nddons
Touchdown! Greaser!
How's that for a clever title? I've always been envious of these posts, so while it may be boring, I thought I'd write one myself.
I started my IR checkride last week, but the Wx sucked http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38083 and we deferred the flying portion until today.
I was still having a little pucker factor, because today's winds were 310 @ 12G20 - not terrible, and I've flown in worse, but I REALLY wanted to put this behind me. I know the go/no go decision was up to me. But the DPE had to drive about an hour and a half to get to KUES, so I felt some pressure to fly, even though I could have cancelled with no personal consequences to me. For probably the wrong reasons (getting it done, drive by DPE), I decided to fly.
One thing I really liked about this examiner is that he briefed me on exactly what we were going to do, and had the entire plan written out for me.
I filed and we picked up an IFR clearance to MSP, and began the flight to MSP under an IFR flight plan. After establishing myself on V170 and tracking a course for a few miles, we cancelled IFR and proceeded to do steep turns. Under the theory that one can get themselves into unusual attitudes pretty well, he asked me to put my feet on the floor, head down, close my eyes, and make a standard rate left turn. Same to the right. Apparently I'm good flying with my eyes closed, because they weren't very drastic unusual attitudes and the recovery was good, so he took the controls and put the plane in a couple of unusual attitudes himself, and my recoveries were fine.
We then proceeded southeast back toward the Badger VOR, and did an 8 DME arc to the northeast. No sweat, except a it was a wicked crosswind, and I really had to exaggerate my wind correction by about 30 degrees. I never got worse than 0.3 DME off of the arc.
Next up was heading to the LOM for the full ILS 10. The approach was going very well, even with a rear quartering tail wind, but tower asked me to break off early due to a departing jet, so I headed off to the published hold. I entered the hold on a direct entry, and some how, some way, got my inbound course at 1:02, even with the winds. I only had to do one full circuit after that.
The next approach was supposed to be the GPS 10. However, the 172 has had an intermittent problem with the switch that moves the GPS signal to the HSI on NAV 1. Day before yesterday, it was completely inop. The GPS worked fine, but I could not transfer it to the HSI, so when I filed for the XC, I needed to file /A. We also labeled that switch INOP. I mentioned this to the examiner this morning, so we just substituted the LOC 10 and flew that approach.
Throughout the checkride, the wind corrections never posed much of a problem. They were large but predictable. The turbulence and updrafts did, however. I was using throttle, yoke, and trim for all 1.8 hours. Even the POS altitude hold couldn't hold altitude for me. At one point I had a 5% pitch down attitude, throttled down to 1800 RPM and I was climbing! This is one of the times that I thought "OK, this was a stupid idea, Stan." That was the roughtest part of the checkride. I think the examiner was fair with me with any departures from altitude. He was justifiably strict on the minus side, whether it was +/- 100 enroute, or +100/-0 on an approach.
Still, I realized that I've made it this far without anything negative from the examiner, and I realized that I only had one more approach to fly. I needed to nail this.
The final approach was the VOR A with a circle to land. I was supposed to do it using the autopilot, but I had to tell him that I could only use the heading mode with the VOR, as the POS A/P wouldn't capture the VOR in NAV mode let alone approach mode. Oh, and I had to turn the POS A/P off when doing my procedure turn, because it doesn't like to turn left in heading mode. The DPE saw that I could use the A/P, and then said I could handfly the approach if I wanted. I did.
MDA on this approach was 1,460, but tower asked us to break off the approach at 2,000 because of other traffic, and commence the circle. So I just held 2,000 as my MDA, and did a pretty good pattern and a fair crossind landing on 36.
I parked and shut down, and then the examiner asked how I thought I did. What a loaded question! My answer was with these conditions, I thought I performed adequately. (I didn't want to be presumptuous.) We then debriefed, and that's when I started to get nervous. But then he reached over and shook my hand, and told me "congratulations."
Thanks to all for the advise given over the last 2 years. I'm glad this one is over. It was starting to seem like work.
Now off to the Blackhawks game tomorrow night for a little celebration!
I started my IR checkride last week, but the Wx sucked http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38083 and we deferred the flying portion until today.
I was still having a little pucker factor, because today's winds were 310 @ 12G20 - not terrible, and I've flown in worse, but I REALLY wanted to put this behind me. I know the go/no go decision was up to me. But the DPE had to drive about an hour and a half to get to KUES, so I felt some pressure to fly, even though I could have cancelled with no personal consequences to me. For probably the wrong reasons (getting it done, drive by DPE), I decided to fly.
One thing I really liked about this examiner is that he briefed me on exactly what we were going to do, and had the entire plan written out for me.
I filed and we picked up an IFR clearance to MSP, and began the flight to MSP under an IFR flight plan. After establishing myself on V170 and tracking a course for a few miles, we cancelled IFR and proceeded to do steep turns. Under the theory that one can get themselves into unusual attitudes pretty well, he asked me to put my feet on the floor, head down, close my eyes, and make a standard rate left turn. Same to the right. Apparently I'm good flying with my eyes closed, because they weren't very drastic unusual attitudes and the recovery was good, so he took the controls and put the plane in a couple of unusual attitudes himself, and my recoveries were fine.
We then proceeded southeast back toward the Badger VOR, and did an 8 DME arc to the northeast. No sweat, except a it was a wicked crosswind, and I really had to exaggerate my wind correction by about 30 degrees. I never got worse than 0.3 DME off of the arc.
Next up was heading to the LOM for the full ILS 10. The approach was going very well, even with a rear quartering tail wind, but tower asked me to break off early due to a departing jet, so I headed off to the published hold. I entered the hold on a direct entry, and some how, some way, got my inbound course at 1:02, even with the winds. I only had to do one full circuit after that.
The next approach was supposed to be the GPS 10. However, the 172 has had an intermittent problem with the switch that moves the GPS signal to the HSI on NAV 1. Day before yesterday, it was completely inop. The GPS worked fine, but I could not transfer it to the HSI, so when I filed for the XC, I needed to file /A. We also labeled that switch INOP. I mentioned this to the examiner this morning, so we just substituted the LOC 10 and flew that approach.
Throughout the checkride, the wind corrections never posed much of a problem. They were large but predictable. The turbulence and updrafts did, however. I was using throttle, yoke, and trim for all 1.8 hours. Even the POS altitude hold couldn't hold altitude for me. At one point I had a 5% pitch down attitude, throttled down to 1800 RPM and I was climbing! This is one of the times that I thought "OK, this was a stupid idea, Stan." That was the roughtest part of the checkride. I think the examiner was fair with me with any departures from altitude. He was justifiably strict on the minus side, whether it was +/- 100 enroute, or +100/-0 on an approach.
Still, I realized that I've made it this far without anything negative from the examiner, and I realized that I only had one more approach to fly. I needed to nail this.
The final approach was the VOR A with a circle to land. I was supposed to do it using the autopilot, but I had to tell him that I could only use the heading mode with the VOR, as the POS A/P wouldn't capture the VOR in NAV mode let alone approach mode. Oh, and I had to turn the POS A/P off when doing my procedure turn, because it doesn't like to turn left in heading mode. The DPE saw that I could use the A/P, and then said I could handfly the approach if I wanted. I did.
MDA on this approach was 1,460, but tower asked us to break off the approach at 2,000 because of other traffic, and commence the circle. So I just held 2,000 as my MDA, and did a pretty good pattern and a fair crossind landing on 36.
I parked and shut down, and then the examiner asked how I thought I did. What a loaded question! My answer was with these conditions, I thought I performed adequately. (I didn't want to be presumptuous.) We then debriefed, and that's when I started to get nervous. But then he reached over and shook my hand, and told me "congratulations."
Thanks to all for the advise given over the last 2 years. I'm glad this one is over. It was starting to seem like work.
Now off to the Blackhawks game tomorrow night for a little celebration!
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