So, I have 3 things still to pass. It's kind of sad, but I'm not surprised,
especially not after getting up this morning, as I've been feeling like crap
since then.
I could have asked to move the date, but I didn't see the point, as I don't
think I'd have felt much better next time (yes, went to bed early, even took
sleeping pills in an attempt to have a decent night, but that didn't work,
it was very restless).
Besides, I'd rather see what I can do or cannot while not feeling well when
there is a pilot in the right seat so that I know not to do it when I'll
be sole PIC (as opposed to the millions of people who drive every day while
too tired to properly react should an accident right in front of them).

Basically, I know that while I can be very smart, my mental abilities are
very uneven, and go way down with lack of sleep (much faster than others)
or other physical reasons. I failed to be in the top 1/10,000 students in
France and had to settle with 1/1,000-ish mostly because of costly and
punctual brain farts.  This has plagued me my entire life, and obviously it
comes up in flying.
My goal however is to have my skill level be high enough that I will manage
to do the right thing even if I suddenly become very tired or otherwise
start losing mental "sharpness" while in flight (I shouldn't have left
otherwise) and get overloaded with bad situations on top of that.
I have achieved that for driving since I do an instruct for high performance
and track driving: I can manoeuvre at high speed and in dicy conditions
(like opposite lock countersteering if I oversteer in a turn due to water
or oil), even if I'm not much awake, because I've trained enough that I can
do it out cold. I have to reach the same level for flying.


Anyway, today I felt bad enough and was tired enough that I failed to
perform to that level. I'll most likely need many more hours before I know
everything so well that I can do it all while my brain is only working at
30-40%.
At least the good news is that according to Mike most of my flying was
actually ok. I personally think it was nice, I noticed multiple mistakes
I did while in flight (minor sure, but mistakes nonetheless)

Anyway, I did my best to concentrate and ground went fine since it was quite
easy compared to the amount of reading and preparation I had done at home
and with you. No matter, I read and practiced for myself anyway, not just to
pass the test. Just like, I want to practise more spins, basic acro, and
more night flying than the bare minimum required by the exam)
For that matter, I found 5 errors in the gleim written test guide that I
submitted for fixing, and made 2 comments to the FAA about their study guide
(which seem to have been ignored), and found another problem in the AIM
section of FARAIM 2005 that ASA has acknowledged and has passed on to the
FAA for correction next year.


Flying, well, I only managed what I knew out cold and could do in my sleep,
since my abilities were not much higher than that.
Soft field landing was not as smooth as I would have liked and I felt the
front gear touched too early, but the essentials were there.
I got a bit close to busting TPA+100 several times, although I caught it
each time just in time.
Short field landing is the only thing I actually did fairly well.
Takeoffs were easy, no big deal
Power off landing, well, I was distracted by a plane that did an aborted
takeoff, and came in a bit too high. I slipped with no flaps (by the book)
and no power, and was a tad fast. We could have stopped, but I didn't
like the way I was landing (I had touched down and bounced once, so I
went around instead of finishing the landing). Mike apparently counted that
as a pass for power off landing (since we would have made it), and
successful go around (that part was fine, with half flap, check for positive
rate of climb, no flaps and Vy)

We then went for the X-country where I flew slightly off course to stay below
clouds and go more towards the low side of sunol.
Mike then diverted me to KLVK, turned off the GPS and my workload got
interesting at that point.
At that point, I wanted to stop and circle, but I was just in an unsafe
spot to do so (in the middle of the pass), so I went towards calaveras
reservoir while starting my work.
I was:
- inside the pass so I had to watch traffic
- flying a bit low (2000 not climbing) due to clouds
- recomputing heading on the terminal chart, calculating distance
- quick calculation in my head: 12 miles is a 10th of an hour at 120knots,
  or 6 minutes, which is less than 1 gallon of fuel. I gave that to Mike
  along with the approximate heading by the time I had reached calaveras
  reservoir, I turned for that heading so that my time would be correct.

While checking my heading, altitude (descending) and getting ATIS for KLVK, I
tuned the tower and Mike told me I had busted their airspace by the time I
was pressing on the button to call them. Thanks for playing...

Mistake #1: I knew to divide the distance by two on a terminal chart, I even
told myself to do it after measuring, except I never did it. See my comment
about "costly brain farts above" :(
At least I had reset my HI to compass right before leaving on the X-Country,
so my heading was pretty much dead on, but that didn't do me any good.

Mistake #2: diversion to close by airport when you have to pretend you don't
know where it is and do those computations instead of focussing on flying
there and doing what you should do, as never been my forte and something
that requires a fully working brain. I didn't have that.
Obviously, my biggest judgement mistake was to try and get to KLVK quickly
and worry about making the numbers I had just computed (based on a regular
120knots cruising speed) instead of staying over calaveras and circling
there until I had everything together. In the end, I was only about 1mn
short.

Mistake #3: I have never really been able to tell what a mile is, never mind
4. As a result, putting away my sectional instead of looking at how close
I was to the airspace, was obviously stupid since the GPS was off (I put
it away in an attempt to clean up the cockpit and work on my descent
checklist).

I landed at KLVK, and departed for airwork exercise. Hood work was not
a problem, as it's never been for me anyway.

After that, I was obviously annoyed that the not very unexpected mistake
did happen, and proceeded to doing my first steep turn without a clearing
turn. No comment. I actually caught that without Mike telling me after
finishing the turn, but that's a bit late. Mind you, by then, my brain
was obviously even more shut than when I started.
I also overshot the heading. I'm not sure what happened: when I practised,
if I stopped the turn before the heading, I would undershoot it, so I used
my regular rudder and back to level flight, and the needle moved by almost
15 degrees as soon as I did that, as opposed to my regular 2 or 3. I think I
was blown off or something weird happened as I've never seen this before.
Not that it matters for the test either due to clearing turn... but I'd
love to know more about what actually happened.

Slow flight, which I've never not had problems with, was also failed because
weather was someone turbulent, and while Mike asked for 55 knots as a
result, at some point we got caught in an updraft which made us go faster
and climb. At this point, my mechanical reaction to pitch up to reduce
speed, and remove power to restore altitude was not the right one since the
updraft would have messed the results anyway and I pitched up a bit too high
(Mike said 20 degrees). The stall warning did not go off, nor did we stall,
but Mike felt it was unsafe and that I should not have tried to maintain the
exercise parameters at all cost. At that point, he had a better picture than
me, so I'll defer to him.

The rest was fine, Mike thought it was actually reasonably good. I
personally think he was nice and several points were passable, at best, but
that's the best I could do today, which wasn't enough obviously.

The vexing part is that I could most likely pass all this just fine
tomorrow if I get a decent night of sleep tonight :-(
Anyway, I guess I'll go back for more practise, so that if I reach 200%,
I'll still still at 100% when my capacities drop by half
I'm obviously not worried about passing what's left, I've already done it
enough times just fine if I'm able to use my brain and pay attention, I just
need to deal with the extra unreliable brain challenge...

Sorry for your passing ratio Ali, but as agreed, I don't think another 100
hours of flying would have changed today by a lot.
I missed at least 3 or 4 questions on the written for similar stupid
reasons...

As for Mike, he was a nice person, I didn't feel he was there to nail me
on the smallest mistake (hence my comment about him being happier about the
rest of my flying than I was), and if it weren't for me being upset again
at my mental and concentration deficiencies, it would have been a great day.
I'll just have to continue to work around them.