Saturday, November 21: "The Checkride"

San Diego International at dusk

I'll save you the suspense: I passed.

The checkride was probably the most stressful thing I've ever done. The examiner did his best to calm me, but it was no use. I was a big ball of nerves.

I showed up to the airport at 7 AM and ate breakfast with my instructor. An hour later, the examiner arrived, and after all the paperwork was filled out, the oral portion began. He started with a few pretty simple questions that I answered easily. Then the questions got more and more advanced. He took out a sheet of paper and drew a diagram of a weather system. He asked, "where would you be likely to find thunderstorms in this system?" I had no idea.

He asked me questions about airspace and my mind went blank (fortunately this was an open-book test; I was allowed to reference my copy of the Federal Air Regulations, which helped). An hour and a half later, about the time I started to feel like I was failing, he said, "You definitely know your stuff. I'm going to get a cup of coffee, then we're going flying."

I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

The flight test went similarly to the oral test. It started out easy, then got more and more frustrating and stressful. I performed each maneuver to checkride standards, but they were far from perfect. And the examiner let me know exactly what I was doing wrong at each step of the way. Every knot of airspeed too fast and every degree of heading off-course earned me a stern reprimand. At one point, I become completely convinced of two things: that I was going to fail the checkride, and that I was never, ever going to set foot in an airplane ever again. I just couldn't imagine putting myself through this stress all over again.

When it was all over, not only did I pass, I think I genuinely impressed the examiner. All that criticism during the ride? Just part of his job. I may have passed this checkride, but I have tons more to learn.

The next day (Sunday), I grabbed two friends and took a "victory flight" down to San Diego. I am now a private pilot!

It all comes down to this

Today is November 17th, 2009. It's been three years since the first time I sat in the left seat of an airplane cockpit, five months since I started training in earnest, 63 total hours flown (11 solo) and 153 landings. All leading up to the culminating event this Saturday: my checkride.

That was probably too dramatic. I'm psyching myself up for this but I really should just relax. The checkride is just like another lesson. I'll preflight the plane, like I always do. I'll take off, fly around and perform the same maneuvers I've performed dozens of times already. Then I'll land the plane and shut it down, same as always.

Except this time I'll be flying with someone who has the power to grant me a pilot certificate. No big deal!

On the morning of the checkride, I will present a cross-country flight plan that I am now preparing. We will talk about the flight plan and he will ask me a bunch of questions about airplanes and other things I should know about.

After that, we'll get in the airplane and go flying. Initially we will follow my preplanned flight, but as soon as the examiner is satisfied that I know how to navigate, he will have me perform maneuvers instead, like slow flight, stalls, steep turns, etc. He will pick an airport at random and I will need to fly there after making a decent estimate about how long it will take and how much fuel I will burn along the way. And at some point he will simulate an engine failure and make sure I know how to deal with that.

After this weekend, I'll write about how it went. Until then, I've got some flight planning to do!

Ground Reference Maneuvers

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I promise I haven't given up! I'm still flying and I'm still well on my way to getting my license. In fact, part of the reason I've been quiet is that I've been spending a lot of time studying for the written exam, which I took last week.

I passed!

Now the next step is a checkride with an FAA-designated examiner, but before I'm ready for that I have a few things I need to work on, like ground reference maneuvers. There are two I have to master: turns around a point and S-turns.

During turns around a point, I must fly a perfect circle around a chosen point on the ground, while maintaining constant airspeed and altitude. An S-turn involves flying an "S" shape across a straight line on the ground, like a road or the edge of a field. The difficult part in these maneuvers is correcting for the wind, which is always evil and tries to blow me off course.

On the plus side, I've totally mastered short-field landings. During a short-field landing, I must
pick a spot near the beginning of the runway to aim for and hit it right on, or no more than 200 feet beyond. I had trouble with these for a while, but last weekend I finally nailed them. I did four in a row and hit the spot dead-on.

Some of the other procedures I'm going to have to perform are a soft-field takeoffs and landing (like what I would do on a dirt or grass runway), stalls, slips, and a simulated engine failure. I'll be practicing all these for a few more weeks, and when I'm ready, I'll take that checkride!