Right.
To start, i'm not entirely happy about the weather. There is a line of storms off to the west, in the route of the planned XC. They seem to be moving north and we will terminate well before we approach these storms, and while visibility in the area is reading P6, it sure looks like it is hovering around 5 to us in the air.
During the last checkride (that was discontinued due to a bad, bad mag drop) I had *cough* neglected to unchock the aircraft after getting in. I showed him this time. I didn't use chocks!
I do my runup. Mind, the plane I elected to use failed a mag check for a checkride with the same examiner just two days before! Knowing that the "plugs were cleaned up" yesterday, I took a chance. It is a sad comment on the maintenance of my club that we were both shocked when the aircraft hummed through the runup.
"Our first takeoff will be short field," my DPE says. I taxi close to the end of the displaced threshold. "I really want to avoid the absolute end of the runway - I'm afraid there are rocks over here!" "Well," he said, "by the end of the summer this will be a grass field anyway".
Brakes on, power in, leaned a bit for some extra RPMs.
2100. Hrm. I don't like that one bit. I comment to the DPE, who agrees, and he said that when he checked the compressions in the log they only hit 50. Well, that's a portent if I ever heard one.
Release brakes, and roll...roll...roll.........oh look airspeed that took awhile... roll some more... order out for chinese... FINALLY hit Vr for short field and take 'er up. By up I mean sort of up. 300fpm with a 960 DA off of a 1210' field with cool temps. WTF.
So, on course for the XC. I was able to hit my checkpoints no problem but I completely forgot to start my watch. He berated me for that during the debrief but also said "EVERYONE forgets to start their stopwatch". At least I had one tied to my bag and was able to show him that I had THOUGHT of it ahead of time. Hit the first checkpoint and pointed at the second one in the distance and my door flew open.
Let me back up 7 minutes. This particular aircraft has no pilot side shoulder harness. It disappeared suddenly about 2 months ago. I posted a "HAVE YOU SEEN" sign at the airport (along with a terse squawk) but it has not reappeared.
Open doors are no big deal and it has happened before but of course I turned to the examiner calmly and said in a mild flat voice, "So, is this your planned distraction?" Chuckle and close the door. He says "ok then clearing turns and we'll do a steep turn to the RIGHT so you don't fall out."
Steep turns and slow flight were without incident. My power off stall was a tad cross controlled but I recovered nicely. Remember that cross controlled thing. It'll come up later. Unusual attitudes and hood work were pretty easy. Off with the vibans!
He points at a couple of landmarks to help me orient myself after unhooding. We are on course to fly across our departure airport about 600' above TPA and he asks me to fly to an airport about 2 miles past it to do landings. I cross my airport at the departure end and call the target airport for an advisory. Start my descent as soon as I cross my home airport.
I made a small mistake here, where i somehow got my cardinal directions backwards and claimed I was going to be entering downwind. Shake my head and call back that I'm entering crosswind (no one in the pattern). First landing was a soft field with a soft field takeoff. Second was a short field with a go-around (never ended up actually doing a short field, but my setup was pretty darn good). Reduce power for a no-flaps landing and then abeam the numbers he said "nevermind your flaps work now but you have no engine put it down." I'm at TPA abeam the numbers so I put 10 degrees of flaps in. He clearly didn't like that, but I did a normalish power off approach. Since he grumbled about the flaps I delayed putting the second notch in and lost some altitude with a slip, dropped them all, and landed "in a huff" (but a perfectly good landing). He requested another
short soft field (the plane was so underpowered it was hard for me to do a decided transition into ground effect - the second time I did a better job) and back to my home airport we went.
I couldn't raise anyone on unicom so I flew past the windsock and landed normally.
During the debrief, the first thing he said was that for some reason I had light pressure on the left rudder almost the entire time. I think I was so tense during the checkride that I didn't even notice, and he seemed to accept that, but he cautioned that I should focus on my feet and rudder control during future flights.
His second issue was that I flew buttonhook patterns (almost all power off). He wants me to make sure I raise the wing for a second or so on base to make sure I'm not about to get run over. It was a fair point. During most of my training my instructor wanted me to do power off landings and he stressed a continuous turn to the numbers from downwind. I guess with my nerves I went back to that (except for my short field, which was square).
And that was about it. His main comment was that I seemed to have good positive control of the airplane during all aspects of flight, and that I was a safe and proficient pilot.
