denverpilot
Tied Down
Agreed. It's only the slow flight spec that's supposed to be done above the horn speed. The stalls... I think that examiner has mixed up the slow flight and stall criteria in his head. But who knows. We keep hearing real world stories of this confusion from random places, and it's silly. The ACS does NOT say to avoid the horn for the actual stalls. Supposedly there IS some guidance for examiners that a stall horn may not go "unrecognized" but that's easy to train to -- just verbally acknowledge it when it goes off.
I'll say this also (and I know the FSDO that monitors that examiner may not like it) but there's another piece to this too, the examiner may have simply been very comfortable with your aircraft setup and control working up to the stalls and was just hurrying things along a bit.
From the purely "letter of the law" standpoint, a little iffy. From the "realistic checkride" standpoint, I'm sure it happens. "Yeah, this guy/gal knows this airplane and I have no concerns they get it as far as aircraft control and stalls go..."
One examiner told me (and he's a severe stickler for the letter of the law but also explains things and expects a higher standard of pilots than anything FAA expects of checkrides) that he can tell if a candidate is exercising good judgement and aircraft control in the first few minutes of any flight. He says it's usually pretty obvious when someone isn't prepared for either the oral or flying the aircraft really early on. Doesn't take long to see if someone isn't really ready for a ride. When they're not, they usually bust something early on. He's more surprised when someone who is doing really well all of a sudden busts a maneuver out of the blue. The norm is, they went flying all that well right from the start of taxi, let alone in the air.
So there ya go. Some thoughts. For whatever they're worth. And again, congrats!!!
