My CheckRide

After spending so much time thinking on whether i am ready to take the test or not....i decided one day that i would try giving the test, no matter if i pass or fail the test. I was more scared of Oral test than the Practical test...
I had an appointment today. Unfortunately or fortunately the weather dint cooperate which made me take the Oral test that day and wait for a better weather to take the checkride itself. This is actually a good thing. This is a rule called "Divide and Conquer". My instructor advised me "Concentrate on the Oral test and get it out of your way" and thats so true. I dint worry about the Checkride and just concentrated on the Oral test.
       I had the nav log ready for the cross country from Tacoma to Hoquiam with alternate route as Olympia.  I had all the documents that was mentioned in the Checkride mail. The Examiner comes..We get introduced to each other and then he goes into the Oral test directly. we had about a 2 hour discussion and at the end of the Oral, he debriefed on what i have to improve on. He asked me questions on all the topics and made sure i am confident in answering. My examiner was also nice enough to make sure i am comfortable and not nervous. I was not very clear when the questions were around Airspaces. So he made me pull out my Sectional and started asking questions about each airspace and made me explain them on the sectional.
        I was under the impression that if i don't know about something, and i know that information is available in the Map legend I can't refer to the legend in the Exam. He asked me about P-51 in my sectional but I forgot what it was exactly. But I knew there will be this information in the legend. When I told him that I don't remember this information , but it is on the Sectional Legend, he asked me to go through and show him the information.
        At the end of the test, he gave me a Letter of Discontinuance because of weather and we talked about meeting later in that week.

Tips:

•  Make sure your IACRA is filled correctly.Don't wait till the last day to get it signed by the Instructor.
• Avoid last minute confusions.
• Make sure to be there well ahead of time , so you can relax before the exam.
• Examiner is not there to scrutnize your knowledge but to help you know what you need to know,to be a safe pilot.
• Try to give straight answers, so that they dont get leads to ask more questions from what you answer.
• During the Oral test, it is OK to refer to the Map legends to answer some questions.