Anatomy of My First Checkride

*warning* This actually turned into a mildly nostalgic entry and its a little long... sorry. Don't worry about reading the whole thing.

It's been awhile since I've posted... it's also been awhile since I've flown. I had some ear surgery because of a busted eardrum and I've been grounded. It's really a horrible feeling to be stuck here on the ground after knowing the possibilities waiting in the skies. But I fly again next Friday, after this weekend. School is picking up the pace so I've decided to cut back to flying once a week so I have more time to study.

So I decided to write about my first checkride since it happened long before I started this blog. A checkride is conducted by the FAA through an FAA examiner. (FAA = Federal Aviation Administration. Cheah, this is a federal thing, not state or local like drivers license or hunting license...) Its basically an extremely important exam and as a pilot, I'll be taking quite a few of them over the years. There are different types, but I'll just write about my private pilot checkride.

My checkride began at noon and was over at 6pm. There were two halves- an oral exam and a flight exam. They each lasted two hours. The oral exam was first. The examiner wrote six broad categores on a whiteboard in a back room of the flightschool, then he sat down and said, "Tell me what you know about all of that. You can go in any order, you can jump around, but just let me know where you are."

I lectured for 75 minutes.

I still have my list of everything I talked about, but I'll spare you the boring details (actually, its all quite enthralling to me) and just list a few items: required equipment for day flight, airspace requirements for classes A, B, C, D, E and G, air traffic control services, cross country planning, prelight and postflight procedures, aircraft systems (like the vacuum pump, hydraulics, and pitot-static systems), weather patterns and weather services, and a million other things...

After I finished relating my knowledge as in depth as I could, the examiner asked me to explain a few things I'd said and then asked me lots of other specific questions for about 45 minutes. I should mention that none of this was open notes or open book. I had to either know it verbatim according to the FAA's rules and regs or it didn't count. I forgot how he graded this oral test... I didn't really care since my goal was to get 100% of everything correct. I wish I had that same motivation for college classes... meh...

At any rate, the second half of the exam that day was actually flying the airplane with the examiner in the right seat. I had to plan out a cross country (>50 miles away) trip beforehand for the examiner, so I walked him through every step I had taken in the planning stages. Actually, I told him that the flight was a no-go because there were some significant weather patterns developing at our destination (KAEX- Alexandria, Louisiana) that were going to make the trip impossible under VFR (visual flight rules- basically, stay out of the clouds). This was no problem because he said we were going to divert to an alternate airport anyway.

So, we walked out to the airplane where he explained everything to me. If I failed any one procedure during the flight, I failed the entire checkride and would have to retake the whole thing. There were no second chances to retry any maneuver and nothing less than performing withing the FAA's test standards would be accepted. Now, even though that sounds intense, I was actually not too worried. I have an awesome flight instructor who trained me to fly to much, much higher standards than needed for the test.

For example, the FAA required me to hold my altitude during a 360 degree turn within plus or minus 200 feet. That means that if I started a right turn at 3500 feet, I would be fine if I stayed anywhere between 3300 and 3700 feet. That is a HUGE margin of error in my opinion. My instructor trained me to hold plus or minus 50 feet. Even in turbulance, my instructor still expects me to hold plus or minus 75 feet in instrument conditions. This makes my life really hard, but its worth it to be as precise as possible in my early days of flying so it will just be habit later down the road.

So, back to the actual flight test. I had to do lots of fun manuevers like stalls, banks, different types of landings, ground reference maneuvers and navigation. This all lasted about two hours. It was actually fairly enjoyable because I was already used to flying well within test standards that I didn't really feel much 'test anxiety' and it felt great to nail each part of the test.

After we landed, the examiner walked inside while I stored the aircraft. I walked inside and found him filling out paperwork silently and I sat down across the table and waited. It was after hours now, so no one else was in the flightschool. It felt like an eternity waiting for this guy to say something, but it was probably no longer than 10 or 15 minutes. Then, he handed me a piece of paper and told me to sign my name on it. I did so, then handed it back. He looked at me and slid the piece of paper back across the table and asked for my logbook. I gave him my logbook and took another look at the piece of paper...

IT WAS A TEMPORARY PRIVATE PILOT LICENSE!!!!

The actual card would come later in the mail and the examiner made an entry in my logbook showing I had passed everything. We made some small talk after that informal condoning of my license and then he left. It was all very unceremonious. To me, it was a MUCH higher sense of accomplishment than anything I've ever done. Period. More than graduating from highschool, more than getting into college, more than acing any other exam, more than getting my first car, more than getting my drivers license, and probably more than all of that combined.

I locked up the flightschool and walked out to my car and called my dad. He's been a pilot his whole life, having started in the Air Force and flown all around the world and then getting on with American Airlines to keep flying all around the world. We talked awhile and it was great. I called my mom afterwards and then I drove home (2.5 hours) and met my dad for a late dinner at Red Lobster... mmm....

It was one of about 5 days in my life that I could talk forever about.