was mentally rehearsing how this was going to work. In my mind, I must have completed this landing 5 times before it was showtime, and all I had to do was to, well, do it. As if it was that easy. As if this was something that I did every other landing.

I put my size 12 firmly on the right rudder pedal, I point the nose about 30° to the right and banked left to bring RWY 34 into view. At least this time, I used the “right” rudder pedal, so, all I need to do now is to put it on the ground. Now that we’re falling from the sky like a rock ready to rejoin its brethren, I’m concentrating on working the decent to make the numbers. Steadily monitoring, easing and applying rudder pressure, and maintaining centerline with left bank, it’s looking like I just might make the numbers!

In my mind, the excitement is building, but outward, I’m trying to keep cool and collected. My feet are doing the landing 2-step and the numbers are getting larger and larger. Soon, very soon, I’m going to need to do something. I’m going to need to get this aircraft straightened out and transition to landing. As if I had done this before, about 50 feet above the numbers I start transitioning. I stabilize the aircraft and begin applying back pressure to lose the remaining energy and nail this landing!

Those 1,000 footers are so close, if I can just touchdown on them, maybe within 100 feet of them, will I salvage this check ride? Floating down the runway slowing pulling back on the yoke, it’s looking like I’m going to miss short! All that effort and now I’m going to be short of my goal. A slight, barely audible, increase in power gives me just enough distance to close the gap. I think I did it, I’m pretty sure I did, right? I couldn’t tell you to be honest. My eyes were looking down the runway, focusing on a smooth touchdown and then slowing down to exit the runway at the first turn.

After exiting the runway and switching my radio to ground for taxi instructions, my examiner said “Congratulations”, which I instinctively said: “Thanks, I wasn’t sure I was going to make that landing work.” I was still wrapped up in that landing that I didn’t realize what he meant. “No, I mean Congratulations, you’ve passed, as long as you get us back to the ramp and tied down!” he said.

I did manage to get back to the ramp without incident and started to tie down the aircraft. While I was cleaning up and securing the aircraft the examiner headed inside to finish up and issue my temporary certificate. I didn’t know it, but I needed those 10 minutes. The whole time I was out there flying, I didn’t realize how tense I was, how much pressure I was exerting on myself not to fail, to do it all right. Then finally performing that forward slip all the way to the numbers. If I had a lump of coal in my hand, I probably could have made a diamond. I didn’t check, but that yoke may not have been the same after that. I needed 5 minutes to decompress and take in what just happened.

The previous 3 flights leading up to this one, performing all the maneuvers, I asked my instructor if he felt I was ready, he told me: “The exam is a formality, from what I see, you’re a pilot.” Maybe he was right, and maybe that’s why I executed that forward slip. But in that moment, while on the ramp collecting my gear, I finally felt like I was a pilot!

Since that particular Friday the 13th, I’ve had many instances where I felt like an imposter, that I didn’t know what I was doing, like any moment I’m going to get a letter from the FAA saying this was all a mistake. When that happens, I just remember that forward slip, to the numbers, on the 1,000 footers. Your private certificate is a license to learn as many have said, and I have a lot of learning to do, but that day, that landing, I was a pilot that day.

Keep the blue side up fellow aviators!