IFR Flight Test
Long story short: I did my Instrument Rating flight test and passed. But to actually get the test done took me four attempts due to the weather. The previous three times I showed up at the airport only to have the ceilings at Calgary International drop to 200 feet, which would be fine if it was summer and the freezing level wasn’t close to the ground level. In any case, today the weather held nicely and I was able to get off the ground, fly from Springbank to Calgary, do my hold and approaches and return back to Springbank.
The flight test went as expected, which was pretty much on par with my pre-flight test. And both flights were carried out as laid out in the Flight Test Guide on the Transport Canada website. I won’t bother listing the questions that the examiner asked as they won’t ask you anything you won’t have learned in your training. And I suspect that every examiner is different and has their own list of ‘stock’ questions that they ask.
The flying part of the ride was done on one of the Calgary Flying Club’s Piper Warriors, thus I would be getting my Group 3 Instrument Rating. Since the clouds today were far above the service ceiling of the Warrior the test was done using a hood, which Transport Canada mandates that you wear the entire flight. And that was fine by me since the more instrument time I have to practice, the more confident I feel with instrument flying. I was the PIC for the flight so the examiner talked only when necessary, and since I didn’t need to ask him any questions, the only time he really spoke was when he needed to to give me instructions like when to put the hood on or when to finish holding.
Each skill on the test is marked on a scale of 1 to 4, where 4 is perfect and 1 is all bad. You can read the complete details of the 4-point Marking Scale on the Transport Canada website. Any skills marked as a “1” will result in a re-test of some kind, either a partial or complete. For me, my marks were all 3 and 4, except for my NDB approach which I was given a mark of 2 for flying 125 feet too high during the procedure turn. Overall the approach was successful but the deviation resulted in a lower score than I would have liked. But overall, my pass was an acceptable 81% which is well above the required 60% for a pass.
Flight time: 1.7 hrs
Instrument time: 1.4 hrs (hood)
Approaches: 2
