I made myself more nervous than I needed to be. I was probably more concerned about forgetting something for the oral and flight planning than my flying. Although I was a little concerned about the flying because, due to weather and a trip to Denver for a wedding, I had only flown twice in the preceding two and a half weeks.
I started doing things early that morning so that I wasn't in a hurry, which turned out to be a good thing because, I had to get fuel for the airplane and the oil was at the bare minimum so the maintenance guy had to go back and get a quart of oil, as well. We flew over to the DPE's home airport so we got there early to do some T&Gs. It was probably the worst landings that I had done since my first solo. I don't know if it was nervousness, an extra 200ft in TPA than at my home airport or what. He was running a little late getting there from church so I just tried to relax a little. By the time I got through the paperwork and oral, I must have gotten more in the groove because we started off with short and soft field takeoffs and landings which went much better. My instructor thought that that was the first time he ever heard of starting off with those. After that, we started the XC portion and diversion which was pretty uneventful. One thing that I will say, is that during the flight, and pre-flight for that matter, I was telling him what I was doing, so that he understood that my actions were purposeful, attentive and decisive as a PIC. I didn't wait for him to ask questions about what I was doing.
Then we went into the maneuver portion. One thing that I was concerned about was that I had previously been dropping my right wing during power on stalls even when the ball was centered. I came across this page just before my previous practice flight but only got one chance to try it out. The author doesn't say what type of airplane, but the logic of it makes sense and it worked on that previous practice flight and on the check ride in the C-172 that I've been using. The DPE didn't say much except when he wanted me to do something specific, but I actually heard him mutter, "good" after the recovery from that power on stall.
http://www.mountainflying.com/Pages/mountain-flying/stalls_revisited.html
On the turns around a point, he seemed kind of irritated that I was doing them too slow. I was doing them at about traffic pattern rpm, maybe I was a little slow. Anyway, he wanted them done faster. So I picked up the pace and did fine with that. Just don't get rattled and be your own enemy. Be prepared to recover from an unusual attitude. I'm sure I'm leaving some things out, but of course, the whole time, I'm wondering what his perception is of everything. After all was done he just said "Well, you passed." I said, "okay, great." But in that moment, in my head, I'm screaming "YES!"
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