There’s nothing like failing a checkride to make you feel crappy.

I showed up at 9am with everything I was supposed to have for my oral exam. After two and half hours of endless questioning, the check airman told me to go ahead and preflight the airplane. I actually did really well on the oral exam– I missed maybe three questions in two and a half hours. He gave me a list of things I needed to review. For most people it’s a fairly lengthy list. Mine had two items on it, “Convective Sigmets and Airmets.” And it’s not like I didn’t know what they were or how to read them. I just didn’t happen to know that hail must be over 3/4″ to be included in a convective sigmet or that surface winds in excess of 30 knots were included on an Airmet Tango. He even mentioned that it seemed like “I studied well.” I was almost disappointed it wasn’t harder. I went through all the trouble to learn things like the the minimum and maximum propeller diameter and the four different kinds of hypoxia, and he never asked.

Even the the flight portion of the test went well– up until I had to land.

I made a fairly hard soft-field landing. After bouncing, I made a nicer one. He asked me to try again. I made a worse landing. So he failed me.

I need more landing practice.

I told him that I wanted to go up with someone other than Mike, since this is the second checkride I’ve failed on landings, a different instructor taking a look at my landings couldn’t hurt.

So B. told Mike that I’d fired him and that S. would go over landings with me. I talked to Mike, and he understands.

Fortunately, since I’ve passed everything else, all I have to do is go do a few touch and go’s after I fix my landings. I’ll be a pilot in a few days. Really.