I just passed my Commercial Multi-Engine checkride. I’m done with Airman. Done, done, done!

The checkride was tough, but I did reasonably well. It started with a closed pattern departure. The examiner pulled an engine about 300 feet above the ground. I reacted correctly, though not as fast as I might have hoped. He seemed to think I did just fine. I climbed straight out to traffic pattern altitude, flew the pattern single engine, and landed single engine. Remembering the bit of obvious advice that Zach had given me last night, “Berck! You’re landing single engine on a 5,000 ft runway in a plane that needs less than half that. It’s OKAY if you don’t land on the numbers. Leave power in until you’re rather high, chop the power, drop the flaps and LAND.” I’d previously been making acceptable, but extremely difficult single-engine landings right on the numbers. Duh.

With both engines running, the Duchess is a joy to land. It’s so incredibly easy as compared to a Cessna. Just come in at the appropriate airspeed, hold a just BARELY nose-high attitude, and it just lands itself.

With a single engine running, it’s fine, provided you make the approach carefully so that you have enough airspeed and altitude to pull the remaining throttle to idle a fair bit above the runway. You can’t really land with power, because the plane flies sideways. If you get slow, you’re nearly screwed. As I discovered yetserday, it’s always a bad idea to put yourself in a situation where you have to add power. The more power you add, the more the plane tries to fly sideways, and things get wonky way too close to the ground..

So my landing wasn’t beautiful, but considering I had a direct crosswind, it was perfectly acceptable. On climbout, he instructed me to depart the pattern and fly to the south. He had me do stalls at 5,500 feet, then I climbed up to 9,500 feet. He had me feather the right engine, secure it, then restart it. That done, he told me to put on a hood and set up for the localizer approach back to Norman. While I got set up, he flew the plane. As we descended through about 5,000 feet below the scattered cloud layer, the turbulence became horrible. Just what you want for what was bound to be a single engine approach. We requested the approach, and vectors seem to take forever. They vectored us all the way across the localizer and back toward it for traffic. I waited until the last justifyable moment to put down flaps, because I figured he’d wait until I had flaps down to pull the engine, just to make it harder. I dropped 10 degrees as the controller gave me the turn back toward the localizer to intercept. While in the turn, he pulled my inside engine. Power up, clean up, identify, verify, feather. That done, I returned to chasing the localizer needle. Considering that I was having a hard time seeing it through the turbulence, and it was wagging back and forth in the turbulence, I’m amazed that I managed to get well established on it several miles from the marker. I busted the crossing altitude by about 50 feet, but given the turbulence, I don’t think that was such a big deal. As we crossed the marker beacon, I put the gear down, started the clock, did a before landing checklist, and throttle back a bit and tried to establish the 700ft per minute descent I knew would get us down to MDA right as we crossed the river. Thinking back on it, I’m glad that it’s an approach I know by heart– one less familiar could have been even worse. My leg started to kill me as we neared the missed approach point. I suppose I could have used the rudder trim, but it took all of my concentration to hold the localizer needle as the wind seemed to shift wildly as we descended. At last, 1700 ft and the words “Go visual, circle for runway 17,” sounded marvelous. Tossed my hood in the back, futzed with my headset while trying to set up on downwind for runway 17 while avoiding a plane off the departure end of 21. As I approached midfield, I had a heck of a time maintaining airspeed. At one point I started losing airpseed and had to sacrifice some altitude and went full throttle on the remaining engine. “Good, excellent, nice correction,” which made me feel better, though I probably should have had all the power in already. I barely maintained 85 knots (Vyse, as well as approach speed) as I turned base, then final. I waited a bit, still at full power until I was sure I had the runway, and dropped the flaps, leaving the power in. Then, set up for a nice, steep approach to land a little long. A miserable crosswind and I landed a few feet off centerline, but still perfectly acceptable. And then full power to go around for one more landing. I asked the examiner to take the airplane on climbout so I could fix my headset which had been all askew since I removed the hood. He gladly accepted, configured the plane for cruise and told me the next landing would be a full stop. “Just a normal landing?” I asked? “Yes, that will be fine.” I thought for sure he’d have me do a short field, and when he didn’t, I was worried he was going to kill an engine again. I hoped he wouldn’t, mostly because I was simply exhausted and my leg was killing me (surely he’ll at least pull the other engine). It was about 100 degrees out, and the turbulence was getting worse. He didn’t pull an engine, and I made a rather steep approach followed by a pretty darned good crosswind landing.

After about half an hour of oral quizzing, he signed my logbook and shook my hand. Done!

I checked my voicemail, and had gotten a call about a job interview at a flight school here in Oklahoma. So, I’ve got THREE options now.

I called the chief flight instructor out in Colorado, and I’ve got an appointment to meet with him at 8am on Friday morning. So, I’ll drive out there tomorrow… I’m quite excited. The more I find out about it, the more I feel like I can’t possible be qualified for it. I’ll find out soon enough, I hope…