Checkride prep

With all the required hours met, the only thing left to do is prepare for the checkride. I have to say, when I started my pilot training, I never thought I would actually make it to the end...but here I am. Flying has pretty much been the only thing on my brain since I started, and I am looking forward to having the checkride behind me so I can stop thinking about it 24/7. I am looking forward to being able to read something that is not related to flying.

As far as preparing for the big day, I have been studying the airplanes POH, focusing on the airplanes systems, emergency procedures, and limitations. Up until this point all of my knowledge about the FARs has been from the King videos, so I thought it would be wise to actually study the FAR book itself, in case I have to dig into it during my oral exam. I also bought the ASA guide to the oral exam, which is filled with virtually every question and answer the examiner would think to ask...a great book to leave next to the toilet. I took what I thought were the questions I would most likely be asked from the book, and created flash cards with them, then when I had time, I had my fiance quiz me using them. The flash cards have been a big help I think. Things seem to stick better when you nervously have to say them out loud to another person. I also watched a video online of an oral exam, and although people say it is much more intense than a normal oral exam, it is still valuable to watch. In addition, King School has a video of an oral and practical exam that are worth watching as well.

Once I began to feel somewhat confident that I could squirm my way through an oral exam, I scheduled some time with my instructor for a mock oral exam. I have to say, this took much longer than I anticipated. I scheduled a three hour session with my instructor, which I thought would be plenty of time, and we only got through the FARs. My instructor told me that we would finish up the oral when we met again for the practical portion. He gave me a destination to flight plan to as homework. The next weekend I met with my instructor to finish up the mock checkride. We went over the airplanes log books, my flight plan, finished up the mock oral exam, which was all questions from the POH...all of this took about two hours, longer than I had anticipated yet again. I was pretty beat by this time, and it was starting to get late. I was hoping he would say we would have to reschedule the practical portion, but he didn't, so I was off to preflight.

With the airplane ready to go, we were off. We started with a short field take off, and then I followed the flight plan I had created. Around my first check point we did a simulated diversion. I was told that there was bad weather up ahead and we would need to divert to Ramona airport. I used my plotter and a compass rose on the sectional to determine a magnetic heading to fly. I turned to that heading, and estimated the time it would take to get there. I cheated when I did this, I knew Ramona airport was 15nm away, so I looked at my flight plan to see if I had any legs of similar distance, and used that to estimate the en route time. This whole diversion scenario isn't particularly difficult, but trying to do it while maintaining altitude and heading is.

We were about to start our steep turns, but it was getting dark fast. We decided we would have to postpone the rest of the checkride for another day.Well a day or two after, the plane went in for its 100 hour maintenance  and because it was Thanksgiving week, things are going slow. Its been almost two weeks since my last flight, but I hope to finish up this weekend...we'll see. If there is one thing I have learned through this experience, its that things are going to take a lot longer than you expect. My original goal was to have my certificate when my parents came to visit in Sept, then it was before Thanksgiving, and now I am shooting for before Christmas. Wish me luck!