Checkride Reflections June 3, 2002
© Louise Parsons
My private pilot checkride was altogether a very positive experience, though it did not go perfectly. We are earlybirds anyway, but I was so excited and full of anticipation that I awoke before 4:00 that morning! Our cats could feel my "edge" and were all over me with purrs and persistent rubbing to go-ahead and get up. I checked my "checkride checklists" very carefully to make sure that no piece of gear or paperwork would be forgotten. Then I checked the weather at my favorite sites. What a mixture of emotions: anxiety to do well, joy that the big day was finally here, and determination to do my best. Our (if I may presume to use the possessive!) DE has a very genteel and calm manner. That helps tremendously to overcome natural jitters. So I can't blame him a bit for my feeling somewhat nervous. I waited for the DE on the front porch of AVIA at Corvallis. The folks there were so friendly and calm. They all wished me the best, even though I wasn't one of "their" students. I am not usually superstitious, but I couldn't help thinking, "Well, I did fine on my written test here, so this place has some good vibes!" We had all agreed that the best place for the oral portion would be right in our hangar. I had brought some small tables and chairs, and we had installed both a bulletin board and a white board.
To my relief, the oral test was actually enjoyable. At times I almost forgot that I was going through an exam. Yet Lee, the DE, certainly asked me endless questions. His manner was very to-the-point, yet quite calm and refined. There was even a spot of humor. At the conclusion of the oral portion of my checkride, Lee said, "Now I would like to walk around your plane with you for a few moments and ask you a few more questions before we fly". He first pointed to the ADF antenna --stretching nearly the entire length of the plane --and said, "So....what is this big wire for? Is that holding your plane together?".
In flying, my weak areas were my hood work and landings. Things went fine under the hood until, while I was still climbing and turning to a heading, he told me to track the Eugene VOR. It was then that I did something that I truly should have known better. For a moment I got excessively focused on setting up the VOR and neglected the precision of flying. I was taught well to keep up the scan and the flying -so my instructor is not to blame. As the classic children's book Tootle says, "Stay on the rails, no matter what". Fortunately for me that escapade was not enough to degrade my flying to the point of failure. The experience at least served to drive home that important lesson; aviate, navigate, communicate, --in that order. More hood work and more refinement is a nice goal to be sure.
Don't we all dream of treating our passengers to perfect landings? My landings had been quite good in practice, but this is an area where my performance anxiety came out. Fortunately again, not so bad as to fail, but just plain disappointing. One can never get too much landing practice, that's for sure. As the Kings point out in their video on landing practice, even a high-time pilot only has a small portion of time spent in flaring. But we all want to do better than merely safe landings. There is nothing more blissful than settling our precious machine down as gently as she always deserves. I wanted to do this on my checkride so much, but my first couple of landings were clumsy, even though they were perfectly safe and reasonably gentle ones. My final one, a short field one, was my best landing.
The rest of the checkride was a very positive experience. The maneuvers, slow flight, stalls, emergency procedures, etc. went pretty well. It feels so nice when you hit your own little turbulence on those steep turns. I remembered ruefully struggling with them. Then in transitioning over to the C-172, it seemed as though I was starting all over again with steep turns. The DE said very little during the flight, but his manner was again pleasant. He did not distract me with commentary --either criticism or praise. The few deliberate distractions were subtle and thus made realistic by their very subtlety. My first passenger was indeed a fellow of subtlety and considerable refinement. It was only after the flight was over and the "butterflies" remained in my stomach that it suddenly hit me: I was genuinely hungry! The exam had begun in the mid-morning. I did not even begin the flight portion until sometime around noon. Lunch is my most difficult meal to skip or postpone anyway because we eat a very early breakfast. Thus a tip for those of you about to take any checkride. If it looks as though the exam could run into mealtime, take along a snack to eat between the oral exam and your flying. EATINGor ENERGY is that big "E" in the "I'M SAFE" acronym preflight check! A handful of trail food or some nuts would have done me just fine. Important lesson learned experientally! Not that I think I was ever unsafe, because I did eat a good "power-breakfast". But it would just have been a little nicer.
My husband was hungry too. He was waiting at the taxiway near our hangar when we returned from the checkride. He was very anxious and excited. I had to gently, but firmly, chase him away until the checkride was ~completely finished. At the conclusion, the DE gave me a brief, but helpful critique, mentioning the hood-work escapade and my soft-field landing that was not especially soft. In congratulating me, he encouraged me to maintain and enhance my skills with frequent flying. Only when he handed me my temporary certificate and made an entry in my log book did I start to feel the fullest sense of joy. Afterwards I flew Ty to Annie's at Independence! But alas, both of us had forgotten that it is completely closed on Monday's. This brought a laugh. One day more than a year before, Ty had proudly flown me there, in anticipation of our first "hundred-dollar hamburger". But we discovered that day, to our great surprise, that Annie's is only open for breakfast and lunch. On Ty's checkride day, we had gotten there too late in the day! We flew on to Salem and celebrated with a late lunch at Roscoe's.
Having passed my checkride, I don't have any profound inside track or unique tips to offer. The more practiced you are with your knowledge and skills, the more prepared you will be mentally as well. In flying there is no such thing as too much practice. No matter what your age or circumstances, the more you fly the better and safer you will be. Based on the education portion of my background I will offer some general suggestions:
Try as much as possible to learn things in a realistic context.
Don't forget to enjoy yourself sometimes. Though you want to work hard,
it need not be drudgery. Allow yourself to be inspired. Watch some good
flight videos. (I watched all that I could get my hands on!) Read some
biographies of pilots. We both enjoy cuddling up with aviation classics such as
"Glacier Pilot". Even after forty years, I still vividly remember a
wonderful film about the weather entitled "Unchained Goddess" and
wish it were available to student pilots.
Listening is a very important skill. Like all others it can be actively
practiced. We err when we think of listening as a passive skill. It is anything
but!
An organized cockpit is always important. I like those small
spiral-bound checklists and have customized one to our plane and situation. On
the back side of the pages, I have placed stickers with additional items.
Color-coded items and separated portions help me to maintain a flow of events
and responses. If you tend to get disoriented while taxiing at a larger
airport, enlarge slightly the airport diagram from the directory and place it
in a plastic sleeve as part of your flight planning and preparation. --Note
Even if your eyes are quite good, even slightly larger print will minimize
heads-down time! You can highlight and study critical information such as
TPA, right-or left pattern, etc. As FAA safety brochures suggest, you can
figure out headings on taxiways, then peek at your compass or gyro to help out.
I have placed oft-used pages from the directory in one of those inexpensive
clear plastic chart wallets. When you can't stack frequencies ahead of time,
you can write them (ATIS, Approach, Tower, Ground, etc.) on a sticky-note.
Visualize yourself doing things successfully. We also err when we tend
to think that attitudes are inborn rather than learned. Cultivate a calm, yet
alert, state of mind. As Richard Collins says, "Cool is what does it"
As a women in middle age, there was much about learning to fly that was well
outside my realm of experience, but mental preparations and attitudes learned
from my experiences in mountaineering and championship track transfer well to
flying. You must look carefully within for your strengths and at the same time
be honest about your weaknesses.
If you are in a difficult instructional situation for any reason, you must do
something about it. There is little room for "emotional baggage"
--belonging to either student or instructor --in the flight training situation.
I have read some really sad stories lately about students enduring poor
instruction. The most common complaints seem to spring from abusive and/or
neglectful behaviors on the part of either student or instructor. Both student
and instructor have duties towards each other. The student needs to have a
healthy attitude about criticism. It is necessary for any instructor to
relentlessly point out errors that you make. In our culture, and especially in
our larger educational institutions, we are often protected from this type of
pointed criticism, so take care not to take it too personally. If this is your
first experience with the tutorial style of instruction, the direct forms of
criticism may make you uncomfortable for a time. But such criticism should
never take the form of a personal attack and it should be specific to be
useful. Name-calling, put-downs, or other forms of abuse merely get in the way
of learning. Everyone occasionally has a grumpy or "off" day, but if
a pattern of abuse develops, do something about it. Speak up and
be specific. If you are chastised merely for speaking out, that is a sure sign
of bad faith and you well might need to seek instruction elsewhere. Even when
you are a student, you are also a client or customer seeking and paying for a
licensed professional service. There are mostly devoted and wonderful
instructors out there. If by chance you are feeling "caught" in an
undesirable situation, do not allow the relatively rare "rotten
apple" to define who you are either as a pilot or as a person.
Some promises that I made to myself the day I passed.
To continue to practice maneuvers. It would be fun sometime to learn some new ones too.
To continue to expand my skills and to aim to upgrade --even if the weather is gloomy or I don't have time in a day for a planned longer flight, I can oftentimes do touch-and-go's.
To define and stick to my personal minimums. To be able to say to ourselves, "Tomorrow is another day." and make a no-go decision when called-for.
If by chance a gap does occur in my flying for any reason, I won't hesitate to schedule a "coaching session" with Tim or another CFI. I am blessed to be able to say that my training experience was a very good one, even though it was a long road.
To give something back to the aviation community, to pitch-in when it is needed, to be an advocate for GA. Now, more than ever, we need to show folks what a wonderful experience flying small planes is. It might seem trite, but flying does build character. It certainly causes you to take stock of yourself in both an exhilarating and profoundly humbling way. Sure, I wish that I had been able to learn to fly as a seaplane-crazed teenager forty years ago, but this is the here and now. There is a unique perspective in being a late-blooming flyer. Youth has its advantages, but so does maturity. How many women get to become a pilot and a grandma both in the same year? As I am finding out, quite a number of grandmas do become pilots!
A Woefully Inadequate Tribute to our CFI, Tim Burdick
I was blessed with fine instruction. There are no words that begin to express the gratitude that I feel towards our esteemed CFI, Tim Burdick. He is always going 'way above and beyond for both of us. I know that it must have been tiresome at moments, going through the same maneuvers so many times. I certainly needed a lot more "programming" than a typical student, in spite of my seriousness of purpose and diligent study. I would also enthusiastically recommend my other two instructors, Jeremiah Secord and Jack Rogers, who both also understood the needs of a late-bloomer. Tim was always there for me. He was incredibly calm and patient, yet he is a very direct and no-nonsense kind of fellow. No matter how justifiably tough he was going to get with me during any training, he always greeted me with a enthusiastic smile at the start of each lesson. Besides being such a fine teacher, he is an exquisite flyer. The stupidest and most short-sighted thing that Bertea at Corvallis ever did was to let Tim go. Fortunately for us, he did not go too far away! He is with Reliant Aviation, preparing Ty for his instrument checkride as of this writing. Below is a picture of Tim with "Eight Foxtrot", a classic twin Comanche based at Corvallis.
