Posted by It took me a little while longer than I thought to get the motivation to write this.
The day after my first post, I went back to finish the course. Another 2 hours of dual with an instructor, and I was signed up for the checkride. I nervously studied over the ground school course hand out. Even though this simple add-on was going to be very straight forward, us pilots are scared of two things: wings leaving the airframe, and check airmen.
I chuckled to myself, as to being nervous over such a timid checkride. After a few internal pep talks, I was fine. We headed out to the plane, and got set to go. I climbed in, and the check airman pushed us off the shore.
First off, we sailed. Using control surfaces you can actually sail the seaplane in a certain direction. We then started up the airplane. This involves grabbing ahold of the prop, and yanking it to start. He climbed in, and we were off. Started off with some idle power taxi techniques. We then did a step taxi, and step turn. Right after that we were off in the air, and headed for another lake.
As I leveled off at flight level 500 feet, I brought the power back to cruise power. He grabbed the throttle and yanked it to idle, "Engine failure, where we going". Looking around, I stumbled for a second. This lake, or that one. "Where we going?!" I pushed the nose over, and banked to the obvious choice. "That was the only logical choice, took you long enough". Great way to start it, I thought. No worries, the landing was beautiful.
We set up for docking. This would be the first time I actually tried this maneuver with a dock. Before we just 'imagined' a dock, and practiced lining up with it. Good thing I'm an amazing pilot, because I had no trouble. (sarcasm)
After this we did some plow taxi, and turns, and then a crosswind take off. We came back and did a rough water landing. Glassy water take off, and glass water landing. Rough water take off, and headed back to the office.
In a quick .8 I had passed the checkride. After some short paperwork, I had a new certificate that now said 'Airplane single engine land and sea'.