How I got to be a licensed pilot.
Here is the story of my checkride, a bit long, but it's all set out ...
I debated writing different versions one geared towards people familiar with aviation and another for people unfamiliar, but I think I'll just put the "pilot's version" here and say that if anyone has any questions about the terminology or what not, then ask.
My checkride was scheduled for 8 am on April 13 (a Thursday thankfully, not a Friday). My instructor arranged to meet me at the school an hour early to make sure my paperwork was all in order and to go over any last minute questions I might have. We went over all the paperwork and I just mostly paced around. Turned out the examiner was about 30 minutes late. He was supposed to have another checkride that afternoon, but that student canceled and it seemed like the message about which student canceled may have gotten a little crossed up. No big deal, just a little more waiting. The afternoon student canceled because he was worried about passing the oral and he had showed up to go over ground work with my CFI while I was taking the test, so I BS’d around with my instructor and the other student while we waited. That was a good way to help bleed off some of the tension. When the examiner arrived we all introduced ourselves. The other student explained that he had cancelled because he had “locked up” during his oral exam prep and wanted more time to get that all down. That led to the examiner talking about his testing philosophy, how he wasn’t looking to fail people, but that he also wasn’t a “ticket factory”, he wanted to make sure that you had a good knowledge base that you could apply to real world situations and that you would be safe in the air. With that said, we got started.
He spent a few minutes just chatting with me, following that directive about putting the examinee at ease (yeah right!), explained how the test would go, collected my fee, asked if I had any questions and announced that the test had now begun. The approach he took was fairly straight forward. He asked questions about what made me legal to fly as a pilot; then what made a plane legal to fly. I was right on all these questions and I think because of that, he didn’t drill down too deep on any of those areas. There was one odd moment. He asked me about required equipment for day VFR flight, and I ran through the TOMATO FLAMES acronym for him complete with writing it out on a scratch pad. When I finished with that he asked me if I could fly a plane with no fluid in the compass. I paused for a second thinking that I had just said the compass was required equipment, so I wondered if this was some little trick regarding whether the fluid being gone meant that the compass was really inoperative or not. Decided that was over-thinking things and just said that the compass was required, so the only way I could fly that aircraft was with a special flight permit. He kind of chuckled and said that he asks that question to make sure someone can actually apply the knowledge as opposed to just repeating an acronym.
After that it was going over my cross-country plan and the charts. Again, that was no problem. He asked me if it was a go or no go with the weather, and I told him go. He said fine, you go preflight the plane and I’ll see you out there in a minute. I did the preflight, and he came out and asked me what I was looking for when testing the fuel and to identify some of the things sticking out from the plane. He pointed to the antennas on top of the tail and asked me what they were and I locked for a second because I couldn’t remember if they were nav or comm antennas. I said those are either nav or comm. Antennas and his remark was, “well, they’re v-shaped aren’t they?” So I said, “that’s right, those are nav antennas then” and we moved on.
Got started, did the run-up and I asked him what kind of takeoff he wanted. He called for a short field and I walked him through what we were doing. The actual take off got a bit disrupted because ATC didn’t like the fact that I was stopped at the end of the runway while my power came up and told me to get moving. Then after I took off, tower told me to adjust off to the right side of the runway like in a go around. I know that got me off my speeds for a bit during my climb out, so I was nervous that I blew it from the get go, but the examiner quickly said not to worry and went on about how he doesn’t like it when the controllers try to rush things. Off we went to the first checkpoint, which I hit right on time and that got me feeling a bit calmer. We then headed out to where he wanted to do the maneuvers, a different area from the normal practice area, so that was another area outside of my comfort zone. It was also pretty bumpy as Thursday was the first fairly warm day here in the desert and we were getting the effect of the ground being warmer. We got into the area and he asked for a 180 turn and then to set up for slow flight. I told him I would use the 180 turn also to clear the area and he remarked that he was hoping I would say that as several people do the 180 and then 2 90 degree clearing turns. Got set up in slow flight telling him everything I was doing along the way. He called for some turns in slow flight and then asked for the power off stall. No problems there so it was on to the power on stall which also went just fine. Then he asked me to put on the foggles and had me do turns to a heading and also a 180 turn to simulate inadvertent flight into IMC. He then asked to take the airplane for unusual attitudes and asked if I got sick. I told him no, but let me tell you he put that to the test. He did more bouncing around ups and downs and what not then anyone who’d put me into unusual attitudes before! I’ve never had any sort of motion sickness issue before, but I was definitely feeling it in my tummy a bit there. In any case the recoveries went fine, he took the plane back and I removed the foggles.
Then he asked for steep turns, both of which went fine even with the bounciness in the air. Then he said to go ahead and head back to the airport for some landings. He asked for a normal touch and go landing to start with, it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. The next time around he asked for soft field landing touch and go to a soft field takeoff, no problems with those. Then he said to do a no flaps landing. Did the approach around to that and he asked for a go around. That actually made for an easy go around, because there was no need to pull in the flaps! Then he told me to tell the tower the next one would be full stop termination and asked for the short field landing. Now the short field landings had been the trickiest thing for me during my training, and this was the one item where I really thought I might not pass on the checkride. My attitude was, worst comes to worst, and I’ll have everything else done and go back and do the short field another day. My approach was good and I was right on speed. I goosed the power a bit on short final because it looked like I was going to land short, and that got me fighting the plane a bit. I ended up way off centerline and trying to get back on led me to landing less then straight down the runway. I did get us quickly straightened out, but I really thought that one was a bust. I talked about it while we were taxiing back and his comment was just to not fight the airplane. He had me talk through the landing and said he could tell I knew what was wrong with it which was important.
We did the shutdown and he asked how I thought I did. I told him that I had it up till that last landing. He said, “nahh, you did a good job, congratulations.” He did say that the last landing was definitely shaky, but that I knew what was wrong, got it down within the tolerances and was never unsafe with it. Then he told me to put the plane away while he typed up my temporary. I’ll tell you, pushing a plane back into a parking space was never more fun!
Reflecting back on it, I noticed that there were several things I was expecting to do that he didn’t call for. I didn’t have to track any VORs and there was no ground reference maneuvers other then flying the pattern. The ground reference stuff would have been no big deal as the wind was almost non-existent. The most surprising thing to me though was that he never pulled the throttle back for a simulated engine out.
It was hard work, but it was also fun work, so I guess that’s all I can ask. Now Missi and I are just trying to figure out where we’ll go on our first trip!
I debated writing different versions one geared towards people familiar with aviation and another for people unfamiliar, but I think I'll just put the "pilot's version" here and say that if anyone has any questions about the terminology or what not, then ask.
My checkride was scheduled for 8 am on April 13 (a Thursday thankfully, not a Friday). My instructor arranged to meet me at the school an hour early to make sure my paperwork was all in order and to go over any last minute questions I might have. We went over all the paperwork and I just mostly paced around. Turned out the examiner was about 30 minutes late. He was supposed to have another checkride that afternoon, but that student canceled and it seemed like the message about which student canceled may have gotten a little crossed up. No big deal, just a little more waiting. The afternoon student canceled because he was worried about passing the oral and he had showed up to go over ground work with my CFI while I was taking the test, so I BS’d around with my instructor and the other student while we waited. That was a good way to help bleed off some of the tension. When the examiner arrived we all introduced ourselves. The other student explained that he had cancelled because he had “locked up” during his oral exam prep and wanted more time to get that all down. That led to the examiner talking about his testing philosophy, how he wasn’t looking to fail people, but that he also wasn’t a “ticket factory”, he wanted to make sure that you had a good knowledge base that you could apply to real world situations and that you would be safe in the air. With that said, we got started.
He spent a few minutes just chatting with me, following that directive about putting the examinee at ease (yeah right!), explained how the test would go, collected my fee, asked if I had any questions and announced that the test had now begun. The approach he took was fairly straight forward. He asked questions about what made me legal to fly as a pilot; then what made a plane legal to fly. I was right on all these questions and I think because of that, he didn’t drill down too deep on any of those areas. There was one odd moment. He asked me about required equipment for day VFR flight, and I ran through the TOMATO FLAMES acronym for him complete with writing it out on a scratch pad. When I finished with that he asked me if I could fly a plane with no fluid in the compass. I paused for a second thinking that I had just said the compass was required equipment, so I wondered if this was some little trick regarding whether the fluid being gone meant that the compass was really inoperative or not. Decided that was over-thinking things and just said that the compass was required, so the only way I could fly that aircraft was with a special flight permit. He kind of chuckled and said that he asks that question to make sure someone can actually apply the knowledge as opposed to just repeating an acronym.
After that it was going over my cross-country plan and the charts. Again, that was no problem. He asked me if it was a go or no go with the weather, and I told him go. He said fine, you go preflight the plane and I’ll see you out there in a minute. I did the preflight, and he came out and asked me what I was looking for when testing the fuel and to identify some of the things sticking out from the plane. He pointed to the antennas on top of the tail and asked me what they were and I locked for a second because I couldn’t remember if they were nav or comm antennas. I said those are either nav or comm. Antennas and his remark was, “well, they’re v-shaped aren’t they?” So I said, “that’s right, those are nav antennas then” and we moved on.
Got started, did the run-up and I asked him what kind of takeoff he wanted. He called for a short field and I walked him through what we were doing. The actual take off got a bit disrupted because ATC didn’t like the fact that I was stopped at the end of the runway while my power came up and told me to get moving. Then after I took off, tower told me to adjust off to the right side of the runway like in a go around. I know that got me off my speeds for a bit during my climb out, so I was nervous that I blew it from the get go, but the examiner quickly said not to worry and went on about how he doesn’t like it when the controllers try to rush things. Off we went to the first checkpoint, which I hit right on time and that got me feeling a bit calmer. We then headed out to where he wanted to do the maneuvers, a different area from the normal practice area, so that was another area outside of my comfort zone. It was also pretty bumpy as Thursday was the first fairly warm day here in the desert and we were getting the effect of the ground being warmer. We got into the area and he asked for a 180 turn and then to set up for slow flight. I told him I would use the 180 turn also to clear the area and he remarked that he was hoping I would say that as several people do the 180 and then 2 90 degree clearing turns. Got set up in slow flight telling him everything I was doing along the way. He called for some turns in slow flight and then asked for the power off stall. No problems there so it was on to the power on stall which also went just fine. Then he asked me to put on the foggles and had me do turns to a heading and also a 180 turn to simulate inadvertent flight into IMC. He then asked to take the airplane for unusual attitudes and asked if I got sick. I told him no, but let me tell you he put that to the test. He did more bouncing around ups and downs and what not then anyone who’d put me into unusual attitudes before! I’ve never had any sort of motion sickness issue before, but I was definitely feeling it in my tummy a bit there. In any case the recoveries went fine, he took the plane back and I removed the foggles.
Then he asked for steep turns, both of which went fine even with the bounciness in the air. Then he said to go ahead and head back to the airport for some landings. He asked for a normal touch and go landing to start with, it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. The next time around he asked for soft field landing touch and go to a soft field takeoff, no problems with those. Then he said to do a no flaps landing. Did the approach around to that and he asked for a go around. That actually made for an easy go around, because there was no need to pull in the flaps! Then he told me to tell the tower the next one would be full stop termination and asked for the short field landing. Now the short field landings had been the trickiest thing for me during my training, and this was the one item where I really thought I might not pass on the checkride. My attitude was, worst comes to worst, and I’ll have everything else done and go back and do the short field another day. My approach was good and I was right on speed. I goosed the power a bit on short final because it looked like I was going to land short, and that got me fighting the plane a bit. I ended up way off centerline and trying to get back on led me to landing less then straight down the runway. I did get us quickly straightened out, but I really thought that one was a bust. I talked about it while we were taxiing back and his comment was just to not fight the airplane. He had me talk through the landing and said he could tell I knew what was wrong with it which was important.
We did the shutdown and he asked how I thought I did. I told him that I had it up till that last landing. He said, “nahh, you did a good job, congratulations.” He did say that the last landing was definitely shaky, but that I knew what was wrong, got it down within the tolerances and was never unsafe with it. Then he told me to put the plane away while he typed up my temporary. I’ll tell you, pushing a plane back into a parking space was never more fun!
Reflecting back on it, I noticed that there were several things I was expecting to do that he didn’t call for. I didn’t have to track any VORs and there was no ground reference maneuvers other then flying the pattern. The ground reference stuff would have been no big deal as the wind was almost non-existent. The most surprising thing to me though was that he never pulled the throttle back for a simulated engine out.
It was hard work, but it was also fun work, so I guess that’s all I can ask. Now Missi and I are just trying to figure out where we’ll go on our first trip!