PP-ASEL

I guess my check-ride story starts two days before the "big day". I was scheduled for my check-ride Tuesday afternoon and was scheduled for my last pre-check-ride dual lesson the Sunday before (which turned out to be Palm Sunday). We were baptizing our newborn son that morning and I was skipping out on the post-baptismal dinner in order to be able to go on this lesson.

We went up and went through all of my maneuvers which were fine and came back to KLZU for some short and soft field landing practice. This is where I had the typical "worst flying of your training" experience. In every short field landing I floated too far down the runway and was generally off. I began to be very frustrated with myself and my instructor (myself for performing poorly and missing out on the festivities and my instructor because he didn't seem to be much help). I landed wanting to give it up. I thought my instructor was going to postpone the check-ride and I was so frustrated I wanted to quit.

We went inside the school to de-brief and my instructor was much more upbeat than I expected. He said that we did need to get together again and work on the short field work but that otherwise I did very well and showed that I was ready for the check-ride.
I ended up taking an additional day off of work and we met the next day to nail down the short field landings. This time everything clicked and we ended the lesson early and I went home to prepare for the oral exam.

Tuesday morning I was rushed trying to get all of the cross-country planning completed. I finally got everything done and we left only about thirty minutes late. (We had a couple of hours built into our schedule to allow us to fly around where the check-ride was and time to practice a few more short field landings).

After meeting the DE we started with all of the paperwork and the DE gave me two written exams to take while he worked on some of the paperwork. I finished the two exams and the oral started in earnest. First he graded the exams. After grading the first one (on airspace regulations) he said that I had not missed any questions and that in his eighteen years as a DE he had only had two previous applicants miss no questions on that exam. After grading the second one (on airport signage) he said that I had again not missed any questions and that he did not think that in the eighteen years he's been a DE he had never had a student score 100% on both exams. (Given that I scored a 97% on the written exam and knew ahead of time which questions I missed I wasn't that surprised.) At this point I became much more relaxed about the oral exam. He continued to quiz me for about an hour and then said "let's go fly".

I was somewhat nervous about the flying portion of the exam. Mostly I was nervous about the short and soft field landings. I performed my pre-flight and we jumped in and taxied to the end on the runway. He wanted a soft field takeoff and made me think I blew it in the beginning. As soon as I lifted off he was shadowing the controls. I later decided that this is a very critical phase of flight and that he simply doesn't know much about the candidate's flying ability and is just being prepared in case something goes wrong.He had given departure instructions that included intercepting a radial on a nearby VOR. After intercepting the radial he failed NAV radios and had me navigate to my first checkpoint by pilotage. At this point he had me run a ground speed check and then diverted me to the airport that was my first checkpoint.

He pulled my engine in such a way that we were way high. After slipping and dumping in flaps he asked me where my aiming point was (since I guess I was still high from his perspective). I told him the 1,000ft markers and he asked me why so long. I said with an engine out I was to be 100% sure that the field will be made (it was a 5,000ft runway.) He told me to aim for the numbers instead. So we did a bit of a dive and about twenty feet up he had me do a go-around.

We stayed in the pattern and did all of the short and soft field work. This was way easier than normal for a number of reasons. First the field has a displaced threshold. Second he did not have me simulate a 50ft obstacle on landing. Third there was a headwind of about ten knots. The displaced threshold removed some of the "we're too low" urges I normally get on a short field landing. The lack of a 50ft obstacle removed one more variable and the headwind helped mitigate any float.

After completing this work we left the pattern and he gave me the foggles for the instrument work. This was pretty standard and posed no problems.
Next up was the maneuvers slow-flight, stalls, steep turns and ground reference maneuvers. This was again pretty standard and posed no problems. He did have me do my stalls while turning which we had never done during training. It was actually a little easier than what we practiced.

Finally came this DE's well known finale. I had been warned by my CFI and by the DE that this was coming and was excited because I knew this meant that I had passed and all I had to do was follow directions. The foggles came back out and you follow his directions. He brings you in for the approach and you land blind!

After removing the foggles he shakes my hand and tells me that if I can get us back to the ramp safely I'm a pilot.

During the de-brief he said that I was a methodical and thorough pilot. He said that his only complaint was that I didn't use the rudder enough but that he has that complaint about all PPL applicants. He encouraged me to get my instrument rating and he said that we need more CFI's that are methodical pilots like I am and he encouraged me to continue and work toward becoming a CFI.

Total Time: 52.6