Day 12: Stage Check

     As I was getting ready to leave the hotel for the first block today, I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to check the weather. I no longer had time to do a complete and thorough self-briefing, so I just listened to the airport weather broadcast to see what the current conditions were. They looked just good enough to go out to the practice area.
     I met up with Matt in Sporty's Cafe as usual, and we watched a nice looking TBM depart before deciding what to do.
     "What do you think about the weather?" Matt asked.
     "I forgot to check the weather, so I just listened to the AWOS. The clouds are scattered at 4,000, so we could go out to the practice area."
     "What else?"
     "Well, the air appears to be unstable," I said, noting the towering cumulus clouds.
     "I agree with that statement. What else can you tell me?"
     "That means we could expect some thunderstorms later on."
     "I agree with that statement. Anything else?"
     "Ummm..."
     Matt grinned. "You're not catching on to my hints, are you?
     I shook my head. He pulled out his iPhone and showed me the weather radar. There was a decently large thunderstorm system headed our way, and not very far out.
     "Oh! I see," I said.
     "So, we can either stay in the pattern and practice landings or we can go out to the practice area and do a few maneuvers and hightail it back here before it rains."
     "Yeah, let's do that."
     We took off and practiced some stalls and slow flight in the practice area. Soon we could see an area of rainfall in the distance, slowly creeping toward the airport.
     "Let's head to the airport, and maybe we'll have time for one more stall on the way back," Matt said.
     I nodded and keyed the radio, "Clermont practice area, one uniform charlie is over East Fork Lake at three thousand feet, northbound back to india six niner."
     It quickly became obvious that we did not have enough time for another stall, so we headed straight for the airport at 135 mph. We landed and just as we were parking it began to rain. We tied down the aircraft and went inside to wait it out. It continued to rain for several hours, right up to the time of my stage check.
     A stage check is when a different instructor goes up with you and instead of teaching, grades you on how well you learned the maneuvers and how safe you are. Since there was still rain in the area, Tim, the other instructor, said to skip the maneuvers and just do three landings.
     "I'm not looking at how smoothly you land or how your traffic pattern looks, I'm just looking to see if you're safe enough to send out on a solo," he said. "You just fly the plane and pretend I'm not here, because that's how it will be when you're flying solo."
     I did just that, and made two of the smoothest landings I have ever done. On the third time around, we were up in the pattern, and he pulled the throttle out to simulate an engine failure. I got the plane set up for the best glide distance and asked if he wanted me to go through the engine restart procedure. He declined, so I glided to another relatively smooth landing. Tim was impressed, and I got a good score on the stage check. With that passed, now I just need to get my student pilot certificate in my hands, and I can knock out the 10 hours of solo flight I need.
     Today's flying added 1.4 hours and 4 greased landings to the logbook, which brings the totals to 27.4 hours and 83 landings.