I passed my JAA PPL in minimum hours, then went to the US to take the FAA flight test and do some hours-building. Had a one hour preparation flight with an instructor, who told me “Don’t worry, your flying is well up to standard, you’ll walk it.” Can you guess what’s coming?
On the day of the test, to cut a very long story short, I shouldn’t have been flying. I had a heavy cold / throat infection that was starting to block my ears, and I had only had 3 hours’ sleep, having very nearly had a forced landing in the Everglades the previous night. Not a good start, but it got worse.
Having clambered into the aircraft in 30 degree plus heat, I let the examiner bully me into rushing my checks – “Come on, let’s get taxying and get some air through this thing.” As a result, I missed several rather important checklist items (aligning DI and compass, switching on the transponder . . .). So off we launched, to start with some VOR tracking. Staring at the OBI, I couldn’t correlate what the needle was doing with my heading (not too surprising, as the DI was completely off), and I sensed things weren’t going well when the examiner asked; “Have you ever done this before?”
My confidence started to return with some unusual attitude recovery, but then we tried stalling. (It’s worth mentioning at this point that I had never stalled this particular aircraft – unknown to me, it had been fitted with a new wing, which endowed it with exciting handling at the stall). Anyway, in blissful ignorance I let the knots bleed away, expecting a wail from the stall warner and the usual benign downwards mush. Instead, the left wing dropped viciously, I let out an expletive and threw my hands up in horror.
At that point the examiner had seen enough and decided to discontinue the test. “It’s not a fail, but I think you need to brush up on some areas and come back in a couple of days.” Which I did, and got my FAA licence as a slightly older, wiser and poorer pilot.
Conclusion? You need to be 100% fit and rested for your test. If not, postpone it as you’ll probably be wasting you money.
Never let the examiner rush or bully you – if you need more time for checks, or you don’t want to chat about football while selecting a field for your PFL, don’t be afraid to tell him – assert yourself. If you make a mistake, don’t flap or panic, stay calm, point it out to the examiner (chances are he’s already noticed but is waiting to see if you spot it) and correct the situation.
At the end of the day, the examiner isn’t expecting Chuck Yeager – he’s expecting a nervous 50 hour stude. He expects mistakes but wants to see a decent scan / technique and evidence that you can spot errors and correct them before things become unsafe.