At least I think.... I was supposed to do my PPL check ride yesterday, then with less than 24hrs to go the examiner asked if we could move the time back until the afternoon. Not possible as "my" plane was reserved for me all morning then in the afternoon was booked solid with other students. So after chatting to my instructors we decided to split up the test and just take the oral section and do the flying another day.... Well I guess the examiner wanted to fill the whole time slot with something, that was the longest 3hrs of my life....holy cow you could have grown rice in the sweat pouring of me LOL I felt pretty good about most of it, the stuff I thought I would mess up on, (airspace/clearances, weather etc) I must have done well because he only asked a few questions on each and moved right on to the next subject. He caught me a couple of times and hammered me, one was a question about, IAS,TAS,CAS,GS, after I had correctly giving the definition of each he gave me a scenario about flying at 100kts into a 100kt head wind and asked me how fast I would be flying ( cant remember if he wanted TAS or IAS) I stumbled a bit and he kept going and my mind just went blank, I couldn't have told him my name if he asked it. What he was getting at was wind has no effect on airspeed...I worked it out eventually. The second was on the spin acronym P.A.R.E. I told him with great confidence Power, Aileron, Rudder, Elevator. Super he said now what do we do with them ? now in my head in a spin your headed vertically down, It didn't occur to me that the PTS has you in a flat spin, so naturally if your in a dive you would pull back on the elevator, not what he was looking for...he got pretty mad about it, ask me how I recover from a stall, no problem with that, finally he said say pull back one more time and we are done, so I said push forward.... and he moved on...only later talking to my instructor did the flat spin thing come up. The rest of it went well, he liked that I had planned two routes to our "destination" and my explanation of why I would do that (changing weather along the coast), the fact that I have put some personal check lists on my aircraft check list (IMSAFE, GOOSEACATS etc). With that all out of the way he said, ok you passed the hard part now we need to go flying. I offered to just let him watch one of my gopro videos of me doing maneuvers etc and he said wish it was that easy. Of course the other bummer about him not making our original appointment ( which he picked over a month ago and confirmed on Friday) is that the plane I fly the most (G1000 C172s) is now in the shop for its annual ....guess it takes two weeks, I could use the steam gauge plane, which I fly just fine (maybe even better), but not being as familiar with the gps and vor's etc, probably wise not to use my check ride to practice. So as always seems to happen when I get to "landmark" point in my training something pops up to delay the next step, I did 12 hours between my first and second solo's because my instructor was ill and the others couldn't sign me off for solo, always something, but I will keep on flying and gaining experience, I expect I will be close to 100hrs when all said done, not worried about that, I think I will be a much safer pilot having spend 80-90hrs with an instructor than I would have been had I pushed to try to make the test at the minimum 40hr mark.. Hope to get it done sometime in September
Wow, too bad you could not just go fly -that is the way I did my check ride. And my examiner proceeds to turn on the XM radio by playing with the avionics and I had no idea how to turn it off. What a huge distraction to have the radio playing for a large part of the check ride. You will get there, but I highly recommend another dry run with an instructor shortly beforehand just to build confidence and brush up. I'm finally taking lessons again to get the tail wheel endorsement I promised myself and to do some spins and basic aerobatics. I almost forgot how much fun it is to fly with a good instructor.
D, congrats on your success in the oral portion, too bad everything couldn't be wrapped up in one day I'm sure you are going to to "ace" part deux, if only the opportunity would finally present itself...Dang, it has been a long time coming! Mark (F.V. )
I am dismayed by your description of your check ride. I realize that I'm old and not up to speed with all the new techniques, but a check ride is not a stage to see how the student handles distractions, it is, as it is entitled, a ride to check the flying competence of the applicant. My check ride 65 years ago dealt with flying, albeit many problems thrown at me that were difficult , but they were all about how I would handle the things that I had to know not how to listen to XM radio!
Not knowing when I will be able to schedule the check ride I will carry on flying every chance I can....Its half the reason I have to many hours, when I get to a check point, I don't stop waiting for that particular sign off or endorsement, I just keep on practicing I have been told to expect this examiner to keep throwing stuff at me to see how much I can handle before I make a mistake or tell him to shut up.
IMO, that really isn't the way it is suppose to be. A checkride should focus on demonstrating the flying skills described in the Practical Test Standards book. http://www.faa.gov/training_testing/testing/test_standards/media/FAA-S-8081-14B.pdf A checkride is plenty hard enough without the examiner trying to disrupt or distract the pilot applicant. .
