Welcom To My Pity Party

I have been a lousy father lately. Working a job that requires weekly travel and going to school full time pretty much insures that.

Sunday morning I decide to step up and take all three kids to Makudu's Island, an indoor play place with tubes, slides, rope bridges and more. It used to be called Club Disney but Disney's cut was a little too high (go figure) and the name changed to Makudu's. The kids did have a great time and therefore, I did too. However, chasing them through mazes and climbing a 50 foot tall artificial tree twenty-plus times wore my fat *ss out.

I have to digress for a moment...

Bluetooth is a great technology. I use it daily with my cell phone. BUT...
Are people sooooo important and busy that they have to wear their BT headset at a kids play place on a Sunday? I had my cell phone. It was on vibrate. If I had a call, I could take it discreetly. I counted at least 15 people wearing BT headsets at Makudu's Island. They must have been really important. One guy actually scared my son. He was bald, muscular and the BT headest made him look like a cyborg.

Anyway...

The problem is that I have my end of course check ride scheduled for 6pm. Well, 6pm rolls around and I AM EXHAUSTED. Not sleepy, just drained.

Mistake 1: Go flying anyway. Get it out of the way. I can do approaches in my sleep. Hazardous attitude ignored.

Mistake 2: Rex gives me a mock clearance: Fly runway heading, expect vectors to intercept the 180 IWA radial. At 18 DME intersection, hold south on the 180 radial. EFC 02:00. Climb and maintain 4,000. I read back correctly. After takeoff, I get my notepad ready for further instructions and throw away the top page with my clearance. Crap. What did he tell me to do at the 18DME? Arc to the east? Yeah...that's what I'm supposed to do. DME arc. He finally lets me off the hook by saying "beautiful arc, where are we arcing to?". CRAP! I get the clearance again and follow it as instucted the first time.

Mistake 3: He gives the the GPS 23 approach to Casa Grande (KCGZ). We're only about 5 minutes away from the initial approach waypoint, but I inadvertently LOAD the approach into the 430 vs. activating it. What the heck? Why isn't the flight plan being displayed. Why no course? I finally figure it out about 2 minutes later and ACTIVATE the approach. Enter the hold teardrop. Nice. 2 miles from final approach waypoint...altitude looks good...needle centered...I forget to call out approach active. Damn. Now I'm flustered. Still on course, still looking good on altitude. Radio calls going well. It's getting dark. I'm so absorbed in my errors that I don't even realize that I'm still wearing my sunglasses! I can't read the approach plate and decide to go missed. The only problem is that I went missed 1/2 mile early. I forget to hit the suspend/OBS button when I go missed and get off course towards the hold. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

I finally compose myself, get in the hold and do a few turns to calm down. He then gives me a funky intercept for the VOR/DME approach to Coolidge (P08) but it doesn't faze me. I do the approach and it works out perfectly. A King Air using the opposite runway keeps me from being able to do a touch and go. Oh well. Approach was good.

We went to the practive area and did stalls, unusual attitude recovery, partial panel...the usual stuff.

He then gave me instuctions to do the ILS 30C approach at KIWA and then proceeds to fail my vacuum instruments. For whatever reason, I'm not fazed and the approach is picture perfect. I go visual at the DA and it was actually a smooth landing (we instrument students forget how to land, ya know).

When we sit down for the post-flight, he actually says "sorry" when he says he can't pass me. Sorry? I'd be mad at him if he did pass me. One mistake led to the rest. Although I wasn't incapable of VFR flight, I wasn't really up to single pilot instrument. My mind and body just weren't sharp enough.

I flew last night to review GPS approaches. The mistakes I made were the kind you learn from the first time and never repeat. (Approach active and missed approach point) We do three GPS approaches without a hitch.

Tomorrow morning is the do-over. Three of four GPS approaches and it will finally be time to schedule my FAA check ride.