Citation II type rating - Day 12 - checkride prep

It was checkride prep day!

Started off in the simulator, essentially running through everything that will likely be on the checkride. The entire flight was at (or near) JFK.

After an aborted takeoff, the second takeoff, climb to altitude and airwork went great - steep turns, stalls (clean, takeoff, and landing configurations) - no problems there. Back to the airport for the ILS RWY 22L using the autopilot to minimums, and missed approach.

On the missed approach, an engine failed and we shut it down (no restart). Vectors to the ILS RWY 4R, single engine. Nearing glideslope intercept he had me turn off the autopilot and hand fly (we knew this was coming). And the minute I did, everything started getting out of hand.

I was having a really hard time following the flight director. Every time I'd turn to follow it I think I was on it, I'd drift off heading. I weaved all the way down final! It was somewhat humbling, because I've always considered the single-engine ILS on checkrides to be something that people worry too much about, they are usually pretty straightforward once you have the airplane all trimmed up. And I think that was my problem - I may not have had the rudder properly trimmed when I had engaged the autopilot after the engine failure, and so the autopilot masked that out-of-trim condition. Until, of course, the point where I turned it off just as I intercepted glideslope, and never really got stabilized.

The ground track, or at least what it felt like to me!

So, doing my bobbing and weaving down final, once the runway was in sight (with 1/2 mile visibility), I was not in a good position to land, and went around. Fortunately this was still a training event, not a checkride, so the instructor just repositioned me back outside glideslope intercept on a vector. The second try was much better and I landed safely. Whew!

Following that I got things back together. Takeoff, engine failure, successful restart, RNAV (GPS) RWY 4R with a go-around/missed approach due to pink elephants on the runway or some such thing, and then the VOR RWY 4L, full procedure from the JFK VOR, circle-to-land runway 31R. They teach a local technique for the circling part of this that works every time if you do it right.

Landed, took off again, and vectors for the visual approach to runway 13R with inoperative flaps (stuck at 0 degrees). No problems there either.

And apparently, that's pretty much the checkride! You can bet I will really be focused on that single-engine ILS - we've done them before and I had no problems, so I'm sure I'll be okay.

After the sim, we did a couple hours of prep for the oral part of the checkride. I was way more worried about this than the flying part, but it seems pretty straightforward and I don't anticipate any problems. I've been studying the aircraft systems for about 6 weeks now, so hopefully some of it has stuck!