- Did he at any point do the "you lost your engine" throttle back to idle on you? Or did he say "you have a fire!"? I.e. what sort of emergency was the simulation? My instructor insists I keep my hand on the throttle in the pattern, as he said the DPE will sometimes pull it on crosswind if you aren't on it.
He did "you have an engine fire", so obviously, that also counts as an engine loss because you want to stop introducing gas into a flaming engine (at least
I do). So it was the same essentially, except since it was a "fire" I had to get the nose down and the speed up, instead of going straight to best glide (which i did after he said "fire is out, what do you do now?). I definitely keep my hand on the throttle in the pattern. I don't know if this was just
this DPE, (YMMV) but he told me everything we would do beforehand. I was ready for all sorts of tricks and surprises, but that wasn't really how he ran the checkride. If you know what to do during an engine fire or power loss, you'll be fine. That's all they want to know, I'm pretty sure, that you know how to try to put it out, and that you can get to best glide and find a field.
- Checklist use: I have been told (instructor and others) that use of checklists is very encouraged on the check ride. Preflight, startup, taxi, take off (with different ones for short/soft/etc), cruise, pre-landing, landing, shutdown. I have all of these and plan to use them. Did you? Just wondering if I'm being excessive.
Don't you use checklists anyway? Aren't all your lists on the same checklist? I only had to reach for one thing, and everything was on there. They are there, use them, most of them take 2 seconds anyway. I know it
seems like a lot, I felt the same way. But once you reach cruise, the cruise checklist is literally like pitch, power, trim, or something similar, which you're doing (or already have done) anyway.
- Short field - Did you do this at an actual short field? I can nail those, I have more trouble with the "imagine a tree on the numbers of this 11,000' x 500' wide class-c runway and land short beyond it". Give me a real 2500' field with a real treeline any day.
We did all the landings at FRG, same place we departed from, which is
definitely not a short field. He just told me, "short field, the 1,000-footers are your spot", so I aimed 2 stripes before them (if I remember correctly), and as long as you land on the spot or up to 200 feet after, you're good. He didn't simulate any obstacles or anything. I was nervous about it but did fine. Just don't force it, be poised to go around. It'll show good judgement if you're gonna miss it by 400 ft and you go around.
Read the ACS like a Bible, it's all in there, and Short Field Landings don't say anything about simulating obstacles. Once I really dove into the ACS, it calmed me down some because the standards are fairly simple. (Ex: my instructor was making me hit a spot+200ft on short
and soft field, but the soft field landing doesn't have that distance as part of the standard, so it doesn't matter on the checkride.)
Finally - how long from start to finish was the oral portion and the flight? I have to fly to my exam (~30min) and home, wondering how long a day to expect.
Let's see. The DPE showed up around 9:30 AM. The paperwork took a little while. The oral was probably a little over 30 minutes, maybe 40. They get the idea pretty quickly if you know your stuff, and they won't drag it out unnecessarily. We had to pile in a car and drive to the ramp, then preflight, taxi out, wait for 3-4 landings/departures because FRG sucks, and we got off the ground at 11:15 (mark your takeoff time, so you can do the dead-reckoning stuff to your first waypoint). The flight itself came out to 1.2. Like I said, he prided himself on efficiency, but honestly, it'll be shorter than a full checkride prep lesson because you're only doing things once. I sent my wife the photo of me holding my signed certificate by 1:00 PM.
Hope that helps. there's a huge YMMV in there, because DPEs are different. But I dont think they can be
that different, as they all operate from the same strict playbook.