Any account of my checkride will hardly be a revelation to the world. I suspect I'd just be recycling the same story that thousands of other pilots have.
I think I got off easy, but it's likely because I knew what I was doing. The examiner, a 215 lb. ex-cop from Berkeley seemed to make up his mind that I could fly, and that' he'd pass me on my initial climbout. At 300 feet, he said, "I can tell you know how to fly, you're not gonna scare me." Matter of fact, he ended up doing almost all my radio calls for me, and my instructor later said, "If he did that, then he really liked you. If he had any doubts about you, he'd make you do all that stuff yourself to see how you hold up under stress." I totally blew the emergency power off pattern and descent, first ballooning, then coming up short, having to go around. A few minutes later, he said that wasn't fair of him, that he was rushing me because he had an appointment that afternoon that he was trying to get to, so he let me do it over again.
The trip back from Concord field to Oakland was marked by a feeling of tremendous relief: all that studying was, for a time, behind me. I can fly where I like without asking, but now I have to ask myself if it's okay.
