I-6, I-7 & I-8 Under My Belt Now...Wow!

[signmanbob]

It's hard to believe but I've made it all the way up to I-7. What a challenge!
I had been practicing for my I-7 using the RealAir Lancair Legacy, and got pretty good at landing at Avalon rwy 22, but when I took my test, I said to myself " Self, I'm going to set this up for sure success right from the start, and use the slow moving Cessna 172 for the test"
Wouldn't you know it? I could not land that thing on the runway! I had to retake the test using the Legacy and it went perfectly.......lesson learned. Stay with what you are practicing on.
Again, I want to thank all of the great controllers. I really appreciate their knowledge, skill and service. They are all amazing.
When I'm online my communication is required to be brief, but I can thank them here on the forum. I'm sure that they drop in here once in a while.

Thank you,
Bob

P.S. Off to I-08

[Kyle.Sanders]

Keep at it man! Busy through them!

[signmanbob]

Thank you for the encouragement Kyle. I really appreciate it.
I just passed my I-8 FIRST TIME AROUND!! It is wild because I am almost as nervous when I'm doing each of these ratings as when I did my first one.
My palms are sweating, my heart is beating and I have a hard time speaking. It is really a rush and makes it hard to stay focused, but great fun.
Believe it or not, doing the I-08 was really crazy because when I was on final, the Pilotedge server disconnected without me knowing it. So I'm getting closer and closer to the threshold and still not receiving clearance to land. You talk about getting nervous! I'm thinking "What am I supposed to do?", then I thought "What would a good pilot do?" and so I went missed. When I contacted the tower and told them I was going missed, I didn't receive any response, so I checked the Pilotedge gui and it said "Disconnected"...UGH!!
I thought "Oh, man I'm going to have to start all over again!" Then I thought "No wait, I'm just going to fly the missed approach procedure the best that I can and reconnect"
It went really well. " Lindbergh Tower, Legacy 412BY is on missed at 2500". Then the controllers set me up for the new approach and everything just went super.
Really exciting!!

On to I-09!!

[Kyle.Sanders]

Wow. Very exciting flight.
It might seem strange but I sometimes like the server going out every now and then. It allows us to practice our Lost Comms procedures and excersise emergency authority when needed.
Which brings me to another point- if you had the field in sight, and still didn't get landing clearance (and radio wasn't busy), I would have asked for the clearance to land long before getting to the MAP.

Then, if established lost comms has occurred (and again- airport in sight) you could have sqawked 7600 and continued to land under emergency authority (lost comms is an emergency event). But then again- nothing wrong with what you did either. I wasn't there and it may have well been the safest thing to do at the time. Trust your instincts and what feels right.

[signmanbob]

Wow. Very exciting flight.
It might seem strange but I sometimes like the server going out every now and then. It allows us to practice our Lost Comms procedures and excersise emergency authority when needed.
Which brings me to another point- if you had the field in sight, and still didn't get landing clearance (and radio wasn't busy), I would have asked for the clearance to land long before getting to the MAP.

Then, if established lost comms has occurred (and again- airport in sight) you could have sqawked 7600 and continued to land under emergency authority (lost comms is an emergency event). But then again- nothing wrong with what you did either. I wasn't there and it may have well been the safest thing to do at the time. Trust your instincts and what feels right.

I know what you mean about asking for clearance to land, but I don't know exactly at what point the server disconnected from me. When I called the tower, no one answered me, but I thought that they might be busy with something else. I was probably disconnected from the start of the final approach. Then I'm getting closer and closer to the runway and I start thinking that maybe they are throwing a curve ball to trip me up. I'm thinking that maybe they want to see if I'll go ahead and land without clearance so I figured I would just go missed. Then I looked at the Pilotedge gui and realized I was alone. I'm just so glad that I didn't have to start the test all over again. It felt good to pass it on the first shot.
I'm glad it worked out that way because it was a lot of fun. Sometimes it is kind of neat when unexpected things happen like that.