steamee
Pre-takeoff checklist
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- Jun 1, 2009
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Steamee
It's been a while since I've posted, but I've had very little of interest to report until now.
After much doubting I kept flying and finally FINALLY took my FAA checkride yesterday and passed. Family vacations, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and work load all conspired against me since last October. A truckload of money, 110 hours, 18 months, 2 CFIs = 1 private pilot license.
So some things I learned about the whole process of preparing and executing my oral portion:
On flying:
In retrospect, nothing really dramatic happened. Imagine that's a good thing. This certainly ranks in my top 3 lifetime accomplishments. I thank the community here for their encouragement, insight, and general posting over the last few months. I'm already getting questioned by the flight school about Instrument rating, but I think I'll just enjoy what I have for a while. Thanks for reading.
After much doubting I kept flying and finally FINALLY took my FAA checkride yesterday and passed. Family vacations, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and work load all conspired against me since last October. A truckload of money, 110 hours, 18 months, 2 CFIs = 1 private pilot license.
So some things I learned about the whole process of preparing and executing my oral portion:
- Don't depend on your flight school to necessarily get all the paperwork in order. I found that I had to check in with the CFI and school to remind them that I was going to do the check ride in "X" days. Things like online accounts, graduation certificates (I did a Part 141 school), endorsements, and other misc paperwork can fall in the cracks and it would suck to be held up on some technicality. They may have many students and some bits get forgotten.
- Study the PTS to target your studying. There's probably no such thing as too much studying, but in retrospect I didn't focus on the PTS enough which meant I could have avoided missing some answers on the oral if I had focused better. Know the airspace rules and visibility requirements and sectional chart especially. My examiner focused on this a lot. Followed by basic engine and systems questions. In retrospect I spent way too much time on regulations (stuff you could probably argue that you could look up on the ground - like NTSB accident reporting). Based on the trend of my oral, I'd say the first priority is on knowledge that you'll use when you're flying and can't have the luxury of looking it up in the cockpit. Stuff like: right-of-way rules, minimum altitudes, VFR visibility, airport markings, wake turbulence, etc. The only regulation questions I got that were less immediate to flying were maintenance and annual questions.
- Absolutely do not talk too much. Take my (and many others') advice on this - do not talk yourself out of a good answer or into a bad one. I had to work on this and I felt it payed off because my examiner enjoyed relating information about flying. I let him do so. It's like clock management in football.
The test is a finite length. If the examiner wants to educate me then I'm fine with that. That's a little less time for something to be asked to trip me up. And for god's sake, just answer the question asked and don't over think the problem. I got stuck a bit in a calling ATC Class C before entering question because I was thinking about the 20nm call up radius on the sectionals because the scenario we were discussing was transitioning through several different airspace categories. At one point I said, "You should call up Class C ATC within 20nm." My examiner asked, "Should or must?" I had to pause and think if he meant "should or must call ATC within 20nm OR before entering Class C." The latter is what he was looking for and I just made my life more difficult and seem less sure by over thinking the problem. The lesson: If the examiner wants clarifications they can ask you further. Don't trip yourself up with complexity before its time.
- You will not fly the entire cross country. I probably spent too much time preparing this including a rather long standard weather briefing, but I'm not sure this could or should be avoided. It's entirely possible that my level of preparation reduced the number of questions in this area - which sucked because I spent a lot of time coming up with answers. BTW, when you get up there the winds aloft will, of course, be rather wrong. We almost spent as much time covering weight and balance and CG as to the actual flight plan. My examiner looked to make sure the altitude for west bound VFR was correct and noted that.
- Ask about the practical test at the beginning. My examiner started the test with an overview explaining what was going to be covered in general and what he expected during the flight portion. It gave me a sense of what was going to be asked in the orals and what to expect in the flight. I found it gave me an opportunity to judge how I was going to be judged and get a feel for what I had to do to stay in the examiner's good graces. I would have never thought to do this, but if you don't get such a briefing before start (and maybe they are required to do so) then it might be worth getting.
On flying:
- Know your practice area. It was a great advantage to fly the test in my practice area. It allowed me to pick up landmarks like I knew what I was doing on the pilotage portions. In my case winds aloft were rather different than planned and I had to go to getting a new fix to get a ground speed check. Knowing my practice area allowed me to confidently declare that I was going to start that at such-and-such point without lengthy map fumbling.
- Maintain altitude without looking at instruments. I had a lot of issues with this earlier on and targeted this leading up to the check ride and it paid off. There was a lot of quick task switching during the check ride and altitude maintenance is always required.
- Landings. Three good landings and one so-so. In the post-flight it was mentioned that I got a bit more side loading on the last landing than desirable. Given that I had three x-wind landings that worked fine during the test he declared that last one as atypical and gave me the benefit of the doubt. The last one was atypical in that it was declared that I had no flaps and had to come in using the forward slip. I should have slipped the other way, but habit of going nose right got the best of me and I had more alignment adjustments than necessary. I think the excitement of knowing that I was very close to completion got to my head.
- Verbalize Your Actions. Another old but sound recommendation to talk through what you're doing. At one time I used the auto-pilot to maintain altitude (light turbulence throughout the test) while I did some measuring on the sectional, but I didn't set the heading (because I didn't want to). My examiner asked me what it was that I thought I was doing with the auto-pilot. He wanted to know that I hadn't intended to also set the heading. I told him I had just wanted altitude keeping and he was cool with that.
- Make Things Familiar / Take Things Slowly. The only time I thought I was going to mess up big time was under the hood going to a VOR. I've done this dozens of times, but for some reason, my mind just blanked on the HSI operation as far as the CDI. I know - stupid, but most of my VOR time has been on the standard CDI. I also practiced on FSX at home and it has the regular CDI as well. So here I was thinking how much it was going to suck to fail by messing up an instrument setting. There was a brief moment of panic, but then I decided to just switch to Nav2 and explain that I was more familiar with the other CDI. That was just fine. Lesson here is to use what you know if you can. The test is no time to guess at stuff. Or, review all your instruments before again even if you feel you know them.
In retrospect, nothing really dramatic happened. Imagine that's a good thing. This certainly ranks in my top 3 lifetime accomplishments. I thank the community here for their encouragement, insight, and general posting over the last few months. I'm already getting questioned by the flight school about Instrument rating, but I think I'll just enjoy what I have for a while. Thanks for reading.
