Dale, one of the excellent Hawai’i Flight Academy instructors, needed time with his family; so he passed his student, “Dickie” Wilson, over to me.
I only needed to fly with Dickie 5 times to be convinced that this guy knew how to fly. Dale did a great job teaching him - Dickie definitely understood his airplane. So, a checkride was scheduled with Hawai’i’s new examiner, D.P.E. “Mac” Smith.
The checkride started at 9:00AM, June 8, 2008. They started flying a little after noon. By 3:00PM we all knew he had passed. His flying was *perfect*.
Dickie has his own Grumman Cheetah. There are advantages and disadvantages to learning to fly in your own airplane. One disadvantage is obvious: you’re bending your own airplane on those hard landings. But there’s a clear advantage to flying a checkride in your own airplane, when you have the incentive to learn every quirk of your bird. And that’s the advantage Dickie brought to today’s checkride: mastery of his aircraft.
Congratulations, Dickie!
