Well not so good news...

flyTotheSky

flyTotheSky

Well-Known Member
First checkride ever failed today...:(

Feels kind of crappy but it probably was going to happen sooner or later, even though I never liked having that attitude.

I had gotten through all my ratings thru the CFI-A without a hitch, but the commercial AMEL add on got me today.

Oral was a breeze, my VFR maneuvers were fine. Sure enough it was the SE IFR approaches... Enroute to the IAF my engine fails.... Basically I had FAMPAC'd the engine before I entered the hold, entered the hold and proceeded to airstart. I totally brainfarted and forgot to switch the fuel selector back to the main tank. So I'm sittin trying to get this thing restarted and I have no idea why its not turning over. While I'm troubleshooting the engine, the whole time I'm subconsciously holding back pressure on the yoke to maintain altitude - bad idea. All the sudden the examiner says "we're going back to the airport". I had never heard those words before so it was pretty hard to take. Right when he said it, it was like a light popped on, I looked at my A/S ind. and it was hovering around Vmc+5 and I looked down at my fuel selector and saw it in the "off" position. I couldn't believe I just let that happen. It was definetly a sombering experience.

Now no airline will ever hire me! :sarcasm:

Anybody else remember the first time you failed a checkride?
 
yep, hearing the DPE say "were going to have to come back and try that again" :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: . I look back on it as a good learning experience though.
 
What's done is done. Gotta dust yourself off and learn from it! Even if you think it wasn't your fault, well, play PIC, and discover what you could have done differently.

My first failure was, even according to the DPE, political. He wanted to '...send ERAU a message about their program' -- primarily because they had just attained self-examining authority and it cost him thousands of dollars per month of lost business and since I was part of the non-self examining authority program, he wanted to send the FAA and ERAU the message that their shiznit did, in fact, stink.

Totally political, but then I gave him the window of opportunity to fail me by not recognizing that the gear didn't go up when I saw the ammeter jump and didn't raise my hood to realize that the nose gear was still slightly visible in the mirror.

I think his last name was "Spence" or something like that.... I can't remember.
 
Rayflyoz said:
DPE's, FAA, ERAU political???? nah...:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:
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Absolutely!

Remember, I work for an airline who helped put Eastern out of business, but then a lot of the same Eastern guys work for the local CMO/FSDO that overlooks my airline.
 
You learn from failure, as bad as that sounds. It will not hurt your chances down the road either. It gives you a good answer for the question about busted rides. It also shows that you can learn from adversity and push through to your goals.
 
desertdog71 said:
You learn from failure, as bad as that sounds. It will not hurt your chances down the road either. It gives you a good answer for the question about busted rides. It also shows that you can learn from adversity and push through to your goals.
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Exactly. There's always going to be adversity. The reaction to it is what makes you a professional.
 
I love learning from my mistakes, but I ####ing hate making mistakes that I should have known better than to make.

I'm 1 for 1 on the checkrides..... but I'm extremely nervous for the future. I HATE LOSING and I see busting a checkride as just that: losing.

Of course, I'd learn from my mistake(s) that caused me to get the slip, but I'd still be irate with myself and punch the hell out of my pillow(s).
 
I lucked out with my busts and only ended up with one. There was a very good possibility that I could have busted another one but I stepped up a bit and the DPE was in a good mood I guess.

The one I did bust was mostly due to the fact that I just couldn't fly the plane as well as I should have (it was a commercial single and anybody from the ATP side of the house will know what I mean) and the DE happened to be an aerobatic pilot so he wanted to see me fly the heck out of the plane. The recheck went ok and while we were doing it he showed me some things a C172 will do that I had no idea about. Stuff I would never do to the plane, but my comfort level with students getting a plane out of control and still be able to recover went up greatly.

You fail, you learn and you move on.
 
mtsu_av8er said:
I never had a problem with lazy 8's - it was those stupid 8's-on-pylons.

Stupid maneuver.:mad:
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:) I will always have fond memories of that maneuver.

Lets just say it was Deer Hunting season here in Kansas when I was practicing these. I called them 8's on Deer Stands. I always had these images of Billy Bob all liquored up in his Deer stand, saying "Hey Earl, that damn plane is scaring the deer, lets shoot his ass"
 
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