It's taken a while wrap everything up, but as of yesterday, I scared an examiner enough to get him to punch a hole in my certificate.
I started in January, taking a couple weeks off work to try to fast-track my way through the instrument rating. Everything was going smoothly other than being able to schedule progress check instructors. Once I went back to work, schedule became an issue (surprise surprise), so finishing up the last few flights and the progress check took a while. To add a cherry on top, I had been working on the rating in an Arrow, and both Arrow's went down for maintenance before my checkride. So it was back to the glass in a G1000 C172 for the ride. Fortunately, I remembered which buttons did what (for the most part).
The knowledge portion was last Tuesday, with the flight deferred due to thunderstorms. About 3 hours of reviewing paperwork and going over ground. Nothing here was surprising. Lessons learned? Do whatever you need to do to learn the material. Period. I had my fiance asking me questions on a daily basis out of the Instrument Oral Exam Guide almost every day leading up to the progress checks and checkride. Youtube has some great videos on checkride prep as well. And of course, POA gave me plenty of opportunity to fact-check.
The flight was yesterday, and I almost canceled due to a not-so-great looking forecast. Basically every source I was looking at said that it would start to storm within 30 minutes of our start time. I discussed this with the examiner and told him that since he was my eyes, any indication he saw of a building storm should be communicated to me and we would stop the flight at that time. He agreed, so off we went. I'm not going to give a full play-by-play, but I will share my lessons learned in case it can help anyone.
1. Remember that you're PIC. The examiner tried to get me to copy a clearance while taxing. My response was "stand-by. I'd like to copy my clearance at the hold short line." That's the correct answer.
2. Remember your stand-by instruments if you have them. I forgot to check my stand-by attitude indicator while taxing.
3. Life is easier when you know your power settings. I wish I had at least one more flight getting my power settings nailed down in this plane before I went up for the checkride. I managed everything well enough, but it was a lot more work to be chasing a desired airspeed or vertical speed than it should have been. In the Arrow, you probably could cover up the manifold pressure and RPMs and I would still get the power settings that I wanted the first try.
4. Know your autopilot. One approach was shot from initial fix through the missed approach procedure 100% by autopilot. MDA = 640' MSL. My problem? I could dial the altitude down to 700' or 600'. I did not know how to get the autopilot down to 640'. Like the power settings, I think this could have been avoided if I were more familiar with the plane. The Arrow's both had single-axis autopilots vs the two-axis autopilot this particular 172 had.
tl;dr: I'm legal to fly in less than awesome weather!
I started in January, taking a couple weeks off work to try to fast-track my way through the instrument rating. Everything was going smoothly other than being able to schedule progress check instructors. Once I went back to work, schedule became an issue (surprise surprise), so finishing up the last few flights and the progress check took a while. To add a cherry on top, I had been working on the rating in an Arrow, and both Arrow's went down for maintenance before my checkride. So it was back to the glass in a G1000 C172 for the ride. Fortunately, I remembered which buttons did what (for the most part).
The knowledge portion was last Tuesday, with the flight deferred due to thunderstorms. About 3 hours of reviewing paperwork and going over ground. Nothing here was surprising. Lessons learned? Do whatever you need to do to learn the material. Period. I had my fiance asking me questions on a daily basis out of the Instrument Oral Exam Guide almost every day leading up to the progress checks and checkride. Youtube has some great videos on checkride prep as well. And of course, POA gave me plenty of opportunity to fact-check.
The flight was yesterday, and I almost canceled due to a not-so-great looking forecast. Basically every source I was looking at said that it would start to storm within 30 minutes of our start time. I discussed this with the examiner and told him that since he was my eyes, any indication he saw of a building storm should be communicated to me and we would stop the flight at that time. He agreed, so off we went. I'm not going to give a full play-by-play, but I will share my lessons learned in case it can help anyone.
1. Remember that you're PIC. The examiner tried to get me to copy a clearance while taxing. My response was "stand-by. I'd like to copy my clearance at the hold short line." That's the correct answer.
2. Remember your stand-by instruments if you have them. I forgot to check my stand-by attitude indicator while taxing.
3. Life is easier when you know your power settings. I wish I had at least one more flight getting my power settings nailed down in this plane before I went up for the checkride. I managed everything well enough, but it was a lot more work to be chasing a desired airspeed or vertical speed than it should have been. In the Arrow, you probably could cover up the manifold pressure and RPMs and I would still get the power settings that I wanted the first try.
4. Know your autopilot. One approach was shot from initial fix through the missed approach procedure 100% by autopilot. MDA = 640' MSL. My problem? I could dial the altitude down to 700' or 600'. I did not know how to get the autopilot down to 640'. Like the power settings, I think this could have been avoided if I were more familiar with the plane. The Arrow's both had single-axis autopilots vs the two-axis autopilot this particular 172 had.
tl;dr: I'm legal to fly in less than awesome weather!
Now as others have said, go get that thing wet...
