Well, the sim session tonight (Lesson 6) was far from perfect, but I think I’m getting there. The instructor said he didn’t see anything that would likely result in a checkride failure, but we didn’t do stalls today, which are still the thing I suck most at.

The sim malfunctioned and kept kicking off the autopilot at the end of my session, so I had to fly the VOR/DME to 22L without an autopilot. What’s funny is I’ve said to several people that this was the thing I really, really, didn’t ever want to have to do, and fortunately it’s not something I have to do on the checkride at all. It wasn’t as bad as I figured, if anything, it was probably more busy for Rob than me, as he had a lot to do. I left some of the step down fixes just a smidge late. I was pretty late getting the landing gear down and flaps out all the way (I damn near forgot to do it all together, that would have been embarrassing, though the gear horn would have sounded), but I did get it before 1,000 AGL. I’m starting to get the idea of how to lead the turn to final at 160 knots, and it seems like I can manage the non-precision approaches as long as I just dump the nose as soon as I’m somewhere near the VDP. It’s pretty hard to wind up high, and it’s a lot easier to recover from being a little low than a little high in a jet, as long as you’ve got the engines spooled up.

Our instructor said he was really happy with us today. Two sessions left and then the checkride, though it remains to be seen just when the checkride will be since we didn’t fly yesterday. Possibly on our originally scheduled off day, which is Sunday. I think I’ll be ready.