kenjr
Line Up and Wait
Well, I passed my PPL checkride on Monday and finally put together a write-up for my CFI. It was way too long so I'll post the abridged version here, which will probably end up being too long as well. I know how much I enjoyed reading other people's experience so I thought I'd take the time to share mine and hope it helps someone else out...
First of all, I found these two video's to be very insightful. Both are relatively recent and are two DPE's doing seminar's on what to expect on the checkride and a bunch of stuff people are messing up or don't know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xz0kfBvEp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVE-gIeZUpk
My DPE was let's say, a bit of a hard ass. I think he was fair but his focus on random minutia was to the point of extremely annoying. My oral ended up in two parts (more on that later...) and was a combined almost 2.5 hours. At the end of the first part he straight up told me that this was probably the best PPL oral he's ever done - I can't remember anything I didn't have an answer for and the stuff I didn't know off the top of my head I knew exactly where to find it in the FAR/AIM. Yet, we talked about stuff like Hypoxia for 30 minutes. Bizarre.
My DPE made me plan an insane XC - over 400nm, 3 legs and the last leg was supposed to be at night. Um, OK. So, I spent 45 minutes plotting 15-20nm checkpoints, calculating winds, etc... You'd think that someone would be able to discern your understanding of the material with something much less than that. It made for good conversation in the oral as just about everything was covered airspace wise, class C and D and skirting Houston's class B. But, you can still ask all those questions without the monster XC planning.
Anyway, we scheduled the checkride and I had to fly about 35 minutes to where he is based out of. No big deal there - I like the practice time on the way up. I had already done some recon up there and flew my planned XC so I knew where everything was and had the timings down. Intel from other folks he's ridden with told me we wouldn't go past the 3rd checkpoint and that held true for me as well.
I show up about an hour early to get all my stuff setup, get a cup of coffee, calm my nerves...was a great plan. When he shows up we exchange friendlies, do the IACRA paperwork to get things started and then we're back in the conference room starting the oral.
Everything went great - all the usual stuff you'd expect in the oral. Started with pilot privileges, what kind of documentation I need in the airplane and then we started going over the aircraft logs. I am a part owner in a Cherokee so I brought my own plane, of course. We just did the annual 2 months ago and had all our inspections done then. I had talked directly with our IA to make sure they were all done. My DPE starts going through my logbook and doesn't like the way the ELT inspection was recorded. We had it as part of the annual (A&P recorded it as the Piper maintenance plan with reference to the documentation (FAA approved) of all the things that get checked at annual, ELT included) and he wanted to see it as a standalone item with specific reference to 91.207b.
So, he basically stops the thing right there and we start trying to figure out what we can do. He makes some calls, I call one of the partners in the plane to get with our A&P to see what we can do and the DPE decides to continue to the oral and see what happens.
So, off we go...
My DPE was all about the PTS. He made several comments about applicants coming in and not knowing exactly what they should be doing - it's all in the PTS. I had it printed out with the special emphasis subjects front and center. He was all about those - stall/spin awareness, checklists and ADM.
Everything was scenario based, as expected. Not to many right off the test type questions...stuff like, "What if you get in your plane, turn on the master and the turn coordinator isn't working?" type stuff.
I found it extremely helpful (and my DPE was impressed) to sticky note up my FAR/AIM. I had all the places I knew I might be going tabbed up to get to very quickly. But it's imperative that you know the basics if you don't do that - 43 is maintenance, 71 is airspace, 61 is pilot stuff and 91 is regs. If you get asked about what inspections you need on your airplane and you go digging around in 61 you're probably going to be in trouble.
I got a lot of question on load factors and how moving the CG forward or aft affects how the airplane flies. More questions about where stalls occur and how to avoid them.
We went over W&B quite a bit. I brought mine in on an Excel spreadsheet that someone over on the P28b.com forums put together. There's several Piper variants in here so if you fly one - might be worth checking out. http://p28b.com/sites/default/files/Weight and Balance Calculator 1.20.xls
He liked it but asked me questions about the numbers to make sure I knew what I was doing. I almost dared him to start going deep on W&B with me. I was a Navy Aircrewman/Loadmaster many moons ago. He left it at that. :wink2: I especially like that XLS because it shows fuel loading. So you know as you fly and consume fuel where the CG is going to move...instead of having to make two W&B's to show that.
I didn't get hit to hard on the sectional - he asked about 10 questions and I popped the answers right off so I guess he figured I knew that stuff pretty well. A lot of finger pointing at places and saying, "What's my visibility req's here?" or "What equipment do we need to fly here?".
When we went over my XC he asked about my decision making process for my checkpoints and kinda focused in on that night leg back. I had planned it using GPS waypoints to stay over a major freeway the entire way back up. I explained my reasoning and he liked it.
My overall impression is that you don't have to be perfect on the oral and the DPE's will choose when and where to go deeper. For instance, we were talking about TAS and how I came up with my numbers for my XC. I showed him in my POH and he asked, "What if we flew at 4,500 instead of 7,500 - how is TAS affected?" to which I replied, "Your TAS will be higher...". He just let it go and about 2 seconds later I realized I said the wrong thing and corrected myself. He said, "Nice catch!".
We didn't spend a ton of time on weather. I brought in DUATS for the entire trip and he asked me about the various things in it - TAF's, winds aloft, etc... Fortunately he didn't make decode any PIREPS or anything. We talked a lot about iPad stuff. He asked me to bring up a prognostic surface analysis chart and said it was OK to bring it up on the iPad (I used ForeFlight). We have a Stratus so we talked about that a bit, but that was about it on the weather. I feel like I know it well enough to pass a written test kinda thing...but if he started going deep into some of those charts I figured I might be in a little trouble.
Last thing he spent a bunch of time on was aeromedical stuff. Hypoxia and illusions specifically. I didn't memorize all the types of hypoxia but did know all the various conditions or situations that could create it or exacerbate it. He was fine with that. We spent a good deal of time on the 'black hole' airport scenario and how to deal with that.
Last thing he did was ask me for my POH and started flipping through the pages asking me random questions about the electrical, fuel, etc... systems.
Anyway, never was a question that I was going to get through the oral...never really stumbled...felt pretty confident about that going in. Unfortunately, and I'll save the long version of the story, he stopped the ride and failed me for flying an unairworthy airplane to the checkride (for the ELT inspection that wasn't to his standards that had been done). He actually was going to try to make me call the FAA for a ferry permit to get it home but after an hours worth of phone calls to various FAA folks we agreed that we would just get an A&P on site to do a quick ELT inspection and I'd be on my my...which is exactly what I was pushing for once all this popped up 10 minutes into my oral portion. We could have had the guy doing the inspection during that time and have been ready to go when we were done. Anyway, it is what it is...
So, he gave me his next available slot to finish up...a month away. Nice.
Fortunately, someone cancelled on Monday and he texted me Sunday night asking if I was able to jump in at 2pm the next day. I cleared my work calendar for the afternoon and said Sure, I'll be up.
So, I flew up...got there a little early...enough to re-do the first leg of the XC with the most current info. I filed a flight plan using ForeFlight and called FSS to get a weather briefing. The weather was gorgeous, but I figure they like seeing you do that kind of stuff - especially to see if there are NOTAM's, etc...
We did the paperwork and he asked me to pre-flight the plane...asked me how long I'd need. He didn't go out with me...I assumed he was watching but he came out as I was about done and asked me a few random questions...what's the min/max oil qty? Where do we keep the level? How many sumps? What is this antenna for?
We climbed in and away we went. My ride went like this:
* On the way out the ground controller asked me if I was ready for my clearance while we were taxiing. I asked her to wait until I was finished with my runup. The DPE liked that - said never to be jacking with radio's or writing stuff down while you are moving.
* Short field takeoff - like a total noob I leave the flaps down and finally about 3 miles from the airport he says, "Is there anything you need to do right now?". Took me a second but couldn't believe I pulled a bonehead move like that right off the ground. I tracked to first 3 waypoints - was exactly on time. Once we got to the third waypoint he started pointing at stuff in the distance asking me what it was and show it to him on the map.
* After the 3rd checkpoint he says, "I'm not feeling well - let's divert...". So, I take a quick look at my map and figure we need about a 250 heading to get there. I didn't know if he'd be cool with using the GPS for the diversion so I reach for it and he laughs and says, "Um, no GPS yet...". There's a VOR adjacent to the airport so I dial that in and track it. I goofed a bit here because I went from a 147 heading to a 250 heading. He let me fly that for about 5 minutes and then said, "Are we OK at this altitude?" I figured it out and climbed to 4,500. He asked how long it was going to take to get there? I didn't pull out my E6B or anything - I use this method. Take your GS and divide it by 10. I can get mine off my Garmin 430. That's going to show you how many miles you'll fly in 6 minutes. It took me about 3 seconds to calculate it (and I said my process outloud so he knew what I was doing) and told him we'd be on the ground in 15 minutes. Once we made it to the airport he commented on how well I'd handled the diversion.
* He had me stay at 4,500 until we were about right over the airport and had me do an emergency descent. He likes power off, stick it around Va at a 45 degree turn. You'll drop like a rock
* Once we were down to about 2,500 he said let's enter the pattern here and do our landings. He did let me pull my iPad out to use the sectional, check pattern altitude, etc... at this point. We needed to use RWY 15 but were north of the airport so I setup to enter a proper 45 on the downwind. Tuned in to CTAF and it was pretty busy there - it's uncontrolled and there were 4 or 5 planes in the pattern. We got over the numbers and he had me go-around and then told me to exit the pattern and fly north.
* Once we were over a big interstate he had me foggle up. Didn't have to track a VOR with it - but he had me turn to various headings and then did 3 unusual attitude recoveries...2 up and 1 down. Foggles off.
* Steep turns. Yawn - no big deal there
* Slow flight. I love slow flight - I always nail it...since just about the first time I did with my CFI. We practiced it with no flaps, one notch, two notches, full...climb, descend, turn...I love it. I start my slow flight and it's the worst I've ever done. My CFI warned me that the stuff you are most comfortable with it probably what you'll screw up. Sure enough. Anyway, I started and was up almost 200 feet to high but talked me way through the correction...got it and nailed for the turns, etc... If the ride wasn't going as well as it was I wouldn't have blamed him for failing me with that trash.
* Stalls: Started with a power-off. I recovered within PTS (which says Vx or Vy) but I was kinda in the middle. He wanted to see a solid recovery to Vy on all stalls. I showed him that on the 2nd try and he was fine.
* Emergency Landing - he pulled power and said we lost the engine. Pretty straightforward...turned into the wind, found a spot, was high but could make it so I slipped down. He asked me if I was slipping and I said yes...he says - good - we have that covered now.
I got down to about 1k feet and called it off. I went through all the checklist stuff for a restart and then for a ditch. No issues there.
* He prefers to use the rectangular pattern in lieu of S-turns and turns around a point. Fine with me. He basically said if you're pattern work is solid then we'll use that for the ground reference...if they stink we'll go out and do those. So, I made sure I flew great in the pattern and we skipped the turns. Cool.
* He let me go D-> GPS back to the airport and asked me to ask for the option. We did a short field first touch and go and then a soft field. The runway is 7k feet long so he had me slow to taxi speed and do a soft field takeoff from midfield. Final landing he said "Show me a normal landing".
He critiqued my slow flight and Vy stall recovery on the taxi back to the FBO but never did he say anywhere during the flight that I failed so I pretty much knew I was good...barring running off the taxiway or hitting another plane on my way back in. I shut it down, we got out and he congratulate me on becoming a Private Pilot. We did the paperwork, I got my temp certificate, did a quick preflight and headed back home.
As Murphy's Law would have it - my very first solo PIC with my ticket...I only get one latch of the door closed so I end up with a very nice breeze coming through the top of the door the entire way home. *sigh*
Overall, I thought it was fair. My DPE said multiple times - this isn't about perfection. There was stuff he wanted to see a certain way and we re-did it and I did my best to do it his way even though what I had already done was withing PTS standards. I was fine with that - I'll take any and all opportunities to learn something from a more experienced pilot...
Still no passenger flight for me this week...too busy for work. I was going to take my wife on a short trip this weekend but I think one of my other Partners has dibbs on the plane and a front is coming in on Friday and scattered thunderstorms are expected all weekend. Go figure.
Anyway, good luck to all you folks out there working your way through it. I started my journey right before Christmas last year - so it took me right at 9 months. I had 64.7 total time when I did the checkride with 19.1 of those solo. I did all the ground work on my own - used various study materials...Sporty's DVD's were good, bunch of books. When I was ready for the written I used Sporty's Study Buddy and http://www.exams4pilots.org/faatest.cgi to pound through questions. Just using those two I made a 90 on the exam. I would have made at least 2 answers better...but I went back on review and changed them to wrong answers. I waited to take the written until right before I scheduled my checkride to save on study time. I travel frequently for work and have 3 young boys so my quiet time to study is at a premium and I didn't want to have months between the written and oral and have to re-study the stuff all over again. My oral ended up being over 2 hours so the folks that think if you make a 100 on your test you'll get a pass on the oral are wrong. It's totally DPE dependent.
Happy Flying!
First of all, I found these two video's to be very insightful. Both are relatively recent and are two DPE's doing seminar's on what to expect on the checkride and a bunch of stuff people are messing up or don't know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xz0kfBvEp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVE-gIeZUpk
My DPE was let's say, a bit of a hard ass. I think he was fair but his focus on random minutia was to the point of extremely annoying. My oral ended up in two parts (more on that later...) and was a combined almost 2.5 hours. At the end of the first part he straight up told me that this was probably the best PPL oral he's ever done - I can't remember anything I didn't have an answer for and the stuff I didn't know off the top of my head I knew exactly where to find it in the FAR/AIM. Yet, we talked about stuff like Hypoxia for 30 minutes. Bizarre.
My DPE made me plan an insane XC - over 400nm, 3 legs and the last leg was supposed to be at night. Um, OK. So, I spent 45 minutes plotting 15-20nm checkpoints, calculating winds, etc... You'd think that someone would be able to discern your understanding of the material with something much less than that. It made for good conversation in the oral as just about everything was covered airspace wise, class C and D and skirting Houston's class B. But, you can still ask all those questions without the monster XC planning.
Anyway, we scheduled the checkride and I had to fly about 35 minutes to where he is based out of. No big deal there - I like the practice time on the way up. I had already done some recon up there and flew my planned XC so I knew where everything was and had the timings down. Intel from other folks he's ridden with told me we wouldn't go past the 3rd checkpoint and that held true for me as well.
I show up about an hour early to get all my stuff setup, get a cup of coffee, calm my nerves...was a great plan. When he shows up we exchange friendlies, do the IACRA paperwork to get things started and then we're back in the conference room starting the oral.
Everything went great - all the usual stuff you'd expect in the oral. Started with pilot privileges, what kind of documentation I need in the airplane and then we started going over the aircraft logs. I am a part owner in a Cherokee so I brought my own plane, of course. We just did the annual 2 months ago and had all our inspections done then. I had talked directly with our IA to make sure they were all done. My DPE starts going through my logbook and doesn't like the way the ELT inspection was recorded. We had it as part of the annual (A&P recorded it as the Piper maintenance plan with reference to the documentation (FAA approved) of all the things that get checked at annual, ELT included) and he wanted to see it as a standalone item with specific reference to 91.207b.
So, he basically stops the thing right there and we start trying to figure out what we can do. He makes some calls, I call one of the partners in the plane to get with our A&P to see what we can do and the DPE decides to continue to the oral and see what happens.
So, off we go...
My DPE was all about the PTS. He made several comments about applicants coming in and not knowing exactly what they should be doing - it's all in the PTS. I had it printed out with the special emphasis subjects front and center. He was all about those - stall/spin awareness, checklists and ADM.
Everything was scenario based, as expected. Not to many right off the test type questions...stuff like, "What if you get in your plane, turn on the master and the turn coordinator isn't working?" type stuff.
I found it extremely helpful (and my DPE was impressed) to sticky note up my FAR/AIM. I had all the places I knew I might be going tabbed up to get to very quickly. But it's imperative that you know the basics if you don't do that - 43 is maintenance, 71 is airspace, 61 is pilot stuff and 91 is regs. If you get asked about what inspections you need on your airplane and you go digging around in 61 you're probably going to be in trouble.
I got a lot of question on load factors and how moving the CG forward or aft affects how the airplane flies. More questions about where stalls occur and how to avoid them.
We went over W&B quite a bit. I brought mine in on an Excel spreadsheet that someone over on the P28b.com forums put together. There's several Piper variants in here so if you fly one - might be worth checking out. http://p28b.com/sites/default/files/Weight and Balance Calculator 1.20.xls
He liked it but asked me questions about the numbers to make sure I knew what I was doing. I almost dared him to start going deep on W&B with me. I was a Navy Aircrewman/Loadmaster many moons ago. He left it at that. :wink2: I especially like that XLS because it shows fuel loading. So you know as you fly and consume fuel where the CG is going to move...instead of having to make two W&B's to show that.
I didn't get hit to hard on the sectional - he asked about 10 questions and I popped the answers right off so I guess he figured I knew that stuff pretty well. A lot of finger pointing at places and saying, "What's my visibility req's here?" or "What equipment do we need to fly here?".
When we went over my XC he asked about my decision making process for my checkpoints and kinda focused in on that night leg back. I had planned it using GPS waypoints to stay over a major freeway the entire way back up. I explained my reasoning and he liked it.
My overall impression is that you don't have to be perfect on the oral and the DPE's will choose when and where to go deeper. For instance, we were talking about TAS and how I came up with my numbers for my XC. I showed him in my POH and he asked, "What if we flew at 4,500 instead of 7,500 - how is TAS affected?" to which I replied, "Your TAS will be higher...". He just let it go and about 2 seconds later I realized I said the wrong thing and corrected myself. He said, "Nice catch!".
We didn't spend a ton of time on weather. I brought in DUATS for the entire trip and he asked me about the various things in it - TAF's, winds aloft, etc... Fortunately he didn't make decode any PIREPS or anything. We talked a lot about iPad stuff. He asked me to bring up a prognostic surface analysis chart and said it was OK to bring it up on the iPad (I used ForeFlight). We have a Stratus so we talked about that a bit, but that was about it on the weather. I feel like I know it well enough to pass a written test kinda thing...but if he started going deep into some of those charts I figured I might be in a little trouble.
Last thing he spent a bunch of time on was aeromedical stuff. Hypoxia and illusions specifically. I didn't memorize all the types of hypoxia but did know all the various conditions or situations that could create it or exacerbate it. He was fine with that. We spent a good deal of time on the 'black hole' airport scenario and how to deal with that.
Last thing he did was ask me for my POH and started flipping through the pages asking me random questions about the electrical, fuel, etc... systems.
Anyway, never was a question that I was going to get through the oral...never really stumbled...felt pretty confident about that going in. Unfortunately, and I'll save the long version of the story, he stopped the ride and failed me for flying an unairworthy airplane to the checkride (for the ELT inspection that wasn't to his standards that had been done). He actually was going to try to make me call the FAA for a ferry permit to get it home but after an hours worth of phone calls to various FAA folks we agreed that we would just get an A&P on site to do a quick ELT inspection and I'd be on my my...which is exactly what I was pushing for once all this popped up 10 minutes into my oral portion. We could have had the guy doing the inspection during that time and have been ready to go when we were done. Anyway, it is what it is...
So, he gave me his next available slot to finish up...a month away. Nice.
Fortunately, someone cancelled on Monday and he texted me Sunday night asking if I was able to jump in at 2pm the next day. I cleared my work calendar for the afternoon and said Sure, I'll be up.
So, I flew up...got there a little early...enough to re-do the first leg of the XC with the most current info. I filed a flight plan using ForeFlight and called FSS to get a weather briefing. The weather was gorgeous, but I figure they like seeing you do that kind of stuff - especially to see if there are NOTAM's, etc...
We did the paperwork and he asked me to pre-flight the plane...asked me how long I'd need. He didn't go out with me...I assumed he was watching but he came out as I was about done and asked me a few random questions...what's the min/max oil qty? Where do we keep the level? How many sumps? What is this antenna for?
We climbed in and away we went. My ride went like this:
* On the way out the ground controller asked me if I was ready for my clearance while we were taxiing. I asked her to wait until I was finished with my runup. The DPE liked that - said never to be jacking with radio's or writing stuff down while you are moving.
* Short field takeoff - like a total noob I leave the flaps down and finally about 3 miles from the airport he says, "Is there anything you need to do right now?". Took me a second but couldn't believe I pulled a bonehead move like that right off the ground. I tracked to first 3 waypoints - was exactly on time. Once we got to the third waypoint he started pointing at stuff in the distance asking me what it was and show it to him on the map.
* After the 3rd checkpoint he says, "I'm not feeling well - let's divert...". So, I take a quick look at my map and figure we need about a 250 heading to get there. I didn't know if he'd be cool with using the GPS for the diversion so I reach for it and he laughs and says, "Um, no GPS yet...". There's a VOR adjacent to the airport so I dial that in and track it. I goofed a bit here because I went from a 147 heading to a 250 heading. He let me fly that for about 5 minutes and then said, "Are we OK at this altitude?" I figured it out and climbed to 4,500. He asked how long it was going to take to get there? I didn't pull out my E6B or anything - I use this method. Take your GS and divide it by 10. I can get mine off my Garmin 430. That's going to show you how many miles you'll fly in 6 minutes. It took me about 3 seconds to calculate it (and I said my process outloud so he knew what I was doing) and told him we'd be on the ground in 15 minutes. Once we made it to the airport he commented on how well I'd handled the diversion.
* He had me stay at 4,500 until we were about right over the airport and had me do an emergency descent. He likes power off, stick it around Va at a 45 degree turn. You'll drop like a rock
* Once we were down to about 2,500 he said let's enter the pattern here and do our landings. He did let me pull my iPad out to use the sectional, check pattern altitude, etc... at this point. We needed to use RWY 15 but were north of the airport so I setup to enter a proper 45 on the downwind. Tuned in to CTAF and it was pretty busy there - it's uncontrolled and there were 4 or 5 planes in the pattern. We got over the numbers and he had me go-around and then told me to exit the pattern and fly north.
* Once we were over a big interstate he had me foggle up. Didn't have to track a VOR with it - but he had me turn to various headings and then did 3 unusual attitude recoveries...2 up and 1 down. Foggles off.
* Steep turns. Yawn - no big deal there
* Slow flight. I love slow flight - I always nail it...since just about the first time I did with my CFI. We practiced it with no flaps, one notch, two notches, full...climb, descend, turn...I love it. I start my slow flight and it's the worst I've ever done. My CFI warned me that the stuff you are most comfortable with it probably what you'll screw up. Sure enough. Anyway, I started and was up almost 200 feet to high but talked me way through the correction...got it and nailed for the turns, etc... If the ride wasn't going as well as it was I wouldn't have blamed him for failing me with that trash.
* Stalls: Started with a power-off. I recovered within PTS (which says Vx or Vy) but I was kinda in the middle. He wanted to see a solid recovery to Vy on all stalls. I showed him that on the 2nd try and he was fine.
* Emergency Landing - he pulled power and said we lost the engine. Pretty straightforward...turned into the wind, found a spot, was high but could make it so I slipped down. He asked me if I was slipping and I said yes...he says - good - we have that covered now.
I got down to about 1k feet and called it off. I went through all the checklist stuff for a restart and then for a ditch. No issues there.* He prefers to use the rectangular pattern in lieu of S-turns and turns around a point. Fine with me. He basically said if you're pattern work is solid then we'll use that for the ground reference...if they stink we'll go out and do those. So, I made sure I flew great in the pattern and we skipped the turns. Cool.
* He let me go D-> GPS back to the airport and asked me to ask for the option. We did a short field first touch and go and then a soft field. The runway is 7k feet long so he had me slow to taxi speed and do a soft field takeoff from midfield. Final landing he said "Show me a normal landing".
He critiqued my slow flight and Vy stall recovery on the taxi back to the FBO but never did he say anywhere during the flight that I failed so I pretty much knew I was good...barring running off the taxiway or hitting another plane on my way back in. I shut it down, we got out and he congratulate me on becoming a Private Pilot. We did the paperwork, I got my temp certificate, did a quick preflight and headed back home.
As Murphy's Law would have it - my very first solo PIC with my ticket...I only get one latch of the door closed so I end up with a very nice breeze coming through the top of the door the entire way home. *sigh*
Overall, I thought it was fair. My DPE said multiple times - this isn't about perfection. There was stuff he wanted to see a certain way and we re-did it and I did my best to do it his way even though what I had already done was withing PTS standards. I was fine with that - I'll take any and all opportunities to learn something from a more experienced pilot...
Still no passenger flight for me this week...too busy for work. I was going to take my wife on a short trip this weekend but I think one of my other Partners has dibbs on the plane and a front is coming in on Friday and scattered thunderstorms are expected all weekend. Go figure.
Anyway, good luck to all you folks out there working your way through it. I started my journey right before Christmas last year - so it took me right at 9 months. I had 64.7 total time when I did the checkride with 19.1 of those solo. I did all the ground work on my own - used various study materials...Sporty's DVD's were good, bunch of books. When I was ready for the written I used Sporty's Study Buddy and http://www.exams4pilots.org/faatest.cgi to pound through questions. Just using those two I made a 90 on the exam. I would have made at least 2 answers better...but I went back on review and changed them to wrong answers. I waited to take the written until right before I scheduled my checkride to save on study time. I travel frequently for work and have 3 young boys so my quiet time to study is at a premium and I didn't want to have months between the written and oral and have to re-study the stuff all over again. My oral ended up being over 2 hours so the folks that think if you make a 100 on your test you'll get a pass on the oral are wrong. It's totally DPE dependent.
Happy Flying!
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