My CFI Initial check ride.

 I'm not sure where to start. My last post was when I got my commercial single engine add on.. and a lot of things have been going on after that.
I started CFI school at ATP on July 23rd at Lawrenceville Airport. CFI class is advertised as a 2 week course. I have a full time job doing consulting and sales for the motor sports and active sports industry  on the timing and scoring part. My job requires some domestic and international travelling and so far I have been able to squeeze work and ATP within the 10 month program.
For the CFI part, I had to request 2 weeks off from work so I could focus full time for the flight instructor class.
There are rooms with beds on the second floor of the Lawrenceville ATP location and also showers, so we lived there for two weeks, my house is 60 miles away from that airport. There was no way I was going to do that commute every day. I did go home two or three nights but I couldn't do it every day.
We were 6 in our class, we take classes from an instructor on every subject on th Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, sometimes we did group study and sim. We were studying everyday from 7 am to 10 pm, it is very intense. Our instructor was awesome. His class was interesting and funny, he stayed there late covering material with us and making sure we didn't have any doubts.
One of the most memorable things was definitely the spin training.. we went on a C172M over Lake Lanier and it was AWESOME! I didn't get dizzy as I thought I would.. but it is a great experience.
On the flight, your instructor acts as a student and you need to teach him everything.. basically you need to talk everything that you are doing on the aircraft.. telling your student about exchange of controls, taxi procedures, collision avoidance, checklist usage, etc..
On the maneuvers, you need to state the purpose of the maneuver, know the PTS standards and talk through the maneuver while you are demonstrating it. If you make any mistakes you need to say it and how you are correcting for them.
On Monday July 30th, we got the dates for our check rides.. mine was one of the last ones, scheduled for August 16th!! With Mr. Brooks Black at Ft Lauderdale Executive Airport. I stayed at the school until August 1st and then returned to work.
During the weekend I went back to the airport and took advantage of the quiet rooms for studying and gave some class to my classmates (role playing), I also used the sim to practice my maneuvers and talking.
The next weekend, three of my classmates had already taken their tests; two of them passed and one didn't.
I did my second flight on sunday Aug 12th. I had to practice the Vmc maneuver, steep turns and short field and single engine landings. We departed a little late and pretty much I felt comfortable with the air maneuvers, we returned to PDK and flew in the pattern; the night got us and we still did 4 more landings.
On August 15th I flew down to Ft Lauderdale with one of my classmates, we both had our test with different examiners on the 16th at 7:00 am.
Anxiety kicked it like it never had before.. I was extremely nervous, and at moments, I wasn't even sure If I've made the right decision on choosing this path; why didn't I just stayed at my job and don't have to go through all these expenses, all these check rides nervousness,  all these written tests... what if I fail?? How was I going to afford another expensive checkride and how was I going to get the time off from work to travel  back to Ft Lauderdale.. the train of fears was just rolling through my brain..
The morning of Aug 16th I arrived at ATP in Ft Lauderdale at 6:00 am.. I started working on all my airworthiness sheets, weight and balance, performance sheets. My examiner arrived at 6:45 and started working on my paperwork while I was finishing up my calculations.
Well, long story short, after 3 and a half hours of oral and one of the coolest flights I've ever had.. we taxied back to the ramp.. parked, and the examiner just walked away.. he just looked back while I was securing the airplane: "I'll see you inside!! You passed!"
This is what is considered the most difficult checkride, the odds of passing the initial instructor are a lot less than any other checkride.. I am very happy and now looking forward to my CFII.. I have a business trip to Bogota and Quito next week, I'll try to do some studying and I'll take this check ride when I come back on the first week of September.

Saturday... the checkride

I arrived at the school at 9:30 am, I made sure I had everything I needed for the checkride with me. Foggles, money, Id's, cross country flight plan, performance charts... I finished up the airworthiness information for IFR on that morning. (Annual, VOR check, 100 hrs, Altimeter, Transponder, ELT..) It was a very busy morning; my instructor had 3 students with checkrides. One of them was a private multi-engine, a commercial single-engine and me; however, I was the only one who was going to take his test at another airport, so he had to call an instructor from KLZU to come to KMDQ with me since ATP doesn't allow solo flying for students in the Seminoles.
The instructor from LZU arrived and pretty much I handled all the radios all the way to KMDQ. We taxied to runway 2R and off we went up to 6,000 feet. The air was smooth and we requested Huntsville Approach the RNAV  to runway 18 at KMDQ.



We arrived at Mr Clyde Shelton's office. It was pretty impressive, he had tons of awards and pictures with Geoge Bush, McCain, etc. He told us some nice stories about the good ol' days of flying and computers, very nice person.
We went ahead and started the oral; I think it went pretty good but you also learn a lot from him. The first question he asked me was if I knew how to calculate Va.. I didn't.. he provided me with a piece of paper with the formula written and asked me to calculate Va for our flight.

 I felt I didn't start good.. he then went ahead and started asking questions about the cross country flight that I planned and all the weather resources, weather charts, approach plates, scenarios.... Then he went ahead and briefed me about our flight.
Mr Shelton really gave me a workout in the air, I contacted Hunstville approach to request practice VFR approaches. The ILS at KMDQ was out of service so we were going to do that at KHSV runway 18L with one engine inoperative, then we went direct to RQZ VOR for a VOR-B approach, circle to land runway 18, then tune to the IAF for the GPS runway 18 touch and go, back to intercept the 070 radial from RQZ, do a 10 DME arc to the 044 radial inbound that have to be interrupted because another airplane was flying towards us.. but the arc was pretty good. Then we went back into the radial and he covered my HSI and my Attitude Indicator and we hold on the 8 DME 044 radial with just the clock and magnetic compass. After that we went ahead and did unusual attitudes and by that time I got pretty dizzy. For the end we went ahead and we did a PAR.. he would tell me headings, altitudes, rate of descents and speeds to the threshold of the runway.:my first Cat III landing and it was the smoothest of all 3!! Bottom line.. I passed, I am instrument rated now, I filed my first IFR flight back and we logged some actual instrument. I celebrated last night with my girlfriend and I am ready now for phase 3 on the ATP course!!