Failed Instrument Rating Oral
Preparing for the Instrument oral/practical the last few weeks has been challenging to say the least due to work, life, family, and so on. I arrived at the airport confident and ready to show what I knew. The First hour went smooth. We talked about IFR currency, required documents, etc. We looked over the aircraft
The second hour, we reviewed my weight and balance problem that he had assigned to me a few days prior. With the weights of the passengers and bags, the plane was over gross by 53 pounds. I created another weight and balance sheet where I deleted fuel to get the weight of all passengers and bags with-in our weight envelope. He was satisfied with my calculations.
We then started to review my cross country planning assignment. My navigation log was good, Fuel management was good. We started to get into the weather minimums for alternates. I answered the first few questions correctly and then we switched to the weather briefing.
This is where everything started to go down hill. As we went over the weather briefing, I brought up all my weather depiction charts/tables I had gathered prior. He started asking questions about each one. Airmets, Sigmets, how long are they good for? How many times a day are they issued? I missed some of the symbology questions on the charts.
After this hour long brain pounding from the DPE about weather. He informed me that I did not meet the knowledge requirements in the weather portion to continue with the practical test. During my time studying, I reviewed the weather section and I thought I had a good understanding of this subject in Instrument Flying.
After he informed me I had failed the oral, I was initially bummed out, but I realized that this failure is just going to make me a better pilot in the future. The past few days I have been studying like a crazed person. I already feel like my knowledge and understanding of weather patterns has greatly improved.
Going to re-test in a couple weeks. Wish me luck!
