At 8:30am on July 10th I walked into the Robert C. Byrd Aerospace Education Center in Bridgeport WV. Sat down, did all my paper work, and by 9am was taking my FAA Private Pilot Knowledge Exam. This was my second attempt at the test, the first being in 1996 with a failing grade of 68%. Just 1 question shy of passing after spending 2 hours in the test room.

At 9:10am I was about half way through my test (2.5 hours is the allotted time). At 9:30am I was done, and started over. There were only 3 questions I wasn’t sure about, but I wanted to redo the whole test since I had time and I’ve been known to make stupid mistakes during testing. At 9:50am I stood up and proclaimed to the world that I was finished. The test proctor told me that I finished very fast, I told her that I did the test twice. She went to her desk, graded the test and handed me the print out in that “See, you shouldn’t have rushed” kinda of way that teachers hand papers back to students.

My heart dropped as I reached for the results print out and glanced at it knowing that I failed. My eyes got big and I smiled wide. 98%. I only missed 1 question on the test. Hot Damn.

2 months of studying for several hours a day payed off. I was happy, but suddenly upset with myself that my grade wasn’t a perfect 100%. I rushed to get to the Office after the test, logged into the FAAs testing website and looked up the code for the question I got wrong (the information on where to find it was provided on the printout). I put 122.5Mhz as the frequency for Flight Watch instead of 122.0Mhz. Damn-it. I knew that. Stupid mistake.

I’m still upset about missing only 1 question, but, its back to studying. I have 2 more tests to go before I get my license. The Oral Exam and the Check Ride. Both will occur on the same day.

All my requirements are met for me to take the check ride. Now, its just a matter of convincing myself that I’m ready and tightening up some of my maneuvers. There are 5 blank entries on the current page of my log book. I’d like that 5th one to be my check ride.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Aviation, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.