Checkride #3
As promised, this post has the full details of my private checkride, which I completed successfully day before yesterday, 11/15/00. (Yeah! :-)

At the risk of damaging the entertainment value of the story ("Always leave them wanting more," my dad says), I've tried to report as many of the details as I can recall, since I got a lot out of other people's detailed checkride posts. And before I get into it, let me say that this group has been a tremendous resource for me over the past 5 months. Thank you all for your stories, comments, links, and advice!

I have been flying with Executive Flyers Aviation out of Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, Massachusetts USA. This is a busy Class D GA airport, with an increasing amount of commuter (Dash-8), corporate (Hawker, Citation), and charter (727) traffic. EFA is a high-class outfit, and I feel like I've gotten a rigorous flying education there. I started in mid-June, so my training has occupied 5 months. I had a bit over 70 hours before my checkride, meaning I've been able to log a bit under 4 hours per week.

My progress was pretty steady, though they closed runway 5-23 for resurfacing just as I was trying to polish my landings for solo. Coincidentally, the wind was almost always 220 at 11 for the next month, which meant I learned to land on 29 in a 70 deg left xwind. This took me a bit longer than planned, and going on vacation for 3 weeks didn't help. 5-23 is supposed to reopen next week, but anyway...

My instructor recommended Ray Collins as the right DE. He is a Delta captain and frequent examiner with a reputation of being rigorous but fair. His fee was $200. My checkride was originally scheduled for last Thursday, the 9th.

On Sunday the 5th, my CFI and I met and filled out form 8710 with all my info and logbook times. He wrote it, which is good, because his handwriting is much neater than mine. He had me pull together the 8710, my sealed written test report, my student pilot/medical certificate and my logbook. He then copied the checklist out of the front of the PTS and made sure I understood what other items I needed to pull together. He stressed the importance of having all the paperwork correct and well ordered. Lastly, he assured me that if I just flew like I did with him, I'd have no trouble passing.

I got a couple good tips from him and the Chief Pilot:
o If you're en route west on your (pretend) xc at 4,500 feet, and he asks for a 180 deg turn, don't forget to descend to 3,500 feet, or to <= 3,000, since you're now headed East! (I'm sure this would have caught me...)
o Don't forget to add half the gust speed to your approach speed, if it's gusty.

I was assigned to plan a xc from BED to Utica, New York. I picked UCA out of the AF/D as the "right" Utica field, though there's a smaller Class G field nearby, not to mention Griffis (ex?) AFB.

The xc planning took a little longer than usual. The first decision was whether to refuel. Even with pretty strong headwinds (2ts, say), the flight would take about 2.5 hours. The plane (C152) carries about 3:45 usable (assuming a conservative 6.5gph burn rate), so even with a 1 hour, 6.5 gal reserve, the flight would leave 15 mins of fuel before starting on the reserve.

Yah right! Of course I decided on a fuel stop - it was an opportunity to demonstrate "a disciplined conservatism about fuel use." I would probably have planned the stop even if it wasn't my checkride because an hour and a half in a 152 is plenty long enough so I need to stretch my legs. Going the full 2.5 without stopping doesn't appeal.

Next question was how far I could use the Gardner VOR (GDM), and would I be able to pick up the Cambridge (CAM) VOR without losing GDM? For this, I got out my AIM and found the section on VOR service volumes. Very educational - above 1800 ft, you get 40nm radius. GDM and CAM are about 67nm apart, so no problem. I did mark the overlap on my course line, noting a good river/highway combination to use as a waypoint for switching. This let me go around the Albany Class C without adding unduly to the distance.

Then I looked and saw the straight shot to GDM VOR took me through R-4102, a restricted area near our practice area. Wasn't going to be caught by that one! I picked my first leg to go north of it via Fitchburg (FIT). The sectional (at the bottom) says 4102 is only active on Saturdays, but I asked FSS and they said every day. So, that confirmed my plan to go around.

Lastly, I saw that UCA lies inside the Griffis TRSA, so I read up on those. Looked to be little different from flight following or Class C operation, so no big deal. I can turn to a heading and hold an altitude. <g> Still, I had to applaud the DE's assignment - it ensured I had to grapple with some issues my student solo xcs hadn't raised.

Once I was done with the xc plan, I started studying for the oral. I spent two days of moderately hard review, focusing on FAR part 91, sectional symbology (reputed to be a pet subject of the DE), and the PTS. In particular, I made sure I understood all the PTS requirements.

I flew with the Chief Pilot Monday morning, and the airwork went OK. He had asked me what I wanted to practice, and I said steep turns and ground reference maneuvers. I did OK on those, thought he helped me clean them up a bit. He threw some hood work and unusual attitudes at me, and that was fine. However, my landings were a bit ugly. He properly diagnosed that I was fixating on the ASI, and "chasing" it with pitch and power changes, making it hard to establish a good, stabilized approach. The result was I was a bit low and slow on final, leading to somewhat dropped-in landings.

On Tuesday morning, I was going to solo in the pattern to work on my landings, but my CFI bummed a ride. He promised to be quiet, but I think the bossman had spoken to him about my landings, and he was looking to see how I was doing. I wasn't much better, so he went into coaching mode, and that helped.

On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the hangar and got a tour of the mx logs so I could show off the annual inspection and the ADs. That was educational, and the mechanics were all really helpful and nice. I put a big postit on the 5406H's logbook saying "DON'T TOUCH - checkride 11/9" and went home.

I was still bugged by the landing issue, so I got out "Stick and Rudder" and flipped to the section on glides. And there I was! He described my error explicitly as one of the typical student errors, and had the fix. I needed to stay higher on short final than I had gotten into the habit of flying, and keep the nose pointed at my aiming point, especially as I went to 30deg of flaps. That plus trusting in the landing configuration and not chasing the ASI would fix things, I felt sure. See, I had gotten in the habit of flying kind of nose high ala slow flight on final, and if you pick up excessive sink rate that way, there's not much you can do about it that close to the ground.

I got up on the 9th, and the wx was as crappy as forecast. Low ceilings and IFR. However, the Worcester TAF held out hope for the ceiling lifting to 4,500 by 1pm, high enough to do the checkride. My CFI had said it would be a bad idea for *me* to cancel the checkride for wx, so I had to go ahead and finish preparing. I got my actual wx briefing and the one for my pretend xc to UCA. The answer on that was an easy No Go due to IFR conditions. Nevertheless, I worked my E6B and filled in my magnetic headings, groundspeed and fuel burn for both legs. I was interpolating up a storm - it was beautiful.

I couldn't do the weight and balance, though - I had forgotten to get the weight and balance info the day before. I filled in what I could, packed up and headed over to the FBO at about 12. That gave me an hour to retrieve the logbook, check the ARROW docs in the plane, and finish the weight and balance. I had put on the biplane tie and tie-tack my wife had gotten me for luck, so while nervous, I was also eager to get it done.

I grabbed the book, grabbed the keys, checked the papers, noted the basic empty weight, the arm and the moment, and headed back inside. It was about 12:30. That's when I heard from my CFI the DE had scrubbed due to the wx. I was pretty disappointed, especially that he hadn't at least wanted to do the oral. I was eager to get the talking out of the way before I forgot the Class G VFR rules again. Not only that, but the wx was forecast as lousy for several days, so it wasn't going to happen soon. I kind of stalked out of the FBO, harrumphed my way to the hangar to drop off the logbook, and decided to go drown my frustration in a milkshake. Of course, the ice-cream place was closed. I didn't bite anyone, but went home and growled for most of the rest of the afternoon...

CFI rescheduled for Wed the 15th at 10 am. I didn't think that would work, since I had a meeting at 2 pm and would need to be in my car departing at 1:30. DE said he'd get it done by then for sure, so we went with it. I actually found that encouraging, because it meant a 3 hour oral (like I've read about here) would be impossible.

Sun afternoon and the wx was nice, so I grabbed the chance to solo. Sure enough, I fixed my landings! Phew. Also saw a Pitts and an Arrow flying formation in the pattern behind me, but not on purpose! They were less than 75 feet apart, with the Pitts at the Arrow's 12 o'clock high. I was trying to figure out what to say to ATC when the Arrow clued in and slowed up. ATC didn't call them on it, but it was a near thing. Never a dull moment at BED, especially on a nice, "remain outside the Class Delta, right 360, extend your downwind, I'll call your base, square your turn to final, can you give me some S turns, go around", busy, Sunday afternoon.

Forecast for Wed looked bad, but CFI encouraged me to prepare anyway, and what else could I do? He also cautioned me not to over-study, which I am wont to do. So I tried to take it relatively easy. I did go through the PTS again and filled in the actual 152 speeds for all the "1.2 Vs0 +10/-5" bits. I even "chair flew" some maneuvers like steep turns and stalls while wearing my headset at the kitchen table.

Spent 7:30 to 9:30 Wed morning re-working my xc plan with the actual wx. Once again, the UCA call was a No Go due to icing and SHRASN (rain and snow showers) west of Albany. However, ceilings and visibility were good for the checkride!