On March 8 1994 I took my flight instructor check ride with the FAA in a Mooney 20J, 900AT.  Nine Hundred Alpha Tango had a cool looking paint job, and was slippery and fast compared to the Cessna’s I was flying at the time.  The national  failure rate for your first time  taking the check ride with the FAA as Flight Instructor (CFI) Candidates, was about 95%. I had completed one of the most intense flight training programs in the United States at a College that was considered by the Airlines to produce top-notch pilots.  We were trained not just to fly an airplane, but also to problem solve and to work as a team.   We had been trained in and flew acrobatics as well as motor gliders so we could have a better understanding of the physics of flight. In our capstone flight course we flew with a crewmember and learned how to fly as a team.  By the time any of us decided to take the flight instructor class, we had gained a lot of knowledge and skill and had been tested many times.

It was raining on the morning of my check ride with the FAA, I had to delay my departure to the Flight Standards District Office  (FISDO) because of the weather.  Even if the weather is bad when you get up, you have to mentally keep your mind set for the flight, just in case the weather gets better.  A  few hours later the weather cleared and I was able to take off.   The flight over to the FAA was uneventful, except for the fact that I had radio issues flying into the airport, and I knew I had upset the controller because after landing when I had stopped to get taxi clearance, I looked up and I could see the tower controller in the tower and he had raised his hands up.  He asked me if I had an instructor on Board..  I’m like, uh oh,  I’m in trouble.  I asked politely for progressive to the FISDO.  When you ask for progressive the controller gives you step by step directions to your destination on the airport and I think he was happy as I was going over to the FAA.

After I got to the ramp at the FISDO and I had turned off everything, I sat for a moment and just took a deep breath.  I’m like, great, I upset the air traffic controller and now I’m about to walk in and talk to the FAA.  I let the thought come to me then I just paused and re-focused before I walked into the building.   When you are going for a check ride, you can’t dwell on the past, you have to stay in the moment.

The FAA inspector and the other folks at the FAA were very friendly.  They offered me some food, it was about lunch time when I had arrived.  And then I sat down with Sandy who was my FAA examiner, and we started the oral portion of the check ride which took about 4 hours.  I don’t remember too much what her questions were but she asked me to teach a task and I had a time limit to create a lesson plan and then teach it to her as if she was a flight student.

After the oral portion of the check ride was over, we went out to the airplane and I did the  pre-flight.  After I turned on the engine, Sandy told me that I would be handling the radios.  Maybe it was just a test to see how I could handle stress.  At that moment what flashed in my mind is that she knew that the air traffic controller was upset with me because I was told that the FAA examiner would be doing the radio calls during the check ride.  That thought came to me then left as I was focused on the task at hand.

I had lowing clouds as we did the check ride,  and I had to tell Sandy that I could not complete a particular maneuver that she asked me to do, because we would not have the cloud clearance that we needed.  She was happy with my decision on that.  We then did some ground reference maneuvers.  After a while, it looked like the clouds were getting lower and we went back over to the airport to do pattern work like take offs and landings.

In one of my landings I had a maximum crosswind component for my landing and I did a perfect, right on the center line, smooth landing.  It’s like being in perfectly in sync with a very good dance partner. I dipped the wing just enough and as we were landing you couldn’t even feel the wheels touch; it was awesome.  But then you have to continue on, you don’t just sit there and have an ego about how good you are as you have to keep flying and being focused.   Being focused and in the moment is not something that they talked about in flight school, it’s something you figure out because you have to, to get good at flying.

Then the tower switched the active runways, probably because of the wind.  On our next take off we believe we experienced a mini microburst.  It happened so fast and was over that fast. I added power and started to pull back to lift the nose up and we were airborne and then I  felt like I was riding a wild bronco for about 5 – 10 seconds.  But I was so in tune with the airplane, I would describe it as like a wild dance, I didn’t think, I was just doing, and then it stopped just as fast as it had started.  It must have scared the examiner as she said ” my plane” but by then I had flown through it and the plane was normal. But what went though my mind as she said “my plane” was that I was told that if the examiner says my plane, it means you didn’t pass the exam.  When flying you just can’t let these kind of thoughts hang out in your mind, you have to stay on the ball no matter what is happening around you. I thought, well this was different, because of the air I had just flown through.

Then on our next landing we, as I was taxing back to the FISDO she told me that I passed. I then asked the examiner to taxi the airplane to the ramp.  She understood.  I figured at that point I might be a little distracted and I didn’t want to run into any airport signs or anything lol.

After our de-brief brief, the weather had gotten worse.  I called weather and got a full briefing.  It sounded like I might have to file a flight plan to fly in the clouds. but it was still good enough, kind of, to go visual.  I called my flight school and they did not give me permission to fly on instrument flight (IFR) because they told my I was exhausted from the day and they didn’t think it would be safe for me to fly on instruments.

They talk about Get Home Ideas and that’s how pilots fly into situations that get themselves killed, like pushing into weather that they shouldn’t be in.  On a normal day I would be fine to fly with this weather and to be able to file on instruments if I went visual. But taking a Flight Instructor FAA check ride is up on the stress list and takes a lot of energy.  I never knew the strong pull of the Get Home Ideas and I wanted to get home so badly.

Becoming a Flight Instructor is a badge of honor because not everyone passes and I had been wanting this for about 6 years. I wanted to see my flight instructor and everyone else when I got back. So I went out to the airplane, just to get outside and I did a walk around the airplane to give myself some alone time and a moment to think.  I decided to stay the night and fly back in the morning and at the moment I made that decision a different FAA person came out, and I think he was going to talk me out of flying that night.  I earned my wings that day.

I can see that day in my mind like it was yesterday, and what they didn’t teach us in flight school, maybe because we have to become like this or we won’t we make it, is to not beat yourself up if you make a mistake, and also you can’t give up in the heat of the battle.  The way they trained us with mindfulness training without calling it that, is to research and get updated information when things change, because sometimes you have to do something different than was planned and we learned how to keep our focus.  They trained us on how to problem solve and to work as teams with different personality types.

The next morning Sandy my flight examiner, talked about the chain of events that leads to an accident and that I had probably broken the chain by my go/no go decision to not flight home the day before  The weather was beautiful the next day, it was a fresh spring morning that was severe clear and I happily took off. Flying from the right seat I flew back to Nashua to celebrate my newly minted certificate with the ink still not dry, A goal I had accomplished that I had wanted for years.

In college, the Flight Instructor class was an elective, but by the time we reached the capstone course in our flight training, which was when we flew with a crew partner, we were very good at flying.  We had studied aerobatics, so we new the limits and performance of airplanes, we had flown the motor glider as well as the slow Cessna 152 and also the Mooney. Now with the Mooney 20J  you always had to plan ahead, because she was faster and needed planning and a little time to get her to slow down compared to the other airplanes we were use to.  We could make the planes dance on our command, we understood team work in time critical flight involvement and Cockpit Resource Management was drilled into us, so that we could perform, understand as a teem, problem solve, and make things happen.

The college trained us how to be elite performers as aviators, and Daniel Webster College was recognized by the airlines as one of the top aviation school in the country. But what was missed in our training at college, was how to live our lives, not just our flying lives, but to live our lives like elite performers outside of the flight environment.   But then, most schools don’t teach us simple techniques that we can do through- out the day, that enhances our own health, mental well being, reduces stress and allows us to be more efficient at work. The most important part of aviation is the pilot and their health and well being.  Heck you don’t want a stressed out, upset pilot who eats unhealthy food so he/ she doesn’t feel good who doesn’t understand how to get focused, fly your airplane.  I’m only talking about pilots but the entire team that works on the airplane and dose all the other work that we don’t see are just as important.

The silent skills of an elite pilot, civilian or military,  that we don’t teach in every day living, is how to stay focused, stay in the fight when it gets tough, to not let things rattle you when you think you might have failed.  But if it does rattle you, then get re-focused fast.  These are just a few of the silent soft skills that we developed over time in our flight program, that was never talked about in a way so that we could transfer these skills into our personal lives.  I know teach these silent Ninja skills of the elite performer in my Performance Coaching Course, and it’s weaved into my Archery classes.  More specific training in our top secret boot camp classes.

The Flight Instructor Check Ride with the FAA is one flight I will never forget. It was challenging, fun, exhilarating and exhausting,  and it could have cost me my life if I had chosen to fly home in challenging weather after a very long and exhausting day.   But I have a feeling that the FAA would not have let me  fly home that night and I wonder if they would have thought twice about my new certificate if I had made that decision.  Sandy the FAA Flight Examiner told me the next day, that the Go/ No Go decision was the true test that day.

Below is a picture me on the ramp at college in front of the Cap – 10, which is a French Aerobatic Airplane that was an airplane that I flew as a  part of our flight program 🙂  .

Ohh they were so much fun to fly 🙂