Commercial multi add-on...FINALLY!

[jrh]

I've been sort of working on this rating since August of 2005, always held up or delayed for many reasons.

Finally, I said enough is enough. Because I work at a high school, I had the entire week off work for Thanksgiving last week. I decided to use this time to do the accelerated multi-engine course at an FBO near my parents' home in Iowa, where I was staying for the holidays (I live in Pennsylvania).

So my checkride was scheduled for today, Monday afternoon with an examiner in central Minnesota.

Well, the weather today in the entire upper midwest sucked. The examiner said he didn't mind climbing out through the clouds and doing maneuvers on top, but the problem was landing...it was 600 overcast and getting colder. The minimums for the VOR approach into his airport in Minnesota had minimums at 650 ft. So he canceled.

Weather for tomorrow (Tuesday) was forecast to be even worse. And I have to return to Pennsylvania no later than Wednesday morning because of work obligations. Also, my flight review expires at the end of November, so if I didn't get the checkride done, I'd have to get a flight review soon. Not to mention I'd end up spendings hundreds of dollars more if I complete my multi training in Pennsylvania, or come back to Iowa and have to review a few hours before a checkride over Christmas. I REALLY wanted to get a checkride done today.

So, my search was on for an available examiner. I started bringing up everybody I could find in the FAA's database who could give checkrides in a Piper Aztec.

Then my instructor went down the list and started calling everybody, explaining our predicament. After about 7 or 8 names were crossed off as unavailable, we finally hit the jackpot--a guy was available in southern Illinois, with clear skies, 285 nautical miles away.

We hopped in the plane and off we went, taking off into a 300 foot overcast, then flying two hours to the examiner's home airport.

You never know what to expect with examiners, so I wasn't sure what I was getting in to with this guy who my instructor and I knew nothing about, but he turned out to be a great guy. Both he and my instructor are about 70 years old and have been flying in Iowa and Illinois for years, so they got talking and it turns out they know a lot of the same people.

My oral lasted about 20 minutes and consisted of some questions about the props, governors, hydraulics, landing gear, fuel system, the meaning of Vmc, and why the critical engine is critical. Pretty simple.

Then we went flying. He told me before the flight that if I ever thought I was going to exceed tolerances during a maneuver, I could exit it early, set up again, and give it a second shot. If I exceeded tolerances, I failed.

For the flight we did a normal takeoff, climbed to 4500 feet, and started with steep turns. Within a quarter turn I had gained 95 feet and decided to take him up on his offer. I leveled the wings, said, "Sorry...nerves. I can do better than that. Here we go..." and rolled into another turn. The second time, I locked it on 4500 ft. the whole way around.

About 3/4 of the way through my second 360 degree turn, he pulled an engine on me (the right engine during a turn to the left). I leveled the wings, got things under control, and he gave me the engine back.

Then we did a power-on stall. No problems.

He told me to turn to the west, and as I was turning, he pulled the left engine on me. I went through the troubleshooting checklist, feathered it, then restarted it. No problems.

Then we did a Vmc demo. No problems.

Then I put on the hood, and he vectored me for the VOR-A approach back in to the airport. We shot it on both engines and I did fine. On the missed, he pulled an engine again. As soon as I identified and verified it, he gave it back.

Then, as I was outbound for another approach, he pulled an engine again and set it to simulated zero thrust as soon as I verified and said to feather it.

We did the procedure turn, came inbound, down to 700 feet AGL and he told me to pull the hood off and circle to land VFR on a single engine.

As I was on final, at 500 AGL, he called for a go around. I thought it was a trick. I had gear and flaps down and thought I was committed to landing. I said, "Are you serious?" He said, "Yeah, really, go around."

I thought, "Alright, let's see what happens," so I added power on the good engine. "No, no, you have both engines now!" he said. Ok, going around with both engines....

As soon as I brought the gear up, but with the flaps still out during the missed, he cut an engine again. I pitched for blue line, brought the flaps in, identified, verified, and he gave it back. "Good job. Show me a short field landing and we'll call it a day," he said.

I brought it around, set up on a long final, and asked him where he wanted me to touch down. "Ummm...go for those big lines, you know, about 300 feet down the runway, those thick lines on each side," he said.

"Uhhh...you mean the thousand foot markers?"

"Yeah, those, touch down on those."

I dropped the last notch of flaps when about 1/4 mile out, airspeed stabilized at 85 mph, slowly eased the power out, brought the nose up, and absolutely greased on a full stall landing about 20 feet past the start of the thousand foot markers. I even impressed myself with that one.

Then it was the usual filling out the temp certificate and all that while my instructor filed the IFR flight plan home.

We took off, watched a beautiful sunset from the air, then flew back into the crappy weather we had come from. We shot the ILS into a 1000 foot overcast, 4 mile visibility night at home.

So after about 5.2 hours of flying, 0.9 hours actual instrument, and more money than I care to think about spending in one day, I can finally say I'm a multi pilot! Woo-hoo!

[John_Mitchell]

hey...a super big kudo's to you for passing this milestone...it sounds like you had a lot of fun doing it too!

I have a long ways to go until my commercial multi, but thanks for the great post...I'm trying to learn as much as I can (for free).

Congrats once again!

[Swen]

Why the instrument approaches? Did you not have your instrument yet?

[jrh]

Originally Posted by Swen

Why the instrument approaches? Did you not have your instrument yet?

No, I have my instrument rating, but I still had to do an engine failure under the hood and a single engine approach in a twin, as per the multi-engine PTS. Now that I think about it, I probably didn't technically need to do an approach with both engines operating...maybe that's just something unique to what that examiner wants. I dunno...I didn't really think about it at the time.

I have a friend who was tight on money and wanted a multi-engine rating, but didn't want to spend the extra money to get instrument current and proficient (he didn't intend to fly professionally). He only did the VFR maneuvers on his multi commercial add-on checkride and I believe his certificate says something to the effect of being "Limited to VFR only" in a twin, although he has a commercial SEL certificate and instrument privileges in a single.

All sorts of weird combinations of privileges out there!

[FlyOrDie]

Way to go man! Oh and its best not to ever think about how much you've actually spent on flying

[surreal1221]

Huge Congrats!!!

[Ian J]

Great job!