I passed my Commercial checkride today. It's been a stressful week leading up to the checkride. I think the biggest reason is the wait. I flew last Friday and then didn't get to fly again until last night when we went up to fine tune before the checkride. I think if I had been able to take the ride earlier in the week it wouldn't have been as bad.
Anyway, the practical test began at 11:00. I showed up at 10:30 to make sure I had everything I needed, including the airplane logbooks. I spent about 15 minutes going through the checklist to make sure I had everything and reviewing the airplane's logs to make sure everything was properly tagged with Post-It notes. Then I spent 15 minutes walking around the FBO waiting for the examiner to be ready. We had two hours scheduled for the oral and two hours scheduled for the flight test.
The oral started out by reviewing all of my paperwork. First reviewing my 8710 and logbook to make sure I had the aeronautical experience required for the commercial certificate. Photo ID, current license and medical; you have a third class medical, what limits does that place on your commercial license?
Once that was completed, we reviewed the airplane log books: explain the logbooks to me; what are the important inspections in the log books; when was the ELT inspected; when does the battery need to be replaced; when will the next annual inspection have to be completed; what about the next 100 hour inspection; what are AD's; what kind of AD's are there?
Moving on to weather: straight forward weather questions followed by "based on your review of today's forecast, is our flight a go or no-go?" (CAVU, light wind, we're a go.)
So far so good. Here's where we started running into problems. I was instructed to plan a trip from HAO to BNA (Nashville). The straight line course would put us right through the middle of the Cincinnati Class B. Having flown around here for over ten years, I know that the would vector us around the class B, so I just planned ahead and plotted my course around it. The DE didn't like that. What's the shortest distance between two points? I explained my reasoning, but what it comes down to is that she wanted me to demonstrate dealing with being vectored around by ATC and getting back on course. I offered to redo the first leg of the trip to go through the class B, but she said not to worry about it. She was clearly disappointed, however. So then we looked at my navigation log. I had planned it so the time would start at my first checkpoint (an NDB a mile from the field) rather than the field itself. I used the POH charts for time, distance, and fuel to climb to plan the fuel usage to the first checkpoint, which worked to be about the right distance to climb to my planned altitude of 3000 feet (which is approximately 2400 AGL for the area and therefore not subject to standard VFR altitudes). Which was another point of contention. She was concerned about planning the VFR flight at an IFR altitude. I didn't want to get into a debate about that, but my thought is that that 3000 feet is not an IFR altitude for this flight since the lowest OROCA for the route is 3200. I had planned it at 3000 feet so we didn't spend the first half an hour of the flight test climbing to altitude. Moral of the story: plan it as a real flight and don't try to optimize the flight for purposes of the test.
Oh, she also was annoyed that I didn't put the FSS frequency on in the frequencies section: what frequency are you going to contact FSS on to file your flight plan? (If I were to actually file it, I would call them on the telephone before we took off.) Well, I guess that's an option, but you don't have the telephone number there either.
Next we covered the sectional chart: what class airspace is this, what are the weather minimums there; what type of airspace is this and what are the floor and ceiling; what airspace is below it; what are the visibility requirements for the class G here; what about here; what's the airspace around Indianapolis; what are the equipment requirements to fly there; do you need a transponder to fly under it; what about over it; what is this little box here with the radio frequency in it; what is the airspace around Cincinnati; what are the equipment requirements to fly there; do you need a transponder to fly under it (you need a transponder to fly anywhere within the 30-mile mode-C ring regardless of altitude, answering the most likely next two questions); why doesn't it have the contact frequencies like Indianapolis (I had never noticed that before, so I didn't have an answer; they're on the TAC, which, fortunately I carry); what are these white boxes around Indianapolis and Cincinnati (Indianapolis detail is an inset chart; Cincinnati detail is in the Cincinnati TAC); what's this area with the magenta hash marks; what about this one with the blue hash marks; what's class A airspace; what are the requirements to fly there.
Moving on, we covered the weight and balance next. Her first comment: your instructor didn't give you a weight and balance sheet for the plane? (Apparently the FBO has W&B worksheets for each plane; I just did it in the Notes section of the navigation log.) Well, fortunately, I had done the W&B for wheels up and wheels down for both departure and arrival. She was happy to see that I did all four and proceeded to discuss how some planes have a very narrow CG envelope, so it's important to make sure you will be in CG when landing as well as before you take off. This was followed by demonstrating how to use the 50ft obstacle clearance take off and landing charts for the flight we had planned using the aircraft weight from the W&B and the temperature and winds from the weather briefing I printed out from DUATS.
Next we talked about the aircraft systems. She asked me about the operation of the flaps, powerplant, prop, landing gear, hydraulic system (landing gear and brakes), fuel system, electrical system (including the effect on the landing gear system in the event of power loss), and "does the aircraft have any deicing equipment" (only an alternate air intake and pitot heat; it's a trick question because most people forget those; fortunately my CFI prepped me specifically for that question).
Then we moved on to aeromedical factors. This was all straight forward discussion of hypoxia, hyperventilation, sinus and middle ear infections of both pilots and passengers, and spatial disorientation. She had a story about a charter flight she had had with a man and his young daughter who had an ear infection and had trouble with pressure in her ears when they descended so they had to descend at go back up and then descend at 200 feet per minute to deal with it; I followed that up with story about a scuba dive I had once where I had trouble getting my ears to clear, so I can sympathize. That led to a discussion about residual nitrogen and decompression sickness. We finished up with a story about a pilot she knew who drank and smoked heavily and as a result couldn't fly above about 6000 feet; I related a story about a flight I had taken with a friend who was a heavy smoker: we were cruising at 11,500 feet and he started getting dizzy and lightheaded, so we had to descend to 9,500 for the rest of the flight. (That led to a discussion about why flying over the Appalachians at least 10,000 feet is more comfortable than below 10,000 and her experiences with it versus my experiences.) That led to the obvious: what are the oxygen requirements for crew and passengers. We also discussed how the eyes work in the day versus night and what effects altitude had on night vision.
That's about all I can remember from the oral. We finished at about 12:20, so it took about an hour after we went through the required paperwork.
That gave me almost 45 minutes to relax before the flight portion of the test. I used the opportunity to grab a drink and a candy bar. I went down to the hangar to preflight the plane (a Piper Arrow III) about 12:45 so we could get started right at 1:00. Unfortunately, no one showed up to get the plane out of the hangar until 1:35, so I spent half an hour just shooting the breeze with the DE (and answering a few questions about airplane systems while we were standing there next to it). We had a seeming casual conversation about people getting lost and doing stupid things instead of the using ATC or the various navaids to figure out where you are. This included a story that about one night when she was hanging out at the FBO when a plane landed and two people get out. One said he was a CFI and that the other was his student and he was wondering what airport they were at; they were trying to get to Lunken. We had a good laugh about the cluelessness of the CFI and talked about the various things he could have done (not the least of which is not admit he is a CFI with a student and got lost to a bunch of pilots and line workers at an unknown FBO). Looking back, it occurs to me that this wasn't a casual conversation: we were covering the PTS task on lost procedures.
We finally got going, and I went through the passenger briefing (in the event of an emergency I will be handing you this checklist and have you read this procedure to make sure we don't miss anything; in the event of an off-airport landing you will need to unlatch the door prior to landing; after landing we will egress the aircraft as quickly as possible and rendezvous at the rear of the plane; the aircraft is equipped with an Emergency Locator Transmitter to inform search parties of our location; additionally, I have a hand held transceiver, so in the unlikely event of an emergency, we will still be able to contact authorities so we won't be stuck out in the middle of nowhere). Then we moved on to the starting and taxiing procedures; check of the ASOS to verify the prevailing winds and active runway hadn't changed while we were standing around in the hangar. Discussed the reasons for the before takeoff checklist items as I did them. Make a short field take off.
As we climbed out I performed the climbout procedures (gear and flaps up, at 500 feet set the throttle, prop, and mixture to the climbout settings, turn off the fuel pump) and then turned on course. As we passed the first checkpoint (the NDB), I noted the time and mentally calculated the ETA to our next checkpoint (ETE 4:33). After a couple of minutes she asked me what the time was to our next checkpoint, which I answered, and then she asked if I had written down the time on takeoff. Since I had planned the flight from the first checkpoint, not the airport, I answered no, I started the time from the first checkpoint. That didn't make her happy and she scolded me for it.
We reached the next checkpoint 10 seconds late, which made me happy: 10 seconds is pretty good. I made a joke about not hitting it right on was a good thing because if I had, that had to mean that something was wrong. About that time she said, OK, we have bad weather in front of us, divert to Oxford (OXD). I stated that OXD was almost due north of the checkpoint we just passed, so we should turn to 360 and look for the airport nearly straight ahead or slightly to the right. She asked how long it would take, and I estimated 2:30 based on the current airspeed adjusted for the almost non-existent wind out of the north east. About two minutes later, I rechecked the chart and realized the railroad tracks that I had been looking at were the ones to the west of the field, not the ones to the east of the field. I stated this out loud, along with the approximate location of the airport based on my revised position estimate and the airport was exactly where I pointed, about a mile and a half away. Let's go land.
After turning toward the field, I called unicom for a an airport advisory. No response, so I stated that we would approach the airport assuming the active runway was 5 based on what the winds where in the area. I flew an upwind leg to get verify the winds with the windsock. About halfway up the leg, someone finally responded to the request for the airport advisory. That verified my guess of the active runway. We did a short field landing. After a back taxi, we did a soft field take off followed by a soft field landing. Finally, we back taxied and did a normal takeoff and turned to the east to go do the maneuvers.
We started with steep turns (which I came close to blowing: I said we were going to start them at 2500, but I actually started them at 2550 and the altitude fluctuated between 2650 and 2550 during the maneuver, which could have been seen as blowing the altitude if she had assumed the starting altitude was 2500 like I stated I was going to do; the only comment was "your altitude was a little sloppy on that"). Next we did slow flight, power off stall, then power on stall. The power on stall gave us some of the altitude we needed to do the steep spiral. These all went fine, and we moved on to the eights on pylons. I had more trouble with them then usual and ended up having to go around three times before I had good points picked out and managed to get it right. After we rolled out of the last one, I went to increase my altitude so we could move on to the next maneuver when I noticed that I still had one notch of flaps down from the the steep spiral maneuver. I tried to discretely bring it in, but she noticed it and made a comment about it. I played it off as the reason why I was having so much trouble with the eights on. Her only other comment was "well, I didn't notice it either". Oh well. We finished up with lazy eights (one turn in each direction) and a chandelle to whichever side I wanted (I picked left because I have more trouble getting the turn to complete before the stall horn starts squealing when I turn to the right).
All of the maneuvers done, we headed back to the airport. On the way she had me go over the emergency engine out procedures and then perform an emergency gear extension. Back at the airport we did an 180° power off landing. I had been having trouble with being too long on this maneuver until I started extending my downwind leg a little before turning base. As I was doing this my examiner said something to the effect "you don't want to wait too long to turn because thing drops like a rock". Being that I was mental mush by this point, I immediately turned to base. As soon as I turned I realized I was going to be long. I mentioned that fact and she concurred and said that she messed me up. I salvaged it by dumping the flaps and diving for the deck to make as shallow of an approach as I could. I managed to get a stall horn as I flared and got the main wheels to touch down close enough. I think my earlier short field landing that touched down right on the numbers helped me here. She again stated that she messed me up, so it was OK, taxi back to the hangar.
I stopped after clearing the runway and performed the after landing checklist. I had even remembered not to bring in the flaps until I was stopped off of the runway. I was taught to bring the flaps in as soon as the plane is on the ground to increase braking efficiency and reduce the likelihood of a wind gust causing the plane to go airborne again. My CFI told me that my examiner felt that this was a big no-no. It took me four of the five weeks of my training to get over this 10+ year habit.
We parked the plane and she said she was going to go back to office to start typing. She instructed me to fill out my logbook and leave the remarks section blank. So, while I was assuming I had passed at this point, she didn't say. After securing the plane and paying the bill, she brought out my temporary airman certificate for Commercial Pilot, Airplane Single Engine Land, Instrument Airplane.
I'm so glad that's over! Now I have to decide what I'm going to go after next. I had originally planned on going to CFI, but now I'm considering doing Commercial Multi Engine Instrument or Commercial Helicopter (I have almost 50 hours of helicopter time already) first, and then going for the CFI.
I'll think about it for a few days and decide next week.
