Matt Young wrote in message ink.net...
Well, I passed by instrument checkride recently and thought I would
share my experiences.

Wow. Seems like the IFR ride in the U.S. is a lot more complicated
than here in Canada. I just did mine about a month ago, in a
Seminole. It was a severe clear and perfectly calm day. We spent
about an hour on ground stuff, going over lost comms, the example
route he'd had me plan, and lots of other miscellaneous bits. I'd
already done the pre-flight on the plane, so his pre-flight
questioning consisted of "what are these two things on the wing?" -
referring to the stall warning vanes; and "how many prop blades are
there on this aircraft?" - um.. four?

The rest of the ride consisted of a departure with him acting as
simulated ATC, then a vector to join a radial. I made a dumb mistake
-- I was supposed to be intercepting the 215 radial but due to a total
and complete brain cramp has dialed in the 225 radial instead. About
a minute into this I hear the examiner say "Juliet Fox Fox, confirm
you're intercepting the 215 degree radial." Continuing clueless, I
say "roger, 215 radial". About a minute later, "Juliet Fox Fox,
confirm you're intercepting the 215 radial." Ok now the fog
s-l-o-w-l-y lifts and I look at the VOR. After tuning the correct
radial this time I see that I am almost exactly 10 degrees off. That
could have been a fail right there, 3 minutes into the flight. I
still can't believe he cut me two breaks on that.

After that, the ride was pretty uneventful. A hold, and ILS, and a
non-precision approach, in this case a VOR/DME, but with the added
excitement of a simulated engine fire and single engine approach.

So that's the entire ride: departure, hold, two approaches, one of
which is a precision approach. Three emergencies, one of which
includes an engine out approach if in a multi-engine aircraft. No
partial panel, no steep turns, nothing like that in Canada.

Kevin