Failed The Checkride, need some encouragement from you guys

Considering what you have left to do is all in the pattern, sounds like the ground ref was good enough to pass the checkride. I've had to really rein in my perfectionism since starting flight training. If you know someone who is egotistially and feels they can do anything, flying an airplane will either take 'em down a couple of notches or kill em.:)
 
Jace don't sweat it man I know exactly what your going through and how you feel.
I busted my PPL checkride as well. I remember I was sooooo freaking nervous my whole body was shaking my voice was cracking over the comms.
Seeing all this the DE told me to just chill. The flight was going fine he said that I was a natual pilot and had good control of the plane.
We were getting ready to head back to the airport and he asked me to start my stall procedures. I did slow flight right then he asked me to do a power on stall.
I put the throttle to the wall and pulled back on the yoke and the planes nose begain to rise sharply.
But like a dummy I did the manuver sans right rudder and the left wing dipped sharply and I almost "spun" the plane.
The DE took immediate control of the plane, recovered and failed me.
But hey I learned it's not good to spin your plane during your PPL checkride.
The DE was kool and said "what are you trying to do jump ahead to your CFI checkride."
He asked me if I wanted to go on and I was so f-ing pissed that I had f'ed up my whole day was shot.
But I said yeah and we bagged everything else and he said that I just needed to practice my "controllability" of the plane and always remember to fly co-ordinated and to use right rudder!
The next time up I aced my checkride and so will you!
Were family me and you and we need more family in the cockpit so buck up and knock this next one outa the park!

-Matthew
 
The LEFT wing dipped??? That's weird. Usually when a wing dips for me its the right. Anyway, why did it dip so much? Did you try to correct with ailerons?
 
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The LEFT wing dipped??? That's weird. Usually when a wing dips for me its the right. Anyway, why did it dip so much? Did you try to correct with ailerons?

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This was back in 03 and I had tunnel vison I was concentrating so hard on passing the checkride that I screwed myself!
It could have been the right wing but I think that I seem to remember the the left wing dipping very sharply.
I performed the power on stall with zero repeat zero right rudder.
I was flying totally unco-ordinated. I tried to correct the action but the DE said "my airplane" and immediately took control of the plane.

-Matthew
 
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The LEFT wing dipped??? That's weird. Usually when a wing dips for me its the right. Anyway, why did it dip so much? Did you try to correct with ailerons?

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Sorry to correct you but I have to for the sake of the yougner JC crowd.

Correct a stall wing drop with ailerons!
shocked.gif


Think about that one...

You are stalled (the wings Angle of Attack is above the Critical Angle of Attack)

You want to pick up the left wing so you turn the yoke to the right...

Which drops the left aileron...

and increases the Angle of Attack even more above the Critical Angle of Attack on the left wing...

the left wing loses more lift...

the left wing drops farther...

Instant spin...

Always pick up a wing in a stall with opposite RUDDER, not ailerons.

BTW Jace, don't sweat it too much... you'll knock it out of the park next time around!
 
Don't be overly hard on yourself. EVERYONE has some sort of failure story. It sounds like you were prepared and just let your nerves get the best of you.

When I was a CFI I had students, who I knew were well prepared, have checkride breaking moments due to nerves. Heck, it happened to me during an airline interview once. I let a small screw up in a sim ride fluster me and things just went downhill from there. I blew it and didn't get the job. Kicked myself in the butt for a few weeks and then decided it wasn't worth the effort to be so depressed and got back on the proverbial horse and kept going. In the end things worked out. I have a decent regional airline job now and I think I grew from the experience.
 
Jace, sorry to hear about the checkride. Don't sweat it, I'm sure you'll nail it next time! The wx has been kinnda crappy here today, did you get your review flight in?
 
dont feel bad. I unsat my commercial/multi/instrument check because I landed 20ft short on a shortfield landing. It was the very first thing we did!!
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Dont sweat it, I have made my fair share of mistakes while flying but we all learn from them. quick question, im from Winnipeg and do you know if I flew down there would they let me take a look at some of there simulators down there?
 
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Jace, sorry to hear about the checkride. Don't sweat it, I'm sure you'll nail it next time! The wx has been kinnda crappy here today, did you get your review flight in?

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I was going to do my review flight this morning at 8am, but winds were 19 gusting to 26, so I cancelled. It would've been fine for a regular landing, but soft fields would've been a little difficult.

I have my review flight rescheduled for Monday at 7:30pm. My stage pilot told my instructor he'd be available on Tuesday to finish up the checkride.

One thing that really made me stressed out during the flight is UND's policy of dropping 2% off of the AVIT 102 course grade (for those not at UND it is a 5 credit ground school course). I did have an 88.2% in the course, but now I will have a C due to the THIRD stage check having failed. The first stage check I failed because I missed the before landing check "gear down locked and set flaps 0" on the power off 180. The second stage check I failed the oral because I could not draw the electrical schematic on the Piper Warrior. The guy was a brand new stage check pilot and told me before the oral that he had failed 100% of his students so far - that was very unprofessional. So he had me already scared. My instructor brought it up to his Lead and someone above him obviously had a word with the stage pilot that 102 students should not have to draw a whole schematic of the Warrior. The second time around he told me to just "explain verbally" how the batter/alternator/magneto/etc works together, which I did.

Overall, I have not had a good experience here with UND's aviation program. I'm going to stick with it though and see how things go. I'm just gonna try to keep a positive attitude.
 
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When can you take your chckride again?

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Tuesday - IF the weather is nice enough to be able to do 3 landings in the pattern.
 
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The LEFT wing dipped??? That's weird. Usually when a wing dips for me its the right. Anyway, why did it dip so much? Did you try to correct with ailerons?

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Sorry to correct you but I have to for the sake of the yougner JC crowd.

Correct a stall wing drop with ailerons!
shocked.gif


Think about that one...

You are stalled (the wings Angle of Attack is above the Critical Angle of Attack)

You want to pick up the left wing so you turn the yoke to the right...

Which drops the left aileron...

and increases the Angle of Attack even more above the Critical Angle of Attack on the left wing...

the left wing loses more lift...

the left wing drops farther...

Instant spin...

Always pick up a wing in a stall with opposite RUDDER, not ailerons.


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Um, yeah. That was my point. I was asking if the reason the wing dipped so much is because he tried to correct with ailerons.
 
Just think about everything you did RIGHT! That ought to make you feel better.

And then ask yourself, can I do the things that I will need to redo? If the answer is yes, don't sweat it, just go and do it.
 
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Um, yeah. That was my point. I was asking if the reason the wing dipped so much is because he tried to correct with ailerons.

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Ahhhh.... OK!
grin.gif


Sorry man.

Then to stress your point...
grin.gif
 
No worries. I can see how that might have been misunderstood, so its probably good that you clarified.
nana2.gif
 
Your checkride failure probably means a lot right now, but a 1000 hours down the road you will realize it was not worth beating yourself up over.
 
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I was going to do my review flight this morning at 8am, but winds were 19 gusting to 26, so I cancelled. It would've been fine for a regular landing, but soft fields would've been a little difficult.



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As a CFI, this has become kind of a pet peeve of mine - why are students not willing to take advantage of the learning opportunities that less-than-perfect weather provides? I know you need to review for your retake, but if you learn how to land well (even shorts and softs) in the wind, don't you think you'll be better at them for the checkride? Just curious of anyone else's thoughts on that one...

Sorry to hear you failed, but learn from it and move on. Every pilot I know has met the same fate at some point, and most of them are now flying CRJs.
smile.gif
 
Don't worry about the failure. I'm pretty sure I almost failed my PP checkride... because I had so much Performance Anxiety all my skill went our the window for that flight. I had to do several maneuvers twice and even did a go around because of my sloppy approach (luckily I had the judgement to go around our he would have failed me for that).

My instrument checkride was much more challenging put the PP was the worst because of that first time anxiety. You will do just fine on the next try, so don't worry too much about it.
 
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