Saturday
The oral examination started at 7:30 AM and lasted 4 hours.
My DPE (Designated Pilot Examiner) is Tony Jobusch, who has prepared a “scenario” upon which the oral exam is based.
The contents of his scenario are sensitive and proprietary, so I won’t go into detail. Suffice to say it’s a carefully crafted and polished means of evaluating the student’s overall knowledge while also providing opportunity to further increase the applicant’s understanding of the subject matter.
I was pleased to contribute an improvement by calling a minor typo to Tony’s attention.
It was an excellent experience. As I’d been led to expect, the session was absolutely non-adversarial; the principle is that the applicant must meet the standards defined in the Practical Test Standards (PTS), but perfection is not expected, because perfection is not achievable.
Continuous improvement is.
The examination started uncharacteristically early by glider standards with the hope my flight test “check ride” (the final, pass/fail demonstration of my aviation skill) might be executed before the afternoon’s typically more turbulent atmosphere complicated the situation.
By the time the oral exam was finished, weather conditions had deteriorated from a condition that had been marginal to start with. All morning they'd been about typical for Arizona in 2021, which is to say incessantly windy; now the sailport was beset by 17 knot (Nautical Miles Per Hour) winds, gusting to 25, with a strong crosswind component.
Fortunately, the FAA provides an election to postpone (in official terminology “discontinue”) the examination in situations that might compromise safety, such as adverse atmospheric conditions or an applicant's mental fatigue following the oral exam. Discontinuation obliges the applicant to complete the examination within 30 days.
We rescheduled the flight test check ride for Tuesday morning, for which winds were forecast at only 3 knots.
The oral examination started at 7:30 AM and lasted 4 hours.
My DPE (Designated Pilot Examiner) is Tony Jobusch, who has prepared a “scenario” upon which the oral exam is based.
The contents of his scenario are sensitive and proprietary, so I won’t go into detail. Suffice to say it’s a carefully crafted and polished means of evaluating the student’s overall knowledge while also providing opportunity to further increase the applicant’s understanding of the subject matter.
I was pleased to contribute an improvement by calling a minor typo to Tony’s attention.
It was an excellent experience. As I’d been led to expect, the session was absolutely non-adversarial; the principle is that the applicant must meet the standards defined in the Practical Test Standards (PTS), but perfection is not expected, because perfection is not achievable.
Continuous improvement is.
The examination started uncharacteristically early by glider standards with the hope my flight test “check ride” (the final, pass/fail demonstration of my aviation skill) might be executed before the afternoon’s typically more turbulent atmosphere complicated the situation.
By the time the oral exam was finished, weather conditions had deteriorated from a condition that had been marginal to start with. All morning they'd been about typical for Arizona in 2021, which is to say incessantly windy; now the sailport was beset by 17 knot (Nautical Miles Per Hour) winds, gusting to 25, with a strong crosswind component.
Fortunately, the FAA provides an election to postpone (in official terminology “discontinue”) the examination in situations that might compromise safety, such as adverse atmospheric conditions or an applicant's mental fatigue following the oral exam. Discontinuation obliges the applicant to complete the examination within 30 days.
We rescheduled the flight test check ride for Tuesday morning, for which winds were forecast at only 3 knots.
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