It's done! Well at least the first part........

Today was the day - Judgment Day - I really got to find out if all this hard work studying and flying has really paid off. And thankfully, the answer was YES!!!!!!! Since today was the big day, I spent the entire afternoon and night yesterday all the way up to 12AM reviewing all of my material to make sure I was prepared for my oral exam and practical exam that I had today. I even got up at 500AM to look over the material again before jumping into the shower and running out the door to Horizon Aviation for my FAA oral exam and check ride at 830AM. Since I wanted to be more than ready I arrived at Horizon Aviation at Norwood Aiport at 715AM. I went in and looked at all the weather information as usual and updated my flight plan. I then kicked back for about 1/2 hour to try to calm my nerves while I waited for the FAA Designated Examiner, Ray Collins to arrive. I was a complete nervous wreck up until I met Ray and we started off.

First thing is first - print off the application and review my logbook to verify that I have completed all the necessary requirements. After that, he quickly briefed me as to how this whole process was going to work - we would first cover the oral portion covering various topics including my flight planning, weight and balance, and all different types of regs and aviation information that I should know as a private pilot. Then we would go out to the plane to perform the practical portion of the check ride.

I am going to cover this in a little bit more detail as I know there are others getting into aviation now, or already in the aviation community that may be curious to what was covered. On the other hand if you're not interested in all the fine details, feel free to just skim through. Haha.

First and foremost, Ray Collins, is an incredible individual, very welcoming and although he is there representing the strong arm of the FAA, he was really genuine in his demeanor and representation that he really wants to see you do well and wants you to pass. He is very knowledgeable and I was able to accomplish my secondary goal of learning something new from him in the process. I really look forward to flying with him again in the future when I am going up for my other check rides. We went over into the briefing room and started right into it. He briefed me on what are some of the areas that we would cover in the oral test before heading out to the plane to fly the practical portion. He needed to make sure that I really knew my stuff, since you can't always rely on a great test score, he really wanted to put it into real-life scenarios and applications so that I could directly relate and explain the material as it corresponds to its given operations and processes. The topics that we covered included my weight and balance and short field take off calculation based upon today's current weather information. We then segmented right into my flight plan and used the sectional chart to examine the different types of airspace - the difference between class b, c, and d airspace, restricted airspace and what it was, what the meaning of and the difference between the two tower symbols were, specifically the height differentiation. He also point to one of the airports along my planned route and asked me to explain everything I could tell him about that airport just from looking at the information on the chart, he touched on recommended safe altitudes, Flight Service Station communication options, diverting to another airport, emergency procedures and frequencies, wildlife areas, VFR check points, visibility and cloud clearance requirements for the different types of airspace, clearance difference between class c and class b airspace, a little bit of the airplane systems, the engine, static pitot system, and the gyroscopic instruments. He also then drew out a couple scenarios of wake turbulence caused by a larger aircraft and had me tell him where I would take off and land with regard to larger aircraft, we also discussed briefly spin recovery awareness, as well as a few of the airport markings including the hold short line, a displaced runway threshold and blast pad, and finally the closed runway. We surprisingly did not touch on any of the weather charts and reports, which I was really worried about, but since I had spent so much time on them, they are now stuck in my head. All in all, the oral exam portion took almost exactly 1 hour. Given that there is way more information to cover than time available, the exam itself was more about breadth than the depth of a few specific areas. We covered a lot of material in that 1 hour of oral testing. He then sent me out to preflight the plane so that we could go up for the practical portion.

I preflighted the plane as usual, except this time I was in 9905F since the others were out. Ray came out and asked me a couple quick questions regarding the airplane before we hopped in. He asked me about the ram air for the pitot port, where the static port was, what the purposed of the fuel vent was, and even the opening for the stall warning horn at the leading edge of the wing. We hopped in and got the plane started. It took a couple tries since it was a little chilly this morning, but it started right up after that. I then obtained the ATIS information and he explained to me exactly what we would be doing for each portion of the practical. We would stay in the traffic pattern in order to complete the short and soft field take off and landing requirements. The first take off was a soft field take off followed by a soft field landing. Then the next take off was a short field take off to be followed by a short field landing - except when I was about 50 feet above the runway he wanted to simulate that a truck had just pulled out onto the runway so we diverted back up into the pattern to perform a go-around. Except this time, he called up to the tower and let them know we would be departing to the Northwest to begin the cross country portion of my check ride. I turned to my heading after reaching a safe altitude above the noise abatement area, and immediately tuned and identified the Boston VOR. Since he wanted me to show him where we were a couple different times along my route, I tuned the radial that we were off of combined with my outside visual references to pinpoint my location. I did the same thing again about 2 mins away from my first check point and Ray, seeing that I was very aware of my position and heading told me he'd seen enough of that. He took the controls so I could put my foggles on to simulate entering into IFR conditions. He performed one unusual attitude which I had to recover from, which was rather mild compared to the attitudes that my instructor had put me into on previous lessons. We also completed straight and level flight and turns to headings under simulated instrument conditions. He also simulated an engine failure, but didn't want to actually pull the engine out in this really cold weather, so we just discussed what steps an procedures I would follow to perform the emergency landing. He then had me tune and ID Providence's VOR and track it to the Providence station. He'd seen enough of that and asked me to turn to a heading of 240 and set myself up for slow flight with 20 degrees of flaps, did a few turns to a heading under slow flight, transitioned back to cruise flight, did a power on stall, and steep turns - one in each direction. He then said, here listen to this, and turned up the ATIS frequency for Norwood Airport and asked me to take him back to Norwood. On the way back, we simulated an electrical fire and the flaps being the cause of it. So, he had me land in a clean configuration without the use of flaps. It wasn't the best landing to end the check ride, but we did make it on the ground again in one piece. All in all a successful flight. We taxied back to the ramp and as I parked the plane - Ray turned to me and said, well I won't keep you in suspense any longer - you passed. Just a couple minor things that he touched on that I would need to watch out for next time. While I pushed the plane back and tied it down, he went inside to print up my temporary Private Pilot License. He congratulated me again, and I thanked him greatly for his time and told him I looked forward to seeing him again in the near future as I progress toward my other ratings. And so that was it, the end of my check ride. There I was utterly speechless and couldn't believe that I had achieved my first license in 3.75 months and 57 hours of flight time. I can honestly say now I feel like a real pilot. I look forward to jumping into my instrument and commercial ratings starting at the end of next week! But, for now I am ready to take passengers and go out flying if anyone is willing........any takers?