Originally published: September 2008
Wayne Aviation – Commercial SEL
I did my Commercial SEL training with Wayne Aviation in Goldsboro, NC. This was a 10-hour commercial training package in an Arrow. I mainly picked Wayne Aviation because they advertised in Flying, their prices were in-line with others and I could commute from my home. It was a good choice I think, but there were some glitches in the process and like many concentrated training locations YOU have to take some charge of your training otherwise it all just drifts along.
Wayne Aviation is the FBO at the airport as well, and it’s changed hands since I took the training, but I met the new owner while I was there, and I doubt much will change. The new owner was enthusiastic and that’s always good and the instructors expected to be staying and continuing the training plans in place. Although, I notice they haven’t advertised anywhere I’ve been looking lately.
I started the training on Thursday November 8th. Things did not start well. My assigned instructor, Cesar Preza, was stuck in Dallas with his family on his way back from California. He’d definitely be back Friday. So they handed me some books, a copy of the POH, checklists etc. and said go off and study. Later in the morning one of the other instructors came over and we worked through the ASA oral questions for a couple of hours. I think I’d pretty well prepared for the various oral sections, rule and regulations etc., I needed to learn the Arrow and the systems and the Commercial maneuvers. However, there’s always something you can learn and so it was good to go through the questions.
Mid-afternoon another instructor came in and we were going to fly just get me used to the Arrow. This was good, I had plenty of Mooney time, so complex planes weren’t a problem for me, but I still wanted some time in the plane just to get up to speed. Again, nice and competent instructor, but he wasn’t planning to teach Commercial maneuvers, so we somewhat made it up as we went along. My lazy-eights were nothing to write home about and so he demonstrated them. At 60 degrees of bank it was a lovely lazy eight, but I had to remind him of the criteria in the PTS.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone was very nice, and they certainly scrambled to make sure the day wasn’t wasted. But still……
Friday Cesar turns up. Cesar’s a great person and a good instructor. Came from the Comair Academy program so he’s full of procedures and the “right” way to do things. This suits me, I love a good procedure, I can’t remember my own name without a prompt, and so any crutch is good by me.
So I won’t go into detail of every flight, but basically we’d ground school in the morning, which went fairly easily I thought and then fly in the afternoon. Out to the practice area, steep turns, stalls, lazy eights, chandelles and eights on pylons. Then back to the airport for various landing types. It was fun, although that bizarre automatic landing gear extension stuff has got to go!
Then Saturday morning it occurs to somebody that maybe we need to schedule my check ride. Hmmm, I kind of thought they’d have taken care of that when I booked the training, but apparently not. They usually work with Mr. Henry Joyner who comes down to Goldsboro or maybe Kinston. We could do the ride Sunday afternoon otherwise it was Thursday. Over lunch Cesar and I decided I was not going to be ready for Sunday, so it was Thursday. We’d fly Sunday, and then take Monday and Tuesday off and fly again Wednesday and check ride Thursday.
So I was driving home each night, what did I care, but if I’d been living out of the Motel 6 I’d have been unhappy. Now maybe if they’d known I was living in the Motel 6 they’d have been bit more pro-active. Again, everybody was very nice, but it didn’t occur to me to ask about the check ride, next time it will J.
So Thursday comes around and I’m to go to Ahoskie for a 2:00PM check ride. I’m plenty early. As I’m descending into Ahoskie the gear free-falls, this is not good, but we’re here now. I cycled the gear and it came back up and stayed up. So I was an hour early, but luckily so was the DE, so he finished his lunch and we sat down for the oral. The oral and paperwork was about 1.5 hours, and it was a good oral, I got to answer some questions and the DE got to teach me some stuff, everybody is satisfied.
Time to fly. Well we’re climbing out, gears up and then, hmmm, gear unsafe light is on and the gear is definitely down. We can’t get it to come back up. With the landing gear switch down the gear comes down and locks, but it won’t come up, with the gear switch up it just goes unsafe and the plane flies like the gear is hanging out there. So we did some troubleshooting while also doing some maneuvers. At this point I’m making the whole thing up, I’m doing steep turns and chandelles gear down, what power-setting do you use for that? Oh well, the DE wants to keep going and who am I to argue. We covered all the maneuvers and then back to the airport for some landings. I guess my decisive handling of our gear failure demonstrated my mastery of a complex aircraft, because after the departure we were straight legged the whole way.
At the end though, I’m the proud owner of a new temporary Commercial certificate. Time to plug back to Goldsboro with the gear down, thank everyone for their help, call Cesar and tell him he’s got another successful pass to his credit and off home.
I enjoyed my training with Wayne Aviation. I’d certainly recommend them (hey, I got the certificate first try, that counts for something), but if you’re coming into town and/or your schedule is not flexible, make sure all the ducks are lined up BEFORE you get there, don’t assume they’re handling it. If you have any questions for me, feel free to contact me.
