A Pilot I Am! Passed Checkride

I passed, its done, its over, and I can fly whenever and whereever. A sense of freedom. A sense of pride in finishing something that was hard. A sense of elitism , in joining a club of only 1%. And relief that I won't have to review the same material I've been looking at since last November, I can finally move on.

From 8:30 AM until 1:30 we covered both oral and flight tests. The oral was easy. The flight test was not. Charlie Mc Dougle, the FAA checkride pilot was very forgiving on many maneuvers. Ceilings were 1500' to 2000', so it was tricky staying VFR and leaving room for maneuvers. Clock malfunctioned, to complicate pilotage, and had trouble IDn CRP VOR.

We did fly the first two legs of cross country then he diverted me to nearest airport, right after he killed my GPS. I had not taken out the next sectional since I didn't think we would go this far north; and we were off Brownsville sect. So I'm looking for alternate without GPS or sectional. Fortunately I spotted RKP and recognized it since Tres and I had flown there to checkout the gliders one day.

He pulled throttle for emergency landing, I first selected a highway, but diverted , wires, then a dirt road, no too narrow, then a ROW I which he seemed to accept.

Of all maneuvers, I had hardest time with slow flight, turbulence made it difficult to stay on stall edge. Actually my stalls weren't very good either.

The big surprise was how well I did under the hood, even in unusual attitudes, which I was dreading.

Finally back to CRP for landings. Only did three! I shined on a short field when I was high and fast on short and used a slip to get on slope - he really liked that.

Then we taxied in, and it was over, at least my PPL . Now to begin instrument study to be ready for AFIT in September.