I woke up at 5 am, a little groggy as that's a bit too early for me.
Left for Frankfort at 6 am, and E and I were wheels up around 7 am. It took over 1.5 hours to get down there.
Met with Dan, the DPE and instructor, who is very knowledgeable, and turned in my 7 page quiz. He didn't look at it in front of me anyway, so I don't know if he will later or not and just stick it in his file.
I flew first. We did steep turns, slow flight, power off and on stalls, unusual attitude recovery. Came in and did a go-around, then a short field landing, and a no flap landing, a normal landing, and then on the next takeoff, I lifted off, positive rate of climb, I took my hands off the throttles and brought the gear up, and he pulled the critical/left engine, right after takeoff. You're supposed to be at 400' before they do that, so it did take me by surprise. There were mountains to the left and right and rising terrain in front of me. I climbed out straight ahead at 300-400 fpm with one engine until I got enough altitude to be able to maneuver around the mountains, very close to them, turn around and come back in and land on the opposing runway with a light tailwind. I wouldn't have had the time to climb high enough to clear the mountains on downwind before I ran out of room in front of me, so I had to do it that way, and it worked. It was interesting, and a smidge exciting.
I landed, E flew, then we took a break for lunch, at a little hole in the wall BBQ place down there that was delicious. Then we came back and I flew again. This time we did four instrument approaches. As I said: unfamiliar approaches in unfamiliar airspace with unfamiliar avionics. I did okay, but my button pushing definitely needs work, but...E hasn't let me fly it in over a year because I'm not on the insurance, and when I'm along, he wants to do the flying. So...I haven't had the opportunity. We did a localizer, a 'precision' RNAV, an ILS, and a non-precision RNAV. A circle to land. Several missed approaches. And on the last one he shut off my G600, which is the main panel that shows me everything. That airplane has one backup, it's a Garmin 275, and it's tiny, and it's down and to the right, so I had to bend over to be able to see it. So I did a single engine non-precision RNAV partial panel circle to land the other runway approach. All the things combined into one thing. Kind of fun, kind of challenging. ;)
Sunrise on the way down to TN
E flying, with the mountains behind the plane
The BBQ Place
Heading out at the end of the day...
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