Checkride and THE Handshake!
Yeah! Today I passed my PPL checkride. What a great feeling - and also a great relief.
Of course there's a story to go along with this...
Last night I felt 100% not ready for the ride. I had an absolutely horrid day flying my "test" checkride. It was as if I'd forgotten how to fly the damn thing. I couldn't hold an altitude to save my life, there were updrafts screwing everything up. I was trying some short field landings and absolutely busting all of them. I was petrified! My wife picked me up from the airport last night and I just looked at her and said, "I'm going to fail this thing tomorrow." Of course - any of you out there with awesome wives understand that she did nothing but try to boost my morale for the rest of the evening. Its great to have a rockin' wife.
Last night I started working on the flight plan my examiner had prescribed. After the experience earlier in the day, and being extremely tired, I seriously thought I wasn't going to get it done. He actually gave me a pretty complicated plan with stops at different airports picking up various passengers and luggage. So I had to figure out what fuel to carry from one place to the other in order to be within Weight & Balance. Once that was done (about 11:00pm) I needed to spend some time reviewing the electrical and fuel systems, as well as review weather again and airspace classes. Then, when I was filling in my 8710 I realized that a mistake in my logbook had me 1.5 hours short of the required 40. I finally got to bed at 1:30, and then woke up promptly at 3:00am to get out to the airport in time for another 1.5 hours flying.
The Ride: The examiner was a great gentleman who immediately put me at ease. He asked me tough questions, and at the same time went off the record from time to time explaining more in depth some of the reasons for answers I knew, but couldn't explain in depth. Its always great to talk to a pilot who's been flying since WAY before I was even born. After getting through the oral part, he sent me out to pre-flight and get ready for the ride. He spent probably 15 minutes after my pre-flight going over parts of the plane and designs of the plane that aren't covered in any book I studied, either. It was like I was back in ground school - and I thought it was great.
We took off and started into the pre-described flight plan. Almost immediately he had me change altitude and divert to another airport. Although it was the first time I had done so in the plane, he also had me literally draw a plotter line on the sectional to our new destination, as well as measure it out and use the E6B for the wind adjusted course. All the while I was thinking how happy I was the checkride was going on at 8am and not in the afternoon updrafts! We transitioned into performance maneuvers, stalls and the 45deg'ers. Then we did slow flight, emergency procedures, ground reference maneuvers, and finally landings. All the while he was talking to me, asking me questions and giving input. We were in the air for almost 1 1/2 hours, and it seemed like 15 minutes.
After doing the final soft field landing, he had me transition into a normal takeoff, then said to let tower know we were heading in for a full stop with the next landing. I tried not to start grinning, but you know - it was pretty hard. We landed, taxied onto the ramp. And then the handshake. You know - I get a little choked up thinking about it. There will be many more checkrides in my future. But this one, for me, is pretty special. I can fly.
Thanks for reading!
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