Checkride write-up
Alright.. here goes the write up. For reference, I am flying a 182RG that I have about 180hrs in, and I did a commercial short-course rather than a standard commercial course. I flew around 15 hours with my CFI and we did less than 5 ground. I did majority of the ground stuff on my own or with my mom who is still a ground instructor.
I spent the day before my checkride at the airport studying. The DPE (chief CFI) asked for my max gross and total fuel I could carry so I gave it to him and he gave me quite a doozy of a situation. I had to fly from KCHD to KNYL with myself, him and 1 other person. Then we picked up a person at KNYL and went to KHII for a party which involved drinking & scuba diving. I was told at KNYL I had to get as many bags as I could in the airplane. I ended up working out 3 weight and balances, one leaving KCHD, one leaving KNYL and one on arrival at KHII to see how the weight had shifted with fuel burn. I was NOT at gross weight leaving KNYL, I was limited by CG which was at the very most aft point possible because neither myself or the DPE are large enough to compensate for 300lbs in the backseat and nearly 200lbs in baggage.
So checkride day I get updated winds and a standard briefing and we began right at 0730. He quickly went through my logbook to qualify me and we signed everything. The actual ride started about 0800. I only took into his office the things for the airplane that we necessary, NOTHING EXTRA. Showed him the AD’s, the annual and the ELT. Done, it was about 5 minutes qualifying the airplane. We then went through how I would qualify myself using my perfered method of ADM. I chose that day to use IMSAFE. I went through how I hadn’t drank, wasn’t sick etc.. He was satisfied pretty early on with that. Then he asked me how I determine the risks of a particular flight and how I deal with everything relating to that flight. I said the 3P’s, then we went into the PAVE checklist thing. He and I both know it’s a bunch of BS, but that it was required. He asked why I chose a particular altitude and I showed him the winds were better there and since we were so close to Mexico I wanted to be on the airway and that I used an enroute chart to determine the MEA for an airway. He liked that I brought a bit of my instrument training into a VFR flight. We discussed the weather and he pointed at every airspace on the sectional he could find and I told him about it. I did have to look up what class E visibility requirements were about 10,000 feet, but I knew where to find it so he didn’t say anything. I got a little tripped up when he asked how I would depart a class D that was 900ft OVR, I said IFR and he said “well today you’re VFR” he was pushing me to talk about SVFR which I finally did. Then we started talking about flying in the flight levels (briefly) and in pressurized airplanes and oxygen requirements. I knew oxygen requirements for non pressurized, but I had to look up pressurized and I told him that. His response “Well in that 182 I wouldn’t expect you to know this, just where to find it.” So I found it and told him. I made a cheat-sheet of a bunch of regulations and where to find them quickly, including oxygen for pressurized. If anyone is interested in either of the study guides I made shoot me a PM and I’d be happy to send them to you.
So then we get to the flight plan. I show him my 3 weight & balances and he worked out one of them and was impressed that I took the time to do the 3rd one to make sure I would stay within CG with fuel burn. Scored some points there! He looked at my flight plan, didn’t say much except asked how I decided altitudes (en-route charts and winds) and asked some questions about what if “your passenger had an ear infection?” “I did a controlled ascent scuba dive” then the big questions we spent about 30 minutes on were MEL’s and INOP procedures. “What if your green nav light was out? What if it was out at night? What about your landing light?” and I had a great MEL flowchart that another CFI at my school made so it was very easy to answer his questions about that. The oral was under two hours which I am told is very short for him. My IFR oral was over 3 hours with the same guy so I believe it. He said that he’s always happy when an applicant shows up with everything and ready to go, and that I had the best oral he’d seen from a commercial student in a long time. Right there I knew I’d have to screw up pretty bad on the flight to fail, this guy does NOT give compliments for nothing.
We took a 15 minute break and then he watched me preflight. He’d never done that on the two previous checkrides with him so it was a little weird but I did the same preflight I do before every flight and he seemed pleased. He asked where the squat switch was located on the nose gear and I said “Well I think it’s behind that sort of.” And he goes “Hah! I don’t really care or have any idea where it is on this. Let’s go fly.” We get in the airplane, I give him the whole briefing and told him it’s a sterile cockpit blah blah blah. Talked about runway incursions and used my taxi diagram. Did the runup and he said to do a short-field takeoff so I did no problems at all. Went to my points and made my radio calls since the VOR I picked is extremely busy with instrument approaches into an uncontrolled airport. After I got to my point we went lower because of “lowering clouds” up ahead. Then pretty soon he says “Remember that passenger with the ear problems? I’m him, and I didn’t tell you. Now I’m in extreme pain.” So I said “Well we’re going to go to Chandler because Phoenix Regional has no services or hospital within 30 miles.” He said it wasn’t a medical emergency though, so off I went to Phoenix Regional using the “nearest” button (what he wanted). The last time I’d flown into Phoenix Regional was on my PPL checkride a year ago. I was sort of familiar but not really. I knew it was pretty narrow, like 40’ feet. The other 3 or 4 people in the pattern were flying 747 patterns which was annoying to say the least. I am already not the best at flying at an uncontrolled airport because of where I learned and the places I primarily fly. These kids were flying literally 2-3 MILE base legs. It was ridiculous and I knew it and the examiner knew it too. He tells me that it’s a soft grassy field so I landed a nice soft field and we taxied back to the end for a soft field takeoff. We were going to do a normal landing to a touch and go next but the kid in front of me didn’t get off in time (he turned off at the end of a 5,000 runway!!!) so I went around. He told me maneuver time instead. So we start them and I almost forgot to do clearing turns twice. He said if I forgot one more time he’d fail me. I didn’t forget again. Most of my maneuvers were pretty good, but not nearly as good as on my mock checkride a couple days prior with the same guy. He said everything was well within PTS, but not as well as he knew I could fly. My eights on pylons were much better than when I flew with him previously though, so that was kind of nice. He pulled the power on me at like 1200AGL and I picked a field, said I was leaving the gear up because POH says to on soft fields like that and he said to go around. Then about 2,000AGL he did it again and I picked a nice road and he said good job and I went around again. I fogot to mention that we did an emergency descent before all that due to a loss of cabin pressurization. Next we did landings back at home base. Started with a touch & go normal landing and takeoff then we did a power off 180 that got screwed up because of another giant pattern flyer. It was within PTS barely but he said I could try it again. I did and it was a lot better. Then we ended with a short-field landing at the top of the numbers and I can say that it was the best short field landing I’d done in a long time. This was the first time in the duration of my short-course that the winds were calm, I’d been fighting 15kt-30kt winds with anywhere from 10-25kts crosswind. It was a firm landing no doubt, but the examiner said it was quite good. He accidently stepped on the brakes though as I was braking so that was briefly interesting. As I taxied back I didn’t know if I’d passed or not. I felt like my landings were always quite within PTS because of going pass my points. So we get back, he helps me tie down the airplane and I go back into his office area when he takes a phone call… Ahh the torture. One of the CFIs was back there too and I told her I hadn’t failed, but hadn’t passed yet either. We were pretty sure that I had passed because I hadn’t failed. Then my CFI walked in (his day off) so we waited for the DPE to get off the phone and cut the suspense.. He did finally and I walked back to his office and he said “I’m still trying to decide if I should hit this one (pass) or this one (fail)”. He laughed, clicked passed and gave me a “talking to” about looking outside. I need to look outside more, and I fully admit that is an issue with me right now. I’m still a pretty new instrument pilot so I’m trying to get accustomed back into the VFR only world. My DPE is a (recent) midair collision survivor, so I get that it’s HUGE for him. We talked about that for 10 or 15 minutes while we finished the paperwork. He said I’m too good of a pilot not to look outside and that that was the one thing I really need to improve on. So I will most definitely be working on that now that I don’t need to concentrate on headings and anything inside except sort of where I’m going. He also said he would have taken a different route to avoid some of the things I did, but that I didn’t do anything wrong it just took longer. All in all, not a bad checkride experience and most definitely easier than the instrument ride was. I truly think I passed because of the oral. It set the tone for the flight and may have gotten me a few bonus points before the flight started. My advice is to know everything possible for the oral portion and talk about it all. I answered questions before my DPE asked them because of how in-depth I was explaining things and it made the oral much order. Oh, and do lots of clearing turns.
