Passed IR oral, but not with much grace....

rframe said:
I think it's kinda funny that people complain about a lot of inferior pilots in the "ranks" and then when an examiner does an in-depth exam he's insulted.

I had a Private student do a 4 hour oral, and the examiner said he did excellent and was one of the best prepared candidates he'd tested. I had no problem with that.
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There are much better ways to work with 'inferior' pilots than give 4+ hour long orals.
 
My IR oral was 2.0 hours. When I first got to UND I was surprised how long the orals were, 2,2.5, sometimes 3 hours for some people. I don't actually know how long my PPL was because I was billed a flat rate, but it was only around an hour and all of the systems questions were while we were standing next to the plane. 4.5 (or anything over 3) is a bit ridiculous. An examiner is supposed to be judging whether or not you meet PTS standards, not making sure that you can answer every question that could possibly come up about instrument flying.
 
ryan4sail said:
I had a 3 hr oral on my instrument rating, but that's because I failed my written once, and the examiner wanted to assure that I had the knowledge.
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If that was indeed why the examiner decided to do a long oral, that was a total waste of time. You can get 100% on the written and still not know a bloody thing.
 
JDean3204 said:
So today was my scheduled check ride for my IR. I had a great start, but then things went south then continued to make me feel water logged, and ended up recording a 4 1/2 ground for my rating. Now weather impeded the flight portion, but my oral definitely deflated my confidence. I hope that the flight goes well. I felt I prepared very well for the exam, this feedback makes me feel that I am just skimming by as a pilot, which I do not want in any way.
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4.5hrs is on the long side, but don't feel too badly. A lot of examiners like to teach, and all of them (should) know that you still have a lot to learn, even after passing the ride. perhaps the examiner already figured the wx would be bad, and decided to spend some time with you.

You have realized that you have much to learn. That's a good thing. Much better than the guy who had a 30 minute oral and thinks he's now ready to go out and shoot a partial panel ILS down to mins.
 
I am just confused because the examiner even told me that other DPE's probably would have failed me at an earlier point, that is what makes me feel uneasy about the whole thing. At the end she asked how I felt the oral exam went on a scale from 1 to 10, I told her about an 8. She then looked at me with a smirk and said, how about a strong 5. Then followed by saying average to below average in some areas. If she felt I did that bad, why did she pass me?? Also, correct my math here if I am wrong...but a 5 out of 10 seems to be a 50%, I have never heard of a 50% being a passable percentage at any level of examination....

I had a rough time with weather charts, granted there were no charts in front of me. She was asking me questions about them randomly, at which point I started getting confused. She also did not like the fact that I did not know the exact reg for flying into known or forecast icing conditions, even though I told her that you should not fly into forecast even if no pireps or known conditions are current. I started the exam by saying that the planned Cross Country would be a NoGo based on current freezing levels and the amount of moisture in the area, yet when we were talking about the alternate I chose she grilled me on flying through forecast icing to get to more clear weather east of Seattle. Now I felt that was wierd, since I already told her the flight was not safe from the get go, which indicated most of the plan would be discussed in a hypothetical sense supposing weather was better than currently forecast. Now these are not excuses for the way the oral went, I do not blame anyone other than myself for "barely" passing, maybe I could have studied harder, just not sure how that is possible since all I do is study anymore. I even cut down my work schedule to 25 hrs during a three day period to have four days a week to hit the books.

Now I am pretty nervous for this flight as I am usually very strong on the oral portions (at least I was for every stage check and PPL Check Ride). I told her at the end of the exam that although I may have missed a few things and did not know everything she asked me on the ground, I know where to find the answers and will continue to study to fill the gaps in my current knowledge base.

Thanks for all the reply's as I was pretty low last night and quite frankly did not feel like even scheduling the flight portion as my self confidence was in the dirt. I woke up today with a fresh attitude about it and will be trying to schedule it as soon as possible.
 
rframe said:
I think it's kinda funny that people complain about a lot of inferior pilots in the "ranks" and then when an examiner does an in-depth exam he's insulted.

I had a Private student do a 4 hour oral, and the examiner said he did excellent and was one of the best prepared candidates he'd tested. I had no problem with that.
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The role of a flight instructor is to teach and make sure that all their students have superior levels of knowledge. Flight instructors, fundamentally, make pilots, not examiners.

The role of an examiner is to check the work of the instructor, nothing more. You don't need 4.5 hours to determine if an applicant meets the standards for the rating, and frankly it's obvious within about the first 30 seconds if somebody is prepared or not.

And this is not just aviation, this is everything in life. The multiple choice section of the bar exam is 200 questions, given over the course of two sessions lasting three hours each. The next day is an essay portion.

So you have 12 hours total to show that you know everything about the law for your jurisdiction, this after 3 years of continuous study. If the state bar can test lawyers over what they've studied for 3 years in a period of 12 hours, then any examiner should be able to do an oral exam in 1-2 hours for a course that may have only taken 30 days.
 
jtrain609 said:
...then any examiner should be able to do an oral exam in 1-2 hours...
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Yes with simplistic closed-ended questions like "show me a cold front on this prog chart" and "what's the oil capacity of your engine" then it's very easy to blow through an oral in 60 minutes.

If instead they use a more discussion and scenario based exam that might actually reveal the candidate's understanding of the material, then that takes much more time, like "based on this prog chart and a planned route of flight from x to y, what typical weather conditions might we find through the course of the flight", etc.
 
rframe said:
If instead they use a more discussion and scenario based exam that might actually reveal the candidate's understanding of the material, then that takes much more time, like "based on this prog chart and a planned route of flight from x to y, what typical weather conditions might we find through the course of the flight", etc.
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Even with those questions, it shouldn't take four hours.
 
JDean3204 said:
I am just confused because the examiner even told me that other DPE's probably would have failed me at an earlier point, that is what makes me feel uneasy about the whole thing. At the end she asked how I felt the oral exam went on a scale from 1 to 10, I told her about an 8. She then looked at me with a smirk and said, how about a strong 5. Then followed by saying average to below average in some areas. If she felt I did that bad, why did she pass me?? Also, correct my math here if I am wrong...but a 5 out of 10 seems to be a 50%, I have never heard of a 50% being a passable percentage at any level of examination....

I had a rough time with weather charts, granted there were no charts in front of me. She was asking me questions about them randomly, at which point I started getting confused. She also did not like the fact that I did not know the exact reg for flying into known or forecast icing conditions, even though I told her that you should not fly into forecast even if no pireps or known conditions are current. I started the exam by saying that the planned Cross Country would be a NoGo based on current freezing levels and the amount of moisture in the area, yet when we were talking about the alternate I chose she grilled me on flying through forecast icing to get to more clear weather east of Seattle. Now I felt that was wierd, since I already told her the flight was not safe from the get go, which indicated most of the plan would be discussed in a hypothetical sense supposing weather was better than currently forecast. Now these are not excuses for the way the oral went, I do not blame anyone other than myself for "barely" passing, maybe I could have studied harder, just not sure how that is possible since all I do is study anymore. I even cut down my work schedule to 25 hrs during a three day period to have four days a week to hit the books.

Now I am pretty nervous for this flight as I am usually very strong on the oral portions (at least I was for every stage check and PPL Check Ride). I told her at the end of the exam that although I may have missed a few things and did not know everything she asked me on the ground, I know where to find the answers and will continue to study to fill the gaps in my current knowledge base.

Thanks for all the reply's as I was pretty low last night and quite frankly did not feel like even scheduling the flight portion as my self confidence was in the dirt. I woke up today with a fresh attitude about it and will be trying to schedule it as soon as possible.
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I'm going to respond in depth to this, but before I do, how old are you?
 
In my CFI class one of the students had an 8.... yes... EIGHT hour oral for CFI and failed it. It was not uncommom for guys in my class to get 4-6 hour orals. (I got lucky and was done in about 3 no problems) I agree though if you cant tell if this person knows their stuff after a couple hours then you shouldnt be a DPE. After 8 hours I think I would be so mentally drained I couldnt tell you what color the sky is.
 
Orals are such a crap shoot. PP, IR, and CS were bears for me. I actually failed my private oral. Multi and ATP were a breeze. Recent type rating oral wasn't too bad. Most of my tech interviews for jobs left me feeling embarassed, but I always got the job offer (except at Commutair almost 9 years ago, though I think that was the HR interview that I screwed up).

In any case, I've always felt that recalling specific knowledge in a testing or interview situation is very difficult because you have an expectation of what they want you to know, and they often have a different agenda. I've been in so many situations were the examiner asks a question that I know, I give my answer which is technically correct, and they have to keep modifying the question and reasking it until they hear the answer that THEY had in their minds.

Also, in my personal experience, the stuff you get asked in an oral is at least 60% trivia that you will never need to know off the top of your head in real world flying (i.e., how many of those answers would you verify in a book? Like say, tire pressure.) if you got 50% of your answers right in a 4 hour oral, you're probably clever enough to survive 99% of flying.
 
I remember I got fed up during my multi oral and said "I don't care" to something trivial. :) That didn't go down very well. I still passed, but it was uncomfortable the rest of the time.
 
Reason I asked about your age is that I think some DPEs are concerned about giving an 18 or 19 year old their IFR ticket, but with you being 24 don't think that played into it.

With that said, don't sweat it.

I had a rough time with weather charts, granted there were no charts in front of me. She was asking me questions about them randomly, at which point I started getting confused.
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With an aircraft type rating, I believe a cockpit diagram must be made available for the applicant. That is in the PTS standards. You *may* want to check, but if the DPE is asking you questions about a weather chart, they *may* need to make the weather charts available. Once again, I would check to see what the PTS says about that. I could see how one can get confused if you don't have it in front of you.

She also did not like the fact that I did not know the exact reg for flying into known or forecast icing conditions, even though I told her that you should not fly into forecast even if no pireps or known conditions are current.
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Who cares about the EXACT reg, the bottom line is you know to not fly in those conditions. For example, if one went for a Commercial Check Ride at a Part 61 school and the DPE asks if with a Commercial Ticket one can fly someone from a Part 61 Flight school without a Part 135 Certificate to XYZ for pay and they say 'no', that is an understanding of the rules which is important and they can all move on.

Now I am pretty nervous for this flight as I am usually very strong on the oral portions (at least I was for every stage check and PPL Check Ride). I told her at the end of the exam that although I may have missed a few things and did not know everything she asked me on the ground, I know where to find the answers and will continue to study to fill the gaps in my current knowledge base.
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Great attitude to have, just keep trying to get better and put this behind you.
 
Dean,

The IFR flight is very straight forward. The grey areas in the instrument world are much smaller than the VFR world, making it a lot harder to fail for BS reasons. Consider this insurance against a flaky examiner.

Judging purely from what you posted, it sounds like the examiner could have done a better job asking more relevant questions as opposed to the gotcha-game trivia. The cross country example in which you clearly stated at the get-go that this flight wouldn't happen and then her giving you a hard time because you would have to fly through icing to get to your alternate (im assuming there was no way to fly to any other alternate while avoiding the ice) seems like she is doing the "run down the list and check off the boxes" type checkride. While this makes for a difficult oral, it usually makes for an easy flight. Who knows, maybe she is new and still getting her DPE "legs" and can't quite walk on her own yet.

Either way, you passed the oral so you win. In this business you really have to let stuff roll off your shoulder because, unfortunately, these mini-political games are commonplace. Work hard, know that you put in the extra effort to be safe, and don't let stupid stuff that really shouldn't happen in the first place bother you!
 
I just took my Instrument EOC yesterday, and I had the exact same response to the icing question, I wasn't 100% sure on the actual reg, but was certain that I would not fly into them. Examiner seemed satisfied but still probed me until I somewhat guessed the reg, which I suppose was the correct answer! Unfortunately, by the time we were done it was dusk, but decided to go anyway. That combined with some odd vectors from ATC was enough of a distraction that I went full scale on my first approach... Not blaming anyone but myself, I'd done that approach many many times in the past week (including my stage check) well within standards. Guess nerve/slight doubt in myself got the best of me.
 
Don't let your experience with your examiner psych you out. Sometimes we get examiners that are easy going, and some that are jerks. Just devote all of your attention to the flight now. When you pass, don't read to much in what the examiner says about your performance. When she critiques you, listen with an open mind and you will learn a lot. Afterwards, when you move on with your training for your next certificate you can forget about the experience. In the end you passed, and that's all that matters.
 
Weather charts always tripped me up. Especially in recent years where I had been deriving weather information from a few [approved] sources. Then, ending up at either an interview or on a company checkride, the interviewer/check airman would pull out some obscure weather chart that I couldn't translate to save my life. Operational knowledge versus the knowledge they expect you to have for an oral is hilarious distant. For me at least.
 
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