bluesky74656
Line Up and Wait
I just an hour and a half ago passed my IFR checkride. I realized afterward that I've been working on this rating for nearly 2 years. I started in 2012, then got married, bought a house, had a kid, and largely dropped it until this spring.
The checkride actually started at 1pm, Saturday, July 19th. Ceilings were low so we decided to run through the oral portion, then see what our options were after that. I did very well on the oral. The one trick an instructor taught me that the examiner really liked was that I cut out the failed equipment minimums adjustment page from the chart book and taped it to my kneeboard. When the instructor asked about that, I didn't have to search through Foreflight to try and find it, I just pulled out my kneeboard and read him the information.
Alas the weather had not lifted enough for us to fly after the oral portion, so we chose to discontinue. The examiner is an airline pilot and was on call the rest of the week, so he said we would see if and when he got called and go from there. Monday night I got a call saying he had been called for a trip from Tuesday to Wednesday, and that we could fly after work on Thursday.
It turned out to be a beautiful day with clear skies. I was a bit nervous because the winds were coming out of the east instead of the west, meaning that we'd be flying approaches to runways I didn't have a ton of experience with. We had agreed to meet at 6pm. At 6:15, I text the examiner to see where he is but don't get a response. I try calling with no answer. 6:30 rolls around and I call again, still with no answer. A few minutes later I get a text apologizing profusely and saying that he got short-called for a trip to Anchorage. We'll would have to reschedule for later this week. Unfortunately his only real availability this week was this morning, which was difficult with my work schedule, but we agree that this decidedly non-morning person would meet him at 7:30 to take the ride.
I of course show up early to get the plane pulled out and preflighted. We were a bit concerned about the ceilings-- the reports were good but it looked a bit low. He says we'd head out to the first checkpoint on the planned cross country, then see if the ceilings were high enough to do maneuvers, and finally return to the airport for pattern work. "Pattern work", I think to myself, "that's a strange way to refer to approaches." As we walk out to the plane he asks if we're taking my club's 152 or 172. I respond that we're taking the 172. "Good," he says, "more room." "More importantly, two radios," I'm quick to add. As we hop into the plane the pieces click for me. "You realize we're doing an Instrument checkride, right?" "Instrument?! Oh yeah, I had you confused with the checkride I'm doing later this morning!".
New plan, then. Fly to the VOR, shoot a VOR approach into a nearby field, hold as part of the missed approach, then back to the home field for an ILS and an RNAV.
I start up, call for taxi clearance, taxi out, and run through the pre-flight checklist. Call tower for clearance, line up, advance the throttle, and immediately something's wrong. The plane's not making more than about 2000 RPM and doesn't sound happy about it. I pull the throttle and exit at the nearest taxiway. "Hmm. Mags?" he says. Yup, I hadn't quite clicked the mag switch all the way back to both and we were only running on one mag. To add insult to injury, we had been idling on one mag for so long that it fouled. I cleared it out, checked them again, re-checked that I had the switch on "both", and successfully departed.
The air was thankfully smooth. We flew direct to the VOR to begin with, then he gave radar vectors to final so that I didn't have to do the annoying procedure turn on this particular approach.
First approach went well. We got down to minimums at the appropriate time from the FAF. He told me to look up, the airport was directly in front of us, and then I executed the missed. Climbing right turn back to the VOR and hold. I made it back to the VOR just fine. I teardropped into the hold, but took too big of a cut at the teardrop and ended up never really intercepting before we crossed again. The next time around was good, though.
Next he gave me a vector and told me to pull up the ILS approach plate, brief it, and then call up Approach to get vectored to it. Approach was busy to say the least. He took my request, then issued a non stop stream of clearances for other planes, breaking at one point to acknowledge that he had my request but it would be a minute before he could actually get it in and give me a code. We didn't *need* anything from them to shoot this approach, so I called up and told him he sounded busy and he could just cancel our request, but he replied saying that they were just bringing on another controller to split the position out, and that he'd have us in just a minute. Sure enough the new controller calls us up and gives us our code. Unfortunately the ILS we needed to do was opposite direction for the runway they were using, so he needed to call and get special permission for us to do it due to a new regional directive outlawing opposite direction approaches. We also had to wait for an IFR departure. All in all we ended up just burning sky waiting for the controller to get us our clearance for about 20 minutes.
The ILS, once we were cleared, went fairly well. I had everything very stable, but about a dot low and a dot to the left of course. The examiner's comment was that no, we don't want to be chasing the needles, but if everything else is stable we ought to try to correct and not be satisfied with being a bit off.
We missed that approach at DA and started executing the missed Tower had read to me. As we were doing that I loaded up the GPS for the RNAV. Approach vectored us way out for that, but once we got turned inbound it was a piece of cake. We landed out of that one, turned off the taxiway, and at that point I could think, "He hasn't said anything yet, so I must have passed."
We parked the plane and shut it down. He told me I passed and gave me a few pointers as I cleaned up the plane. I didn't even notice, but he said I was so quick on the radio that I was stepping on the controller to acknowledge a clearance before the controller had finished speaking. I've noticed that in my attempts to sound professional on the radio I can come off as rushed. I'll have to keep an eye on that.
So, that was that. Next up for me is the HP/Complex endorsement. I've already done just about all the training, I just need to go for one more ride with the instructor so he can give me the sign off. Then I will really be free to move about the country.
The checkride actually started at 1pm, Saturday, July 19th. Ceilings were low so we decided to run through the oral portion, then see what our options were after that. I did very well on the oral. The one trick an instructor taught me that the examiner really liked was that I cut out the failed equipment minimums adjustment page from the chart book and taped it to my kneeboard. When the instructor asked about that, I didn't have to search through Foreflight to try and find it, I just pulled out my kneeboard and read him the information.
Alas the weather had not lifted enough for us to fly after the oral portion, so we chose to discontinue. The examiner is an airline pilot and was on call the rest of the week, so he said we would see if and when he got called and go from there. Monday night I got a call saying he had been called for a trip from Tuesday to Wednesday, and that we could fly after work on Thursday.
It turned out to be a beautiful day with clear skies. I was a bit nervous because the winds were coming out of the east instead of the west, meaning that we'd be flying approaches to runways I didn't have a ton of experience with. We had agreed to meet at 6pm. At 6:15, I text the examiner to see where he is but don't get a response. I try calling with no answer. 6:30 rolls around and I call again, still with no answer. A few minutes later I get a text apologizing profusely and saying that he got short-called for a trip to Anchorage. We'll would have to reschedule for later this week. Unfortunately his only real availability this week was this morning, which was difficult with my work schedule, but we agree that this decidedly non-morning person would meet him at 7:30 to take the ride.
I of course show up early to get the plane pulled out and preflighted. We were a bit concerned about the ceilings-- the reports were good but it looked a bit low. He says we'd head out to the first checkpoint on the planned cross country, then see if the ceilings were high enough to do maneuvers, and finally return to the airport for pattern work. "Pattern work", I think to myself, "that's a strange way to refer to approaches." As we walk out to the plane he asks if we're taking my club's 152 or 172. I respond that we're taking the 172. "Good," he says, "more room." "More importantly, two radios," I'm quick to add. As we hop into the plane the pieces click for me. "You realize we're doing an Instrument checkride, right?" "Instrument?! Oh yeah, I had you confused with the checkride I'm doing later this morning!".
New plan, then. Fly to the VOR, shoot a VOR approach into a nearby field, hold as part of the missed approach, then back to the home field for an ILS and an RNAV.
I start up, call for taxi clearance, taxi out, and run through the pre-flight checklist. Call tower for clearance, line up, advance the throttle, and immediately something's wrong. The plane's not making more than about 2000 RPM and doesn't sound happy about it. I pull the throttle and exit at the nearest taxiway. "Hmm. Mags?" he says. Yup, I hadn't quite clicked the mag switch all the way back to both and we were only running on one mag. To add insult to injury, we had been idling on one mag for so long that it fouled. I cleared it out, checked them again, re-checked that I had the switch on "both", and successfully departed.
The air was thankfully smooth. We flew direct to the VOR to begin with, then he gave radar vectors to final so that I didn't have to do the annoying procedure turn on this particular approach.
First approach went well. We got down to minimums at the appropriate time from the FAF. He told me to look up, the airport was directly in front of us, and then I executed the missed. Climbing right turn back to the VOR and hold. I made it back to the VOR just fine. I teardropped into the hold, but took too big of a cut at the teardrop and ended up never really intercepting before we crossed again. The next time around was good, though.
Next he gave me a vector and told me to pull up the ILS approach plate, brief it, and then call up Approach to get vectored to it. Approach was busy to say the least. He took my request, then issued a non stop stream of clearances for other planes, breaking at one point to acknowledge that he had my request but it would be a minute before he could actually get it in and give me a code. We didn't *need* anything from them to shoot this approach, so I called up and told him he sounded busy and he could just cancel our request, but he replied saying that they were just bringing on another controller to split the position out, and that he'd have us in just a minute. Sure enough the new controller calls us up and gives us our code. Unfortunately the ILS we needed to do was opposite direction for the runway they were using, so he needed to call and get special permission for us to do it due to a new regional directive outlawing opposite direction approaches. We also had to wait for an IFR departure. All in all we ended up just burning sky waiting for the controller to get us our clearance for about 20 minutes.
The ILS, once we were cleared, went fairly well. I had everything very stable, but about a dot low and a dot to the left of course. The examiner's comment was that no, we don't want to be chasing the needles, but if everything else is stable we ought to try to correct and not be satisfied with being a bit off.
We missed that approach at DA and started executing the missed Tower had read to me. As we were doing that I loaded up the GPS for the RNAV. Approach vectored us way out for that, but once we got turned inbound it was a piece of cake. We landed out of that one, turned off the taxiway, and at that point I could think, "He hasn't said anything yet, so I must have passed."
We parked the plane and shut it down. He told me I passed and gave me a few pointers as I cleaned up the plane. I didn't even notice, but he said I was so quick on the radio that I was stepping on the controller to acknowledge a clearance before the controller had finished speaking. I've noticed that in my attempts to sound professional on the radio I can come off as rushed. I'll have to keep an eye on that.
So, that was that. Next up for me is the HP/Complex endorsement. I've already done just about all the training, I just need to go for one more ride with the instructor so he can give me the sign off. Then I will really be free to move about the country.
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