Day 38 ( 94.5 TT, 19.6 MET )

I'm both sad and happy to write this post. Happy because I finally got my multi-private rating this morning. Sad, because it took two weeks of waiting, a drive up to the Orlando FSDO because of paperwork problems, and worst of all, a practical test failure. I should have listened to my fellow students when they said "don't fly with McColgan, he will fail you to make more money on the retake. People don't like him, so he doesn't have a lot of students." I didn't believe that, but now I think it happened to me. I needed to save some time, other examiners are booked up for months but this guy is always available. And for a reason.

The entire check ride went fine, did all my maneuvers within PTS (practical test standards). When we were flying back to Ft. Pierce, he asked me to do a short-field landing. Under the conditions (landing 10R, wind 040@15kt gusting to 19) the landing was really good. Wind correction applied, on center line, and airline soft. BUT I touched down 250' after the thousand foot markers. The PTS allows only 200' but that's under ideal weather, and the examiner should, at their discretion, curve the results a bit. McColgan's discretion was to fail me, and do a retake (another $250), which I passed with no problems this morning. So if there are people out there reading this, if you plan to attend here, avoid John McColgan. He will scream at you during the entire flight, point and grunt instead of giving you clear directions, and get even more upset when you ask to clarify. The school has two other designated examiners, and you can always call the FSDO for an FAA examiner (and save $400)

Anyways, lesson learned. I'm happy to move on to my instrument flight training. Right now I'm looking for a different instructor (my guy got hired with American Eagle and is packing up for an early December departure, I'm jealous). Below is the weather we have been getting lately, not very Florida like.