What’s left before the checkride?
Now that I’m back in Bentonville, I have asked Michael to have a quick review where we stand and devise a plan for the coming weeks.
What is expected?
The first thing to understand what is left to do is to understand what is expected. This is defined in the Part 61, paragraph 109. To save you the reading of the regulation text, here is the summary. To be able to have the checkride, you need to have a minimum of 40 hours of flight with a minimum of 20 hours in dual training (aka with an instructor) and 10 hours of solo flight. During these hours, we should achieve 6 hours of cross country (with 3 hours at night), 1 cross country flight over 100 nautical miles, 10 take offs and landings and 3 hours of flight training by using instrument only.
In terms of solo, 5 hours of cross country and 1 cross country flight over 150 nautical miles with 3 stops and one leg at least 50nautical miles.
I feel like most of the dual requirements are covered. Let’s review it in detail!
What am I missing
Ok so it’s time to get the log book out and put some numbers in the table.
| Requirements | Achieved | Missing |
| 40 hours of flight training | 41.3h | 0h |
| 20 hours of dual instruction | 40.9h | 0h |
| 3 hours of cross country | 2.2h | 0.8h |
| 3 hours of cross country at night | 0h | 3h |
| 1 cross country >100 nm |
0 | 1 |
| 10 take offs and landings | 142 | 0 |
| 3 hours of flight training solely by instruments | 3h | 0h |
| 10 hours of Solo | 0.4h | 9.6 |
| 5 hours of Solo cross country | 0 | 5h |
| 1 solo cross country: >150 nm 3 full stops 1 segment >50nm |
0 | 1 |
Overall it looks pretty good I think. What I’m missing is some solo time and it makes sense since I did my solo fairly late during my training. The other elements that is becoming obvious is that I’m missing a lot of cross country time.
So I will have to spend the 10 hours in cross country flight before I can get the checkride but I can probably combine some of the flights…
Defining a plan to tackle the requirements
The plan is simple. I need to get into the swing of piloting. This means that I would need approximately 3 flights to redo some of the advanced maneuvers. The next thing is then to plan for a cross country flight. We should be able to knock the remaining requirement in a single flight. After that I should be ready to go for the checkride!
So the plan looks like that:
12/21/09 to 12/23/09: working on getting back into the thick of flying.
12/28/09 to 01/01/10: trying to knock down the 5 hours of solo flight. The weather during that period is usually not really good so I’m not sure that I will be able to get enough time in the air.
Before the end of week, I would like also to have taken the Knowledge test… This leaves the month of January to plan the cross country and prepare for the Oral exam and the checkride.
References
FAA Regulation: § 61.109 – Aeronautical Experience
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