Stage 2 IFR Check Ride......PASSED

Needless to say any further....I passed my Stage 2 IFR check ride! Hooray!

I was really more anxious than I probably needed to be...however I was definitely ready for it. There were a few things that I was a little hazy on....but over all it was a great review! I met with Paul Jacob the Check Flight Instructor at Horizon Aviation after work on Tuesday evening at 6PM. We sat down and jumped right into the oral portion of the check ride. We covered all the areas that we would be going over that night. We started with looking at the approach charts and dissecting all of the information needed to make an approach followed by some of the regulations and requirements of instrument approaches. We then took a look at theIFR enroute low altitude charts where he explained our flight and asked a few questions regarding procedures and basic instrument flight as to how I would accomplish certain things in flight or what certain things meant on the charts. After an hour discussion we went out and pre-flighted the plane and got it topped off with fuel - by this time the sun had already set and the lights were on at the airport. This was going to be a night check flight, and since I hadn't flown at night in a while I was actually really looking forward to it.

We took off from Norwood to the North and held a 20 nautical mile DME arc off of Boston's VOR up to the 268 radial and performed the hold at the WHYBE fix. After a couple laps around the hold we departed to the North and got on with Boston approach to receive radar vectors to shoot Bedford/Hanscom AFB's ILS 11. I got a little distracted and completely missed the approach course and shot right through it. Approach caught onto this real quick and gave me new vectors to reintercept the course, which I did and shot the approach down to decision height. We went missed and got back on with approach who gave us radar vectors back to Norwood so we could shoot the LOC 35 approach there and then circle to land Runway 17. 1.5 hours of flight time later I passed my check ride. After talking with Paul for a little while afterwards, I drove the long tiring hour ride home after a full work day and having been up since 6 AM made it a 17 hour day for me as I got home shortly after 11PM.

All in all a great check ride! Stage 3 IFR cross country flights here I come!