Synopsis of Instrument Check Ride

October 11, 2000

Background: This is a synopsis of Tom Ahonen’s Instrument Rating Certification Practical Test (Aircraft – Single Engine – Land) taken on October 11, 2000. The FAA Examiner was Barbara Mack. The orals portion of the test took place at Al Knowlton’s office at the Anoka County Airport (ANE). The flight test originated and finished at ANE.

The Oral

I chose the conference room near Al’s office for the oral portion of the test. The room provided privacy and a large table. I was able to get to the test early and spread out all of the information relevant to the orals – aircraft and pilot logs, flight planning and weather information, application form and payment, etc. It’s hard to tell, but I think the examiner liked my being prepared and organized prior to her arrival.

We spend about 50 minutes on the paperwork and the oral part of the exam. Much of the discussion focussed on emergencies:

Would you be required to file an alternative for this flight? (no – weather was severe clear) If you did not file an alternate and the weather turned lousy while en route, would you be required to amend your flight plan to add an alternate? (no – might be prudent, but not required)

How would you monitor the weather while en route? Why might you want to?

If you lost communications, en route what would you do? If the weather was VMC? If the weather was IMC?

If it was IMC and you lost communications, when can you start an approach? When holding before initiating your approach, what altitude should you maintain? What do you do if you shoot the approach and find the airport is below minimums and you have specified an alternate? What do you do if you have not specified an alternate?

Bottom line – lots of discussion of “what-if’s” regarding all the bad things that could happen.

One discussion on Instrument Approach Procedures had not been covered in my training – I didn’t know the answer to her question, but was able to quickly look it up – and I was glad I did!

On an IAP, what do the following mean?

A T in an inverted triangle

An A in a triangle

An A in a triangle with NA specified

So – a pretty important piece of information and I completely missed it – but still passed. Didn’t try to bluff – just said I didn’t know and I looked it up – quickly studied it, asked here some questions and said – boy, am I glad we covered that. Note that I had covered standard alternate minimums and SID’s, but not non-standard or non-applicable alternate minimums or non-standard takeoff minimums for part 91 or “small airport” (Non SID) departure procedures.

We spend just a little time on VOR checks. What are the different ways to check your VOR receiver(s)? Also a tricky question – where in the Twin Cities are there facilities to do a VOT check?

Bottom line – the orals seemed to go well. I was pretty well organized and prepared. I approached the discussion as an opportunity to learn – and I did. I sensed that the examiner was looking for strong baseline knowledge, and perhaps more important, good judgement.

The Flight

I had pre-flighted the Archer prior to Barb’s arrival, so we went straight from the orals to the flight test. After engine start, we taxied out from Cirrus to the taxiway, where I stopped and said – here is where I would call and get my clearance (we did not file). She had me taxi out to the runup area and said she would give me my clearance then. One note – I made sure I did the passenger brief – door operation, seat belt operation, etc.

After the runup, she gave me a simulated clearance to New Richmond via the Gopher 085 radial, etc. I did a simulated readback.

Prior to calling for a takeoff clearance, I briefed the engine failure on takeoff procedure – under what circumstances I would land straight ahead versus turning back, etc. I try to make that a habit on every flight.

So – we took off on 18 and the tower cleared me for a left turn, so the join on the 085 radial was quick. Barb had the plane briefly as I put on the foggles. There were no tricks when she had the plane – e.g. stalls or unusual attitudes. I guess some examiners do that. Anyway, I climbed to 3000 at which point she changed my clearance to hold east of the Whisk intersection, 1 minute legs, right turns. I acknowledged the clearance and then she asked me if I would accept a clearance like that. It took me a sec to realize that she hadn’t given me an EFC time – don’t hold without one.

As I approached Whisk, I was trying to figure out the wind and my entry. The forecast was for winds out of the south, southwest at about 30 knots. I was holding 10 to 15 degrees of correction to hold the 085. I decided on a teardrop entry to keep me in the protected airspace. The entire time as we approached the hold, she was peppering me with questions. I answered mostly, but at some point I reached task saturation and just told her to standby. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. My hands were full with the first two in that wind.

I turned inbound after the entry and was about two dots north of the 085 radial – yikes. Increased the correction to 25 or 30 degrees and got the needle centered just about the time I got back to Whisk. With the western component of the wind, I timed my outbound at 50 seconds (got some insight from the inbound leg after the entry – took about 1 min 10 to get back to whisk once established inbound, such as I was. But – I didn’t have enough of a correction outbound, so again, when I came around, I was north of the 085. Took 65 seconds to get back to whisk this time – added more correction on the outbound and only went out 45 seconds. Got closer this time, but was still north of the 085. Was apparently good enough for government work, though, cuz she then cleared me direct to New Richmond. Whew. With that wind and all the distractions she was throwing at me, it was pretty busy. One thing I didn’t practice a lot with my CFI was tripling the inbound wind correction when flying outbound – and with hindsight, I could have flown the hold much better. Say the inbound correction was 15 degrees or an indicated course of 250 – I should have flown an outbound course of 3 times 15 or 45 degrees and a course of 130. I don’t recall exactly, but I was probably closer to 100 or 110 – just lack of experience on my part. I got the impression that what she was looking for mainly was not the perfect hold, but rather awareness of where I was relative to Whisk and whether I was making corrections in the right direction.

Re-established on the 085 eastbound and tuned the ADF to New Richmond. Went to identify it and nothing. Hmmm. Confirmed the frequency. Looked at the chart – I should be close enough. Oops – the ADF was turned off. With that avionics master switch in the Archer, I assumed all the instruments were hot. Turned it on and all was well. She cleared me for the NDB 14 approach.

I crossed the NDB eastbound and decided to turn south – into the wind – to intercept the outbound for the procedure turn. I felt if I turned downwind, I would get pushed so far north that it would take a long time to get established outbound. Later, on the ground, we discussed that choice. While at 3000 feet, I would probably do it that way again, Barb did point out that there are some towers south of the airport – 1165 and 1156 feet, respectively – that should have come into the decision making process. She was right and I honestly did not think about the towers when I decided which way to turn.

Anyhow – crossed the NDB, standard rate turn to the right. Outbound course is 314, plus 45 degrees is 359 degrees. OK. Established on 359 – how does the needle look – what the heck!#% - the NDB is behind me! In other words, in the time it took me to make a standard rate right turn and get established northbound, the wind had blown me far enough northeast that I was past the outbound radial and now north of the airport. Nice day for a checkride.

When in doubt – turn to your heading and see what you’ve got, so I turned left to 314 and saw that the NDB was 30 degrees or so off my port quarter – 314 minus 45 equals 269 – left to 269. Took a minute or so to intercept, but got there. Down to 2700. Outbound for two minutes, shortened up the northbound procedure turn, turned inbound – 134 degrees plus 15 degrees for the wind – down to 1720 at 800 fpm – OK – I’m at the MDA – 149 degrees, needle is 15 degrees off the nose – feeling good. Look up, she says – sure enough – there about 15 degrees to port is the airport. “How far away do you think you are?” “Three miles or so, I’d guess.” “You’re more like 4 and change – you got a little far out, but you probably stayed within the 10 mile limit.” Jeesh – how did I pass this thing?

OK – time for steep turns and unusual attitudes. Steep turns were straight forward – glad I got a tip about slightly altering your power setting as you enter the turn – held 90 knots right on. I wasn’t quite prepared for what she did on my unusual attitudes. While I flew primarily with one CFI during my training, I did log a few hours with two other CFI’s as I completed my preparations. None of them ever covered up the attitude indicator for unusual attitudes – but Barb did. The theory I guess I that you’re most likely to get into an unusual attitude when you have a vacuum pump failure – in which case the AI will likely be down – and/or it might tumble. So the correct procedure is airspeed first, then turn coordinator. I got to learn it the hard way – doing it that way for the first time during my check ride. Thankfully, it was straightforward. Shows you that our CFI’s miss stuff too, though. All three of them.

Next came an interesting part of the flight. I purchased a handheld Garmin 195 GPS a while back. I almost never fly without it strapped to the yoke. Barb and I had talked earlier about the fact that in reality, in actual IMC as an instrument pilot, the 195 would be part of my scan – particularly on an approach (for situational awareness only, of course). So there we were, halfway through the check ride, and she asks me to get out the 195 and to set it up for the ILS 14 at St. Paul. Apparently, she just wanted to see what kind of information the GPS provided during the approach.

Called up approach and asked for the ILS 14 and they gave me a code. Vectored me around a bit, and I got everything set up. Got cleared for the approach and was turning onto the localizer and descending from 3000 to 2600 when the controller cancelled the clearance and had me turn right to 270 and climb back to 3000. 4 very quick vectors later (270 to 320 to 030 to 180), I was inbound again. The approach was uneventful – was getting a better feel for the wind. Barb commented later that she would have set up the radios a bit differently. The St. Paul localizer has DME and the FAF, Agumy, can be identified that way. I was a bit slow changing over the DME from gopher – for situational awareness – to the localizer. I probably should have gotten the localizer into Nav1 real early and gopher into Nav2 and had the DME in remote to manage both situational awareness and preparation for the approach. Instead, I had FCM dialed in for a while in addition to gopher to keep track of where I was. Too many choices.

From there it was back to Anoka for the VOR 27, circle to land 18. Again Barb asked me to set up the 195 for approach. I thought she would say we needed to fly the DME arc, but instead we accepted vectors. Again the approach was uneventful – except for the perpetually lousy VOR signals on that approach. As I descended past Touri, Nav 1 wanted me to turn right and Nav 2 wanted me to turn left. Verify both OBS’s were spot on and split the difference was all I could do. Since the GPS was on, I was able later to download the track of the approach – yech. Even with the needles centered seems like a half mile one side or the other is pretty good on that approach – at least the 8 or 10 times I’ve flown it.

The landing – I must have been beat. Circled from 27 to 18 at 1400 feet. BCC-GUMPS – everything is set – on speed, on glidepath – wind 200 at 15 or so – piece of cake, right? Wrong. Of course, like many of us, I’m a bit of a perfectionist – but I got way too flat and bounced it once. Not exactly the finish I was striving for, but I recognized later, just how worn out I was. 3 approaches and all of the other stuff over a couple hour period sucked it out of me, and I just wasn’t particularly sharp getting the airplane on the ground.

The Bottom Line

As I write this, and perhaps as you read it, it is very clear that I did not have a “perfect” instrument test. I absolutely have heaps to learn. I think I did a couple things right, though. First, I didn’t try to bluff my way through anything. I demonstrated that I view any ticket as a license to learn – and I certainly learned heaps in my time with Barb. Second – I abided by the rule to Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Airspeed, heading and altitude were nearly always in pretty good shape – and when they weren’t, I was on top of it and making the appropriate corrections. Barb did a good job of introducing a number of distractions during the flight – and while I certainly was kept busy, I don’t think I lost focus on the basics. Finally, I think I consistently exhibited a safety-minded attitude. In addition to knowledge and flying skills, my sense is that a big part of the test is a test of judgement.

Whatever the case, I’m delighted to have earned another “license to learn.” I hope this story in some small way helps you with the advancement of your passion for flying.