My checkride

Dennis Millard - 29 July 2003
Well, my original checkride was scheduled for 8 July. I showed up with all the proper paperwork, or so I thought. The designated examiner (DE) looked it all over, and then asked me how long my student license was good for. I replied "3 years, along with the medical certificate". He then directed me to FAR 61.19, which states that student licenses are good for 24 months. That seemed ludicrous to me, since the medical is good for 3 years, and student license is the same piece of paper. Anyway, my student license/medical certificate was 2 years and 8 days old! He refused to administer the checkride since he didn't have a blank student licence certificate to issue me. So, we had to reschedule for 29 July.

The real thing

Finally, the day arrived, and I was able to take my checkride. The oral exam went fairly well. Very thorough, just as I had expected. I was tripped up a couple times... one on the difference between an airmet and a sigmet. If you don't know, go look it up in the FAR. Overall, the oral exam was no big deal. We discussed almost everything... except for those darn light signals, which I had studied so hard!

Next, he wanted to see the logbook entries for the plane. I presented the copies that my instructor had made for me out of the maintainance logs. After inspecting them, he decided that two of them were invalid since they didn't actually show the tail number of the airplane! They had gotten chopped off in the photocopier. In a panic, I called my instructor, and he offered to make new ones and fax them to us. Whew... I avoided yet another delay in this checkride. While the examiner went over to the FBO to pick up the faxes, he sent me out to preflight the plane.

In the air at last!

We climbed into N41669 and took off from KOGD, and he had me perform a short field takeoff/landing, and then a soft field takoff/landing. One of my approaches was a little low, but seemingly within limits. Then, he instructed me to fly the first leg of my cross country plan that I had prepared. It was a flight to Sun Valley, ID. As I passed over the VOR, I proceeded to set up the NAV radio to track the outbound radial. Something was wrong... as I changed the OBS, the FROM/TO flag never changed. I rotated it 360 degrees several times, and it stayed fixed on "TO". I checked the freq, and it was correct. Certainly, I was doing something wrong. I didn't bother to listen to the VOR audio, because I was sure I had just missed something. I fiddled with it for several minutes, and the examiner just sat and watched me curiously. I knew he would offer no help... he was "just a passenger on this flight". Finally, I decided there was something wrong with the radio, and switched over to NAV2. The signal worked great, and I was able to track the outboud radial. The examiner said that before we landed, he wanted me to explain why I thought there was something wrong with NAV1.

I spent the rest of the checkride with that question bugging me in the back of my mind. I'm sure it was a real distraction to my performance. Anyway, we did the rest of the maneuvers. Clearing turns, steep turns, climbing turns. Then we did some stalls, power on and power off. Then he put me under the hood and did some unusal attitude recovery. He did a fantastic job of putting the plane into such an attitude that when I opened my eyes, I was completely disoriented. It was nose low, and I was a little slow to reduce throttle, but it turned out OK. I flew some vectors under the hood... it was a little tricky, and I caught myself chasing the needle back and forth at one point, but I settled down and stabilized it. The DE bugged me about maintaining altitude a few times in the beginning, but after I settled into the routine, I managed to keep it nailed.

Then we did some emergency procedures. He cut the engine, and said "you're engine died... now what?". I had drilled this so many times with my instructors. ABC- Airspeed, Best landing site, Cockpit. I had explained it to him during the oral, so he knew I knew it. Nevertheless, in the excitement of the moment, I mixed up the order. I pitched for best airspeed, and then immediately went to inside the cockpit for engine restart procedures, skipping the landing site entirely! The DE called me on it right away, and I sure felt dumb. He made some notes, and we moved on.

We did some ground reference maneuvers. There was a slight north wind, so I entered my 'S' turn downwind. The first half was dead on, but as I reversed course, the wind was stronger than I expected. I got blown off course, and blew the second half of the 'S' pretty bad. I told the DE that I had not compensated enough for the wind, and he agreed to let me fly it over again. The second time, I turned steeper in the second half, and nailed it. The other ground reference maneuvers went just fine.

NAV radio problem resolved

Before we landed, we discussed the problem with NAV1. I finally tried to tune the audio and listen to the morse code to see if the signal was present, and got nothing. The DE pointed out the little flag with diagonal lines that indicates there is no valid signal being recieved. It was confirmed that the radio was inoperative... just my luck to get a bum radio on the day of my checkride.

Making it official

After we landed, the DE informed me that he was ready to sign my private pilot's license! I was so relieved. We parked the plane, and went inside to finalize the paperwork. At that point, I realized that my back was drenched in sweat, and I was exhausted. We sat down to discuss the details over some cold drinks. He had a lot of good things to say, and I wish I could remember them all. One comment he made- when the NAV1 radio was acting funny, he would have liked to see me switch over to NAV2 sooner... I spent too much time fiddling with it, trying to make it work. One bit of advice he offered- Don't bank my turns so abruptly. They didn't bother HIM, but my future passengers might be more comfortable.

What a long day it had been. The oral exam took 2 hours, and the flight was almost 1.5 hours. I called my wife and my brother to tell them of the news, and then climbed back into N41669 to fly back home to the Bountiful Skypark... my first flight as a licensed pilot.

I've got some photos of me with the DE... as soon as they get developed I'll post them here.

-DRM