I let myself get all wound up for the ride and as my instructor said, "bad rehearsal, great performance!" It all started with a less than stellar performance a few days prior to the checkride. I simply performed poorly - much more poorly than I usually do, starting with the takeoff and tow to altitude. Granted, it was quite gusty and we were getting pulled around quite a bit but still, it was not a great start.
As we started in our base leg, the wind had really picked up and I realized we were dropping like a stone. I abandoned the base and aimed for the runway, accelerating to get closer before we lost too much altitude. The wind gradient made for moderate turbulence on final with loss of airspeed, gain of airspeed, crosswind, you name it. I managed to get us down in one piece and without damaging the glider, but my confidence was shaken. It was too rough to fly after that, so we rescheduled for the next day.
After a rather sleepless night, the next day's tasks went fairly well with one major issue - being able to rollout to stop inside a designated 100 foot box. The solution was relatively minor, I needed to let the glider get a little bit lower on final. I was simply carrying too much energy into the landing in the form of altitude. My instructor reluctantly signed me off and I stuck around to do some touch and goes with some friends from the field - including Bryan, who was also going for his commercial checkride the same day. We flew until we could nail the spot consistently.
When the big day came, Bryan went first and, as I was certain he would, nailed the ride and passed easily. Then it was my turn. First we did about 1.5 hours of oral question and answer, followed by 3 flights. The examiner, Jim Rizzo, was really, really, good about getting me to relax and being very conversational. We went over the weight and balance I prepared, a cross country I built in advance, the weather and so on. By the time we were ready to fly, I felt pretty good.
The flights went pretty uneventfully. I made several lame attempts to thermal and after the second landing, I caught my foot on the side of the glider and fell out onto the grass. I asked if that amounted to points deducted and he laughed.
We did one really cool combination of maneuvers. He asked for a steep turn in one direction, and after I went around once, he asked me to roll into a steep turn the other direction, then at the completion of that turn, to pull up into a turning stall. That was pretty neat. I'd always practiced them as separate maneuvers without linking them, but this was both more challenging and more interesting.
I did well at keeping my airspeeds right, I think I did average at coordinated flight, and after our third landing, we went inside and he filled out my temporary flight certificate for commercial glider pilot.
I worked really hard for this. I wasn't afraid I would fail because I didn't know how to do the things I was supposed to do. Rather, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to demonstrate them to the examiner. In the end, I was able to do that and I've got another level of certification for my continuing journey in soaring.
I owe thanks to many people for getting me this far, particularly my instructor, Ron Ogden. He takes all kinds of personal time to come out and train us for flight and gets nothing back for it. Thanks, Ron!
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