The Big Day (Before)

With everything in order, the checkride was confirmed, the plane was scheduled, and the examiner was given all my information.

I received my "homework" assignment last night at about 7 pm. I had to plan a cross-country flight about 250 miles, over some mountainous terrain. The examiner emailed me a couple of other helpful documents, along with the pertinent weight information for my calculations.

I was up until about 11 staring at the chart and deciding the best course (and, of course, planning how I would justify my decisions), doing all the planning, and writing up the flight plan and navigation log. I used AOPA's flight planner to get the general path and rough time calculations to see if I would need a fuel stop. It didn't look like I would, so I went ahead and made some manual adjustments to the course for terrain and weather considerations. Basically, I didn't want to be over desolate mountains in windy and potentially cloudy conditions.

With no more mental capacity to even crack a book open, I called it a night. I had to be at the airport by noon, so I spent this morning checking the weather and printing out airport diagrams for the departure, destination, and one alternate field.

Then it was off to meet my first "passenger".