Priviate Pilot Check Ride
The night before my Private Pilot check ride, I was sitting in my chair debating whether or not to tell my wife of my impending examination. The week before when my previous ride was canceled she had been out of town and was unaware. Up until this point, I had not cracked a book. The DPE had given me a list of questions he expected me to be able to answer and I knew 99% at first glance. I was really trying not to get too worked up for this as I wanted to get a good nights sleep. So, I decided not to say anything that evening.
Oddly enough, I was able to get a good nights sleep. I attribute this mainly to the fact that I was determined not to second guess my knowledge and abilities. If I had spent the week pouring over the PTS and oral information I think I would not have pulled off the good sleep.
So, advice to those soon to be in my shoes, know this stuff before you schedule the ride, and then relax up until the day comes.
I awoke the morning of, refreshed. I knew this was a good sign. Sleep had come relatively unbidden and I was charged with the best stuff my body could give me, rest. I got up according to my plan, gathered my materials and told the family (wife and 18mo. daughter) that I was off. They looked into my eyes and had no clue of the building excitement within. I felt that I needed to keep moving so I headed out the door.
First order of business was fuel for my rapidly accelerating brain. Already a million scenarios were playing out in my mind and I knew it need some food. Though my stomach was already starting to give me that excited sick feeling, I had a good breakfast at my favorite breakfast restaurant.
I then headed out to the airport for some review time. I figured it couldn’t hurt now because I was already building this thing up in my mind. It was 10:00am when I got to the airport, the check ride was scheduled at 1:00pm at a near by class D airport. I got to the lounge and the airport bums were in full attendance. I told them it was checkride day and they were all suitably impressed. Words of encouragement were freely distributed and it made me feel good. Was I detecting a new found respect from this group? I got a can of pop and sat down for a few minutes. Soon I had spent an hour enjoying the familiar and comforting banter of the local pilots. It was 11:00pm and I decided to go get 175 and put a little fuel in her.
When I pulled the mixture out at the pumps something weird happened. It came out about an inch farther than usual and the engine wouldn’t stop. That was bad news. Just then I happened to see my mechanic pulling up to the terminal. The gods were surely favoring me today! I got his attention and explained the problem. He quickly isolated the problem and I taxied to his shop for some quick repairs. Forty dollars later and the check ride was saved. It was now almost 12:00pm.
I was starting to worry, as I still had not finished my cross country planning and needed to get the weather briefing. I quickly got my materials out and called 1800WXBRIEF. Once I had the information I plotted the correct course and calculated ground speed and ETE.
Once this was finished it was time to get in the air. I wanted to make a few touch and go landings before heading out as I had not flown in 2 weeks. I did a soft field takeoff, and landing and decided it was time to get going. I headed out to the Class D my DPE was waiting at.
We met at 12:40pm and started talking. Over the next 3 hours we talked about many things. He didn’t really grill me on anything. He seem to be more interested in my ability to reason. He explained several interesting things about how airplanes were certified and the criteria that the FAA based it on. It was obvious this guy had been doing this for a long time. It wasn’t at all like I expected the oral to be.
At about 3:30pm we headed out to the plane and he watched as I did a pre-flight. We got in and wasted no time. He told me to get us on a heading for our cross country, but not to climb above 2200 feet (1000 AGL) because we would do our low work first. Once we had put some distance between us and the airport he picked a road and told me to do S-turns across it. I did one complete S and he said that was enough. He then pointed out a small water tower and told me he wanted to see if there were any birds nests on it. I circled it once and he said that was good enough. We climbed up to 3000 feet and did steep turns. Then we transitioned to slow flight with a shallow turn to the left followed by a turn to the right. At this point he threw the first monkey wrench into my carefully prepared plans. He wanted me to transition that slow right turn into a banking power off stall. Well, I had always done these to the left, but I did what he asked. It seemed to take forever but it finally broke. I don’t remember if I called it or not, but he seemed satisfied.
We then went on to do a power on stall which came off fine. He told me to “foggleize” myself and took the controls. With instructions to close my eyes and recover when he said, he proceeded to put my little 150 through her paces. I didn’t know which way was up when he was finished but recovered fine. He followed that one with another and then had me start a descending turn and a heading of 180. Soon he had me take of my foggles and we were right at my local airport. He told me to give him a good landing. He never asked for a short field, or a soft field landing, only a good one each time.
What followed next was somewhat strange. At each landing he would instruct me to hold it off, add power, hold it off. He had me do a forward slip one approach. On one of these landings I was about 5 feet above the runway and had 30 degrees of flaps. It was then that he wanted a go around. I poured the coals to the Mighty 150 and milked off the flaps. He seemed satisfied by that one and told me to head back to the Class D airport.
Wow, I thought, is it really over? It has been a piece of cake up until this point. All I had to do was get this bird back on the ground without scaring him and I would have my wings! I called the tower and was cleared for left traffic to runway 35R. When I got abeam of the numbers they cleared me to land.
It was at this time he decided to fail my engine. No problem, I was right at pattern altitude and had plenty of room for error. As I turned base I noticed that a Bonanza was holding on the runway. As I neared the turn to final, engine out, he still had not taken off? What was going on? If he didn’t start moving soon I would have to abort. I pointed this out to the DPE and he said go to full power. I did and was going to continue and fly a left upwind so I wouldn’t get in the Bonanza’s way when the DPE took over and started in a hard left bank. The tower finally realized what was up and told us to do, what we were already doing, a left 360. Once I knew what was happening I told the DPE to let me have the airplane back. He did, but for a minute there, I wondered if I had done something wrong and had busted the ride. The DPE was very angry and he said that the tower had blew it. However, he didn’t think I had done anything wrong. He took over, because his experience told him what the controller would ask us to do. We landed without incident and he never spoke about what happened.
Thirty minutes later, I was leaving the airspace of Class D, a brand new Private Pilot.
I earned my wings on 2/18/02 just short of a year from my first solo, 2/25/01.
84hrs TT. 50hrs solo, 34hrs dual
Oddly enough, I was able to get a good nights sleep. I attribute this mainly to the fact that I was determined not to second guess my knowledge and abilities. If I had spent the week pouring over the PTS and oral information I think I would not have pulled off the good sleep.
So, advice to those soon to be in my shoes, know this stuff before you schedule the ride, and then relax up until the day comes.
I awoke the morning of, refreshed. I knew this was a good sign. Sleep had come relatively unbidden and I was charged with the best stuff my body could give me, rest. I got up according to my plan, gathered my materials and told the family (wife and 18mo. daughter) that I was off. They looked into my eyes and had no clue of the building excitement within. I felt that I needed to keep moving so I headed out the door.
First order of business was fuel for my rapidly accelerating brain. Already a million scenarios were playing out in my mind and I knew it need some food. Though my stomach was already starting to give me that excited sick feeling, I had a good breakfast at my favorite breakfast restaurant.
I then headed out to the airport for some review time. I figured it couldn’t hurt now because I was already building this thing up in my mind. It was 10:00am when I got to the airport, the check ride was scheduled at 1:00pm at a near by class D airport. I got to the lounge and the airport bums were in full attendance. I told them it was checkride day and they were all suitably impressed. Words of encouragement were freely distributed and it made me feel good. Was I detecting a new found respect from this group? I got a can of pop and sat down for a few minutes. Soon I had spent an hour enjoying the familiar and comforting banter of the local pilots. It was 11:00pm and I decided to go get 175 and put a little fuel in her.
When I pulled the mixture out at the pumps something weird happened. It came out about an inch farther than usual and the engine wouldn’t stop. That was bad news. Just then I happened to see my mechanic pulling up to the terminal. The gods were surely favoring me today! I got his attention and explained the problem. He quickly isolated the problem and I taxied to his shop for some quick repairs. Forty dollars later and the check ride was saved. It was now almost 12:00pm.
I was starting to worry, as I still had not finished my cross country planning and needed to get the weather briefing. I quickly got my materials out and called 1800WXBRIEF. Once I had the information I plotted the correct course and calculated ground speed and ETE.
Once this was finished it was time to get in the air. I wanted to make a few touch and go landings before heading out as I had not flown in 2 weeks. I did a soft field takeoff, and landing and decided it was time to get going. I headed out to the Class D my DPE was waiting at.
We met at 12:40pm and started talking. Over the next 3 hours we talked about many things. He didn’t really grill me on anything. He seem to be more interested in my ability to reason. He explained several interesting things about how airplanes were certified and the criteria that the FAA based it on. It was obvious this guy had been doing this for a long time. It wasn’t at all like I expected the oral to be.
At about 3:30pm we headed out to the plane and he watched as I did a pre-flight. We got in and wasted no time. He told me to get us on a heading for our cross country, but not to climb above 2200 feet (1000 AGL) because we would do our low work first. Once we had put some distance between us and the airport he picked a road and told me to do S-turns across it. I did one complete S and he said that was enough. He then pointed out a small water tower and told me he wanted to see if there were any birds nests on it. I circled it once and he said that was good enough. We climbed up to 3000 feet and did steep turns. Then we transitioned to slow flight with a shallow turn to the left followed by a turn to the right. At this point he threw the first monkey wrench into my carefully prepared plans. He wanted me to transition that slow right turn into a banking power off stall. Well, I had always done these to the left, but I did what he asked. It seemed to take forever but it finally broke. I don’t remember if I called it or not, but he seemed satisfied.
We then went on to do a power on stall which came off fine. He told me to “foggleize” myself and took the controls. With instructions to close my eyes and recover when he said, he proceeded to put my little 150 through her paces. I didn’t know which way was up when he was finished but recovered fine. He followed that one with another and then had me start a descending turn and a heading of 180. Soon he had me take of my foggles and we were right at my local airport. He told me to give him a good landing. He never asked for a short field, or a soft field landing, only a good one each time.
What followed next was somewhat strange. At each landing he would instruct me to hold it off, add power, hold it off. He had me do a forward slip one approach. On one of these landings I was about 5 feet above the runway and had 30 degrees of flaps. It was then that he wanted a go around. I poured the coals to the Mighty 150 and milked off the flaps. He seemed satisfied by that one and told me to head back to the Class D airport.
Wow, I thought, is it really over? It has been a piece of cake up until this point. All I had to do was get this bird back on the ground without scaring him and I would have my wings! I called the tower and was cleared for left traffic to runway 35R. When I got abeam of the numbers they cleared me to land.
It was at this time he decided to fail my engine. No problem, I was right at pattern altitude and had plenty of room for error. As I turned base I noticed that a Bonanza was holding on the runway. As I neared the turn to final, engine out, he still had not taken off? What was going on? If he didn’t start moving soon I would have to abort. I pointed this out to the DPE and he said go to full power. I did and was going to continue and fly a left upwind so I wouldn’t get in the Bonanza’s way when the DPE took over and started in a hard left bank. The tower finally realized what was up and told us to do, what we were already doing, a left 360. Once I knew what was happening I told the DPE to let me have the airplane back. He did, but for a minute there, I wondered if I had done something wrong and had busted the ride. The DPE was very angry and he said that the tower had blew it. However, he didn’t think I had done anything wrong. He took over, because his experience told him what the controller would ask us to do. We landed without incident and he never spoke about what happened.
Thirty minutes later, I was leaving the airspace of Class D, a brand new Private Pilot.
I earned my wings on 2/18/02 just short of a year from my first solo, 2/25/01.
84hrs TT. 50hrs solo, 34hrs dual