Ride Report (what I can remember after 13 hours in the car today).
Oral: Went through the whole introduction thing, DPE asked about if he did my private, etc... First thing he did was layout an outline of everything that we had to do for the checkride, which made keeping track of where we were easy. Basic oral stuff. Went through the cross country he had me plan. Some basic systems questions, some airspace questions, and covered what a commerical pilot can/can't do. Thing that tripped me up the most was how a Minimum Equipment List worked, and specifically how you go about getting one. The whole thing was basically a few questions, with him wandering out into a story/teaching moment. I learned a lot from what he said during this part.
Weather during the checkride was somewhere along 210@10 Gusting to 18, with a bit of shear around 500 ft AGL.
First up was the Arrow flight. Turned out we flew 0.4 in it. Took off, short field, went fine. Went out of the pattern, went "on course" for the cross country. Went 5 minutes, and came back, as the cieling was kind of low. He asked for a normal landing. At about 300 AGL, he said "deer on the runway", did the go-around. Around the pattern, and a normal landing. We talked about the emergency gear extention, but didn't perform it.
Next was the DA-20. Soft field take-off, with a trip around the pattern. Came back, soft field landing. On flair (in the DA-20, which can last for ever), we caught a gust, bounced and floated. I went ahead and landed the bounce soft-field, and he was satisified. Taxi-back, normal take-off, to a Power-off 180. This surprised me, because I had done most of the practice on these in the Arrow, but it went fine. With the DA-20, you can glide forever, as opposed to the Arrow, which can't glide the lenght of the airplane. Hit the 1000 ft markers, and taxied back.
After that, we did a normal take-off, out to the practice area. Climbed up, slow flight, stalls (both power-on/off in a turn). Meanwhile we got blown around really good. I'd say winds aloft were blowing about 30 knots, so the slowflight ended up around 15 knots GS. Then the steep turns, which are very easy in the DA-20. Chandelle's in both directions got us up high enough for the steep spirial. Back up somewhat to pick up the lazy-8's. I finally decided that the slower you go on lazy-8's, the easier they are to understand and to fly. At this point, the examiner said "lets go back, you've done well". I asked him about the 8's on Plyon, and he was very happy that I remembered that we needed to do them. So, we went and knocked them out. Entered on the downwind set up at about 95 knots airspeed (2200 RPM) which gave me a groundspeed in the range of 130-135. Fun stuff to say the least. Turns out that I had points that were too far apart to work well. After 1 set, the DPE showed me how he wanted them done. The tighter the points, the easier is was to see which direction to correct, and it was easier to keep the point on the wing. So, he had me do his points, and it went well.
Flew back to the airport for the short field landing. No difficutly there, with a groundspeed in the 40's on approach, its really not hard. Went back, and got the handshake, filled out IACRA, and got the paper certificate.
Normally, I'd stop there, and would have been done at the flight school for the day. But, turns out the DPE had another checkride after mine. This guy was taking his private ride, in the same plane. Me and my instructor had to take the Arrow back to another airport, so I thought I'd stick around and see this other guy's checkride. We waited around and talked (instructor and I) for a while. He got back, and had passed his private ride. It was really cool to be able to stand there and shake my brother's hand as he got out of the airplane after his private ride. So, my instructor (also my brother's) got 2 guys to pass in one day, and had 4 guys (3 private and 1 commerical) pass on the 1st try in a week.
If you want specifics, ask, and I can try to remember what all was said.
And thanks for the congrats guys. Sitting here south of ATL tonight looking at the departures has made me realize I am infact one step closer to not having to pay to fly all the time anymore.
