IR Checkride!

[mastermags]

Alright, I knew I was supposed to post this, but I put it off a couple of days, so here we go.

My instructor rode down with me to Tara Field (4A7) to meet the examiner. We got down there and he took my paperwork and handed me back my certificate and said "don't forget to give that to me when we're done".

So we go in the next room and he starts the oral, which was not too difficult. He asked me about the flight I had planned, current weather, equipment requirements for the flight, ie. He had me explain a couple of items from the approach chart and some stuff about alternate minimums. Then he asked me a couple of weather questions. I totally forgot the third thing that is required for a thunderstorm (lifting action, moisture, and......... oh s%#&)... so he grilled me for a minute till it came to me. Then he asked me a question about icing which was somewhat involved. After that he took a look at the aircraft logs, gave me a clearance, and told me he'd meet me at the plane.

We took off on a rather windy day (the surface winds were 40 degrees to the runway at 16 gusting to 19, and the winds aloft were nearly 40 knots at 3000 feet). He told me to give him an 80 knot climb, so I did, held it for about 5 seconds... then he told me to give him and 600 fpm climb, which i did for about 5 seconds, then he told me to climb how i wanted. We then proceeded to intercept V97, and he asked me to give him a two minute timed turn, which i did. Then he gave me an unusual attitude. After that he told me to proceed direct to Yates NDB. Arrived there, entered the hold and shot the Thomaston RW 30 NDB approach (which was coupled with a localizer and DME for that runway, so it was no sweat). Went missed on that, then shot the full ILS to a straight in landing, then proceeded back to Tara Field. En route, he covered the gyros and I shot the old VOR/DME approach back into Tara, circled to land and made a pretty decent X-wind landing (winds were now 19 gusting to 21). Taxiing back up to his trailer he says "so now what, you've got the multi commercial and single commercial," which was good to hear since that means I've passed. He even offered to give me both of those checkrides the same day at a discount, so I guess that's what I will do. All in all a good day, good feeling, glad to have this rating done, and excited about moving on to the commercial!

[Alchemy]

Good Job! The instrument rating was fun, wasn't it? Congrats!

[Swen]

Thanks for the de-brief as I'll be doing the IR ride in a few weeks.

Congrats man!