January 19th 1991, I was ready to take my private pilot license check ride. It's taken about five months and seventy three hours to get here. Not too bad. It would have taken years back home.
I had an early morning appointment with the chief flight instructor who was also an FAA examiner. I was a little nervous, but the examiner was a cool guy and had a way of making me feel comfortable. It was overcast that day but the ceiling was high and it wasn't raining. That was good because the sun wouldn't get in my eyes while doing maneuvers. My biggest weakness was still VOR tracking and interception so I was worried about that. The examiner had me plot a cross country flight to a destination that I wasn't familiar with, but I finished in short time.
We went to the plane without him looking over my cross country. He had me do a short field takeoff which I had no trouble with. He watched as I began flying to the destination airport. That's when he started looking at my flight log. After a while (when he could see that I was staying on course and timing and marking my checkpoints) he told me to fly to the practice area. We did the regular maneuvers, but I had a little trouble maintaining altitude while doing turns around a point. I asked if I could try again. He said fine, and I did a pretty good job this time.
We didn't do everything that was written in the standards which led me to believe that the examiners use their own discretion while conducting a check ride. He did have me calculate fuel burn and groundspeed which threw me off a bit. Trying to fly the plane and use a Manuel E6B was a little confusing but I pulled through. When it came time to do some VOR work, I had to do it twice but I pulled through. That was my biggest worry. We went back to the airport and did a soft field landing.
Time for the oral. I had my FAR/AIM in hand. He started looking at the trip that I plotted on the sectional along with my performance and weight and balance calculations and started asking questions. Most questions were about basic reading of the sectional. Then he started asking about FAR's. After that he threw me for a loop. He pointed to a spot on the sectional and asked, "What if you were flying at night and lost power here, where would you choose a landing spot? In a lighted area or a dark area"? I said a lighted area. Wrong! You would go to a dark area because there would be a less likelihood of power lines there. After explaining that and telling me where my weak points were he passed me. He said, "Congratulations, you're a private pilot now".
Time to start a new chapter in my aviation flight training. Training for my commercial.
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