I might as well throw in a couple details about the checkride. It was a crazy last month for me. The relief when I passed was so immense because my CFI and I crammed a busy months schedule into 2 weeks.
The plane was down a couple times, my CFI had to leave for the airlines and he almost passed me off to another CFI. He ended up signing me off just before he left.
It was a weird feeling. My CFI had been there every step of the way, but now he was off training for some jet and here I was finishing what we had started. It felt like I had to grow up and get on with it, like I could now only rely on myself and what my CFI had instilled in me. It was that same feeling you had when you first soloed, or first real solo away from the airport, or your first XC.
The day before the checkride, I was the only one at the school. I loaded up the plane with 3 X 50lb bags of rock salt (the DPE weighs 150lbs). Made 20 landings to a full stop, and practiced maneuvers for a bit.
The checkride date was always tentative, especially with the compressed timeline. I could have rescheduled and delayed. While I wanted to be as prepared as possible, I also just wanted to get it over with at this point. So pass or fail, I was gonna be taking the test.
Went home and studied the oral guide until I fell asleep at 1 am. Woke up at 3:45 am to get the winds and prepare for my 8am checkride. Not ideal for performance but I did my best.
The checkride was a great experience. The DPE put me at ease with his joking nature and he provided a different perspective on emergencies and equipment failure. I was not perfect during the practical but I had survived it up to that point. There was just one last thing. The dreaded short field landing back at my home drome. Why the 20 full stop landings the day before? And the 2.5 hours of pure pattern work the time before that? It was mostly all short field practice. I could average 8 out 10 within PTS. Mostly the first ones sucked. It was my bogey technique.
I was hoping he would skip that part but no, the only thing standing between me and my ticket was 1 landing. I came in as stabilized as I could, 54 KIAS, keeping the same sight picture and moved my aiming point 50 ft further down the runway, thinking it was better to land long than short. Runway expansion, flare ....and greased the landing right at 100 feet past the "threshold". Big sigh....After a quick debrief, we shook hands as fellow pilots.
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I got it from my car and motorcycle forum days.
