So, I passed my checkride on sunday. wall of text incoming, followed by some pics of my club checkout today with my wifey in the back.
I went out for a little while in the morning with Lawrence just to do a little last minute practice. It was a beautiful morning. We did some more stalls, some more steep turns, and a few more power off approaches and short/soft field stuff. Then the cropduster took over in him again, and we went looking for deer and hogs, and checked his neighbor’s fencelines.
After that we started the oral. Got as far as the examiner explaining the test and the standards, getting the admin data taken care of, then broke for lunch :-D
After lunch we went through the rest of the oral. I don’t think Mary was affected much by the new ACS stuff. It seems she’s been very situationally-oriented / risk management focused for a while. She was much less concerned with rote memorization and much more concerned with making sure my decision making process was sound. On a few questions my answer was “yeah, I’d be legal but I wouldn’t do it” or “Actually, I don’t know if that’s legal, but I wouldn’t do it” then I’d find the answer in the regs. We went over the flight planning and talked through some scenarios there. All in all the oral was much less stressful than I anticipated it to be. It was an easy few hours of discussion. We also spent a lot of time talking about personal minimums, and she explained that on the checkride, she was less concerned with perfection, and more concerned with my ability to manage risk and make decisions (which I got to do for real, more in a sec on that), and she said “This checkride isn’t about you. It’s about your wife and kid. I’m here to determine if you flying with them is going to put them in danger.”
We went on the checkride, and honestly it felt less like a test and more like an experienced pilot making sure I was safe enough to join “the club.” Even after some mistakes I never really felt like she was there to kick my butt over them. It didn’t feel too much different than a trip up with my CFI
We took off, circled the field at F05, and headed toward the childress VOR. At the first checkpoint, I used the whiz wheel to get my ground speed, and then she threw a diversion at me. Rather than bust out the chart, I first tuned to the VOR near the diversion airport and spun the dial. Got a signal, saved me some time, and then all I had to do was verify with what I saw on the ground and the chart that I was going the right direction. She then vectored me north and said “are you legal to go with just an ipad?” to which I replied yes. She asked if I was required to have a backup, and I said no, but I also mentioned that personally, I wouldn’t fly without a backup device and the paper chart/plotter/e6b. I thought she was satisfied with that answer, but then I had to look it up later. Indeed, I was correct, you can use electronic stuff and you aren’t required to have a backup, it’s just “recommended”.
Her and Lawrence both are big proponents of technology to reduce pilot workload. She said she was impressed at me being able to find things quickly in foreflight. This I credit to the stuff I practiced in my sim at home. Using navaids, using foreflight, etc… all that stuff I practiced in the sim with some plugins for foreflight. REALLY helpful because I can pause the sim ;-). Prior to departing I had freqs written down for any VOR I thought would be in range of us, and that proved pretty useful. Good idea for the future I think, to have those jotted down on the nav log in case I need to divert.
After that we did a little unusual attitude and hood stuff. I hate that stuff as usual but I did well. Rather than do what some do and screw up the airplane while you are hands off/eyes closed, she said “you dropped your flashlight on the floor under the rear seat. Go get it and hold the airplane straight and level, counting to 20.
At the 10 count the engine rose in RPMs, and a shadow swept alarmingly fast across my arm. At 15 she said recover. Holy crap. I was about 10 degrees nose down and in a 35 degree bank.
A few more of those and she seemed satisfied. As we were turning back to north, we noticed a vibration in the front of the airplane. I asked her if she felt that, she said she did. She said “what do you want to do”.
I gotta admit, I paused for a minute and screwed up my face. I didn’t like the vibration , but I also wanted to finish the checkride. I said “we should head back.” We determined it to be the nosewheel castoring in the wind and it went away when we changed direction
We did our stalls, which went well (barring a misunderstanding on the power-on stall. My CFI had me do them all the way into the stall. He told me to expect her to want me to recover when the horn blared. I did that and she had me do it again, all the way into the stall.) After that we did steep turns, which went well.
My engine failure , however, didn’t go so well. I misjudged a stiff headwind, and realized that we weren’t going to make my spot with enough power line clearance.. By the time I realized that, options were more limited. I elected to go for a crosswind landing in a different field, which wasn’t as smooth, and had some water. She told me that while I likely would have landed without injury, I might have busted up the airplane a bit due to the condition of the field. I was bummed about that, but she reminded me that mission 1 was surviving, mission 2 was using the airplane again, and they’re in that order.
Turns around a point didn’t go so well. Mine was less of a circle and more of an egg due to me misjudging wind direction. After that, short/soft field stuff which went well. On one of the circuits she cut my power after having me go really high on downwind, so I got to do another engine out landing with a heavy slip. Pointed just shy of midfield so I wouldn’t come up short, slipped her to lose altitude, and then once I had it made, went full flaps and landed. Stopped in plenty of space. At that point she said “go top her off” and we were done.
We did some signatures. I passed the “where do you sign” test, and now I’m a private pilot
