Checkride #1
Okay Back from my shock, Figured I would share my experience.
Checkride was a 1pm. Had to Fly from my home base airport (KRYY) to the checkride airport (4A7) Around Atlanta's Class B. Got to the airport at 9am. Checked out the airplane and got some words of wisdom from my Instructor. Then Murphy visited. Aircraft was 1/2 full, and needed oil, so we called at 11AM to get it done. At 12PM the fuel truck finally showed up. Filled one wing (Cessna 172P), then ran out of fuel. Took another 30 minutes to get another fuel truck out. Had to call the examiner to advise him I was going to be late (not a good start). He was extremely nice, and said just show up when you can.

Got there at 2PM, was so worried about meeting him for the first time (Gene says: Always have preliminary visit with DE to learn expectations.) and being late, I bounced on the landing at the checkride airport. Once I got there he was very nice and had me sit down for a little bit and relax. He showed me pictures of his DC-3 and other things to ease my tension. The oral went a lot better than I thought it would. He had me pull out the flight plan I created and asked questions about it.

"What airspace is this?", "What symbol is this?", "You passed this checkpoint four minutes ago and are now lost, where do you think you might be?". He then asked questions about the Aircraft, "What documents are required?", "What maintenance is needed on this aircraft?" Mostly questions were right out of the book. He did go into a lot more about the weather (Fronts, Lapse Rates, Cloud types). I'm glad that I enjoy learning about the weather. I rattled the questions off quickly and he basically said that I knew what I was talking about and lets go fly.

He then told me basically what we were going to be doing in the order (except for the emergencies), that we were going to do them. Once the Preflight was done, I gave my passenger briefing (Normal stuff like Seatbelts, Emergency exits.). I did add a statement that I will give to passengers "These controls are linked together, if you get scared and grab the controls then I will have a very hard time to control the aircraft and to refrain from grabbing the yolk/rudder pedals. Once in the plane I taxied out (using a good crosswind technique). wind was pretty gusty that day and I remembered reading a posting about a gust of wind hitting an aircraft while taxing and lifting the tire off the ground. Runup normal, then once on the runway he asked for a short field takeoff, did it nicely (wind shifted and moved right down the runway). Took off got to my 2nd checkpoint and was told to divert. Once I diverted he had me put the foggles on and do climbs, descents and turns. He took the aircraft and put it in a nose high attitude, had me recover then the foggles were gone. About 20 seconds after the foggles were off he told me I had an engine fire.

Did the emergency decent and found a field. then it switched to a engine failure. Just above the trees did a go around. Then did our S-turns and Turns around a point, steep turns, etc. After that we came back and did our Soft/Short Field T/O's and Landings, Forward slip to landing. After the landings he told me to taxi back and gave me a post flight briefing (list of complaints). Wasn't too bad, I wasn't smooth with the throttle and jerked it, he told me that engines have failed right after takeoff by doing that. Normally I'm smooth with them, guess I was just nervous. He also mentioned that when trying to make my emergency landing, never turn my back on the field that I intend to use, I did a spiral down but was a good distance from the field (not over it). I should of used s-turns and kept the field in sight. Was getting worried at that point. He then told me to bring all my stuff and come back to his office. When I walked in I saw him pull a white sheet of paper from his "Temporary Airman's Certificate" Booklet, and started to put it in the Typewriter (Needless to say, I had to look a couple of times to see if my name was actually on it!)...

Well there it is in a nutshell, not too detailed, but the examiner did everything by the book, and no real surprises. He was very professional and very sharp, not to mention a lot of fun to fly with (If it hadn't of been a checkride). I was so excited to tell everyone, but had to wait until I got back from 4A7 to RYY to give the good news. I was told that I could of taken the shortcut and flew through the Class B at that time, but decided not to push my luck the first day. I did listen to them on my 2nd Com radio. Very busy, and two people busted the Class B and were scorned "... You are already in my class B airspace, Decend Immediately and standby"...

My wife is going to be the first one up, then my Father when he comes back from vacation (He was a Private Pilot until 1967 when the prices started going up), Hopefully he will get the bug again..

I was asked a couple of times about my hours. I started taking lessons in 1994 and acquired 16.7 Hours, until the funds/job ran out. Once I had the funds to complete my training I took my medical, I have high blood pressure and take medication. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to stop me from flying so I got my medical before I took another flight lesson. Right after that Sept 11 came. I decided to take a home study Private Course (King Schools). I watched the tapes and refreshed my brain. Got the sign off and took the written (Scored 95), once all that was out of the way I found a School. The day of my Checkride I had a total of 44 hours, 11 was solo. Basic minimums on all the requirements (5 hrs solo x-country, 3-hrs night, 3-hrs hood). One hour of the hood was actual instrument. My instructor took me up to scare me, then decided not to take me up anymore because I enjoyed it. Guess my Instrument is next.. :-)

Thanks again to everyone here who shared there experiences and gave me many lessons that I learned from. Of course the learning has just begun...
Randy

Checkride #2
My check ride was scheduled for Monday at noon. I spent the weekend studying, flying, and stressing about it. I flew with Russ on Friday night to finish up the instrument and night requirements. I still needed an hour of hood time so I flew almost the entire flight by references to instruments only, including taking off with the hood by watching the directional gyro to stay on the runway and shooting an ILS localizer approach into Watsonville to give me a taste of what I could do with an instrument rating.

On Saturday morning, just 10 hours later, we reviewed the basics including slow flight, stalls, unusual attitudes, and emergency procedures. On Sunday night I went up by myself. Lori (the FAA designated examiner) had already told me to plan a flight to Red Bluff (KRBL) with weight and balance data and takeoff and roll distance over a 50-foot obstacle at whatever conditions existed at Red Bluff on Monday, so I had my flight plan ready. I also knew that she would have me divert at some point, so I had studied the chart to find all of the possible divert airports.

I flew the first part of my flight plan, and then surprised myself with an order to divert to Tracy (KTCY). I wanted to make it as much like the real check ride as possible, so I just picked the divert point at random. I plotted the new course to Tracy and practiced my short and soft field procedures there. They were getting better, but still hit and miss.

That night I checked the weather and it was looking grim. They were predicting a scattered layer at 4000 feet all afternoon, and that was too low to get over the East Bay hills. Monday morning was perfectly clear though, and the forecast had changed to clear skies all day.  (Gene Says, "If a 4000-foot clouds keeps you from flying in the Bay Area you won't be able to fly much.")

I got to the airport at 10am after plugging the latest weather numbers into my flight plan. Russ and I went over all of the paperwork and I pre-flight 446SP as I prayed to the aviation gods. I'll bet they love watching student pilots stress over check rides. The time finally came and Lori arrived. She was joking with all of the flight instructors, but was very businesslike with me.

Her first words to me were, "I'll need to see your logbook, medical, application form, and driver's license." Nice to meet you too! Don't get me wrong, she was very polite and fair, just all business, which was understandable given the role she was playing. Once the paperwork was completed, we went right into the oral exam. From what I remember, she asked the following questions.

- What are the yoke positions for taxi in head/tail winds and taking off in a crosswind?
- Describe spin recovery.
- What do you have to do to remain current with and without passengers?
- Describe the symptoms and causes of hypoxia.
- What would you do if your engine started running rough during the takeoff roll?
- What privileges do you have as a private pilot?
- Describe the Cessna 172 fuel system.
- What are the fuel reserve requirements during the day and night?
- If one fuel gauge is reading empty and the other is reading full, but you have visually verified that both tanks are full, is the airplane legal to fly?
- What is weather like along today's route?
- What is the difference between an AIRMET and a SIGMET?
- How do you tell the difference between taxiway and runway at night?

I nailed every question and she told me, "You are very well prepared for your oral." Little did I know at the time that it wasn't over! She told me to get the airplane ready and that she would meet me there in a few minutes. I was happy for another opportunity to pray to the aviation gods. I was glad that the oral portion had gone smoothly, but I knew that the hard part was yet to come. When she joined me, she told me that I was pilot in command for this flight, no question about it. She also told me that if I failed any portion of the test she would tell me then and that she wasn't allowed to give me any second chances so if she stayed quiet, things were going well. (Note the change in DE rules from earlier checkrides.)  I think if I were a DE, I would wait until I got back on the ground to tell some poor sap that they had failed just in case they decided that life just wasn't worth living after the shame of failure. I guess she decided I have a look of sanity about me. (Gene Says: There is no shame in failing a checkride.  I have never known of an unfair checkride in 35 years.  I do know of several that kept pilots from unknowingly killing themselves.)

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