Today was the focus of several months of training and preparation.
Preparations consisting of endless ramblings of procedures, checklists, numbers, rules, regulations.
Today was my chance to prove to myself, and to the authorities that all this was not spent in vain.

Today was the day of my checkride for the multi-engine and instrument rating.

To get plenty of time to prepare, I and my partner P arrived at the flight school one hour before the examiner would arrive. Or rather should’ve arrived, as we were greeted by him.

“Good afternoon gentlemen!” he said with a grim expression, as the clock just passed 9 am. Fortunately, we found out that he had found a cup of coffee himself, as the examiners are said to become a bit grumpy unless the are greeted with a cup of freshly brewn coffee upon their arrival. Then he brightened up into a friendly smile, and told us that there was no rush, and that we were free to take the time we wanted to prepare for our flight.

After completing all paperwork and a thorough pre-flight inspection, we pulled old Betty out of the hangar, secured her so she wouldn’t run away, and went back indoors to have our oral examination.

The examiner had a look at our homework, which was a mockup route plan to an airport in a close neighbouring country. He told us that our love starved babes were waiting impatiently for us at the destination, implying that we would be in some deep trouble if we couldn’t make it all the way. Between us however was some really nasty weather, and we were thoroughly asked on weather minima, equipment requirements, and everything else that could hinder our conquests.

When the examiner seemed convinced that we had done our homework, and that we wouldn’t expose ourselves to any lethal situations for some punana, it was time to do some flying. I was up first, while P had a couple of hours of waiting nervously to look forward to.

Well in the aircraft, I started up with my checklist work, just as I had done dozens of times before. The examiner was very friendly, telling all kinds of tall stories during our taxi out to the holding point. With a very calm and collected workflow, I completed our engine run-up, and received a clearance for initially flying on the runway heading up to 2000 feet, before turning left to the northern locator beacon.

On the climbout, at 300 ft above the aerodrome, he killed my left engine. Having practised this over and over again, I simply performed the engine failure procedure, minimizing drag, and continuing to climb at the speed for best rate of climb, with one engine inoperative. Upon reaching 1000 feet, the engine “miraculously recovered”, and we continued to climb with both engines up to 2000 feet.

When we had arrived at the northern locator, and I had done away with all our checklists, he told me to enter the published holding for the locator. One offset entry later, we were established in the holding, using the localizer to really nail the inbound track. Inside of the holding, we performed a couple of steep turns, and some power-off stalls, with recovery. This was a bit exciting, since I had never performed air work inside of a holding before, but it all progressed without nasty surprises.

We then performed a full procedure ILS approach, with a simulated gyro pressure failure, meaning no help from the artifical horizon, or the horizontal situation indicator. Luckily, there’s an awesome piece of technology called GPS, which fortunately DIDN’T fail. In this way, I didn’t have to rely on the flaky magnetic compass to keep my track.

After the precision approach, we performed a non-precision NDB approach. Once again, the GPS is an excellent aid, greatly increasing precision in the approach.

Finally, we cancelled our IFR Flight plan, for some visual circuits. After showing off both normal, flapless, short field and one-engine landings, we performed a full stop landing. Just after vacating the runway, I heard a some words from the right seat that I had been longing to hear for months. “Congratulations! You passed!”. Those three words gave my body a huge rush of joy and relief. We were however still taxiing, so I tried to tell myself to keep my cool, at least while the propellers were still turning.

While performing my shut-down checklist, I spotted P sauntering to and from, waiting for his chance to prove his skill.

I smiled to myself, saying the last “Checklist completed!”, realizing this really was the end of an old journey, and the beginning of a new one. Far bigger tests are up ahead…

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