Busted IFR Checkride

Jon Kraus wrote in
:

Funny Mark.... my DE busted his IFR ride on the hold too... He said
hold wasn't even close to being racetrack shaped or anywhere near the
racetrack :-) Like others have said this doesn't mean anything in
the big picture.... Thanks again. JK


When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern. The
outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a crosswind.

Andrew Sarangan wrote in
. 158:

When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern.
The outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a
crosswind.

Why? After the first lap, you should know where the wind is and make
appropriate heading corrections to maintain some semblance of a racetrack
pattern, and you should usually have some idea of the winds, anyway.

In real life, though, nobody cares what the pattern looks like, as long as
you stay in protected airspace. I try to keep it as oval as possible,
though, just out of pride.

--
Regards,

Stan

When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern.
The outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a
crosswind.

Why will[ the hold not be a race track pattern]? After the first lap, you
should know where the wind is


Because the round parts will be different radii. You hold constant rate, but
are blown downwind. So, one half circle is little, the other is big.

Jose



--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

Stan Gosnell wrote in
:

Andrew Sarangan wrote in
. 158:

When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern.
The outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a
crosswind.

Why? After the first lap, you should know where the wind is and make
appropriate heading corrections to maintain some semblance of a
racetrack pattern, and you should usually have some idea of the winds,
anyway.

In real life, though, nobody cares what the pattern looks like, as
long as you stay in protected airspace. I try to keep it as oval as
possible, though, just out of pride.



If you have a crosswind, you can't maintain a racetrack shape if you want
to do standard rate turns. That is why we double the wind correction on
the outbound. The goal is to make standard rate turns on both ends of the
holding pattern, not to keep the outbound parallel to the inbound.

Stan Gosnell wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote in
. 158:


When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern.
The outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a
crosswind.


Why? After the first lap, you should know where the wind is and make
appropriate heading corrections to maintain some semblance of a racetrack
pattern, and you should usually have some idea of the winds, anyway.

Because of the effect of the wind during the turns. If you fly the "off
the holding course" leg parallel to the holding course, then you will
end up either turning either too short or crossing the course on the way
back. The fly a true race track pattern with a cross wind component,
you would have to fly variable bank turns as we all did when practicing
turns around a point in the wind while practicing for our private. This
is REALLY hard to do when you can't see the ground!


In real life, though, nobody cares what the pattern looks like, as long as
you stay in protected airspace. I try to keep it as oval as possible,
though, just out of pride.

But if you do this in a stiff crosswind, you will end up having to make
one of the turns at a greater than standard rate and the other at less
than standard rate in order to roll out on the holding course each
circuit. I believe that is why the normal recommendation is to double
your inbound wind correction angle on the outbound leg (assuming you are
holding towards the station). This will give you a nonparallel outbound
course, but will allow both of your turns to be closer to standard rate.


Matt

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
Jon Kraus wrote in
:


Funny Mark.... my DE busted his IFR ride on the hold too... He said
hold wasn't even close to being racetrack shaped or anywhere near the
racetrack :-) Like others have said this doesn't mean anything in
the big picture.... Thanks again. JK



When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern. The
outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a crosswind.

Bless you, Andrew. I was about to jump in and say the same thing. The idea that
holding patterns are supposed to be racetrack-shaped is commonly held and is a
source of difficulty in doing holds well.

I'm not an instructor of any kind, but I've been instrument rated for a few
years and have flown as safety-pilot with a lot of different instrument pilots
doing holds for currency.

I often see pilots trying to make the outbound leg parallel to the inbound leg,
and it just doesn't work that way when there's a wind blowing across the inbound
course. Pilots with GPS seem to be particularly prone to this error.

Think about the turn radius on the downwind turn versus the turn radius on the
upwind turn, and you'll see why the outbound and inbound legs can't be parallel.

Dave
Remove SHIRT to reply directly.

Dave Butler wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:

Jon Kraus wrote in
:

Funny Mark.... my DE busted his IFR ride on the hold too... He said
hold wasn't even close to being racetrack shaped or anywhere near the
racetrack :-) Like others have said this doesn't mean anything in
the big picture.... Thanks again. JK



When you have a crosswind, the hold will not be a race track pattern.
The outbound should not be parallel to the inbound if there is a
crosswind.


Bless you, Andrew. I was about to jump in and say the same thing. The
idea that holding patterns are supposed to be racetrack-shaped is
commonly held and is a source of difficulty in doing holds well.

I'm not an instructor of any kind, but I've been instrument rated for a
few years and have flown as safety-pilot with a lot of different
instrument pilots doing holds for currency.

I often see pilots trying to make the outbound leg parallel to the
inbound leg, and it just doesn't work that way when there's a wind
blowing across the inbound course. Pilots with GPS seem to be
particularly prone to this error.

Think about the turn radius on the downwind turn versus the turn radius
on the upwind turn, and you'll see why the outbound and inbound legs
can't be parallel.

Well, they COULD be, but it would be a lot of work and you couldn't use
standard rate turns. You'd have to turn at a very slow rate upwind and
very fast downwind!


Matt

Hey, try not to sweat it. Not passing a check ride
is not a big deal. You take it again.

I blew my PP checkride the first time around. I flew
fine, but exercised poor judgement by flying too close
to a cloud. I believed I was outside the 1000/500/2000
rule, but he didn't, and that was that. I don't blame
the DE for failing me.

I think the hardest part of the whole episode was
looking my instructor in the eye, telling him how I
busted. He knew I was ready, I just f**'d up.

When I took my IFR checkride, my instructor once
again admonished me that "these things are really
harder on the CFII than they are on the student."
I did not want to screw up, and luckily, this time
around I did not.

I did make some mistakes on the checkride. One of
which was flying on a vector right through the FAC
on a partial-panel VOR-A approach to TCY. I was
behind the plane, had not dialed in the OBS as
quickly as I should have, when I did, the needle was
already on the wrong side.

I caught the problem right away, correcting right
away, and said so out loud. The rest of the approach
was sloppy by my standards, but within PTS limits.
Still, the DE could have failed me right then and
there. He elected not to. Luck.

There's just something about checkrides.

-- dave j
-- PP-ASEL, IA
-- jacobowitz73 --at-- yahoo --dot-- com

Jon Kraus wrote in message ...
Took my IFR checkride today and busted... I screwed up the holding
pattern big time and that was that... At first I was so damn fustrated
that I told the DE that I just want to head back to the airport... Then
I thought to myself "what are you going to do there pout?" :-) I then
decided to go ahead with the rest of the ride and get it out of the way.
I did OK... not great but passable... This DE made it pretty easy on
me... He was telling me about his IFR checkride and him busting on his
first attempt too... He busted on the holding pattern too so I didn't
feel that bad.. He now has 14,000+ hours and doesn't worry about his
busted IFR checkride so I figured why should I... Now I just need to go
back up with my instructor once, do the freakn' holding pattern... Go
back up with the DE... do the freakn' holding pattern and be done...
More to follow...

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL
Student-IA Argggg...

Dave Jacobowitz wrote:
Hey, try not to sweat it. Not passing a check ride
is not a big deal. You take it again.

I blew my PP checkride the first time around. I flew
fine, but exercised poor judgement by flying too close
to a cloud. I believed I was outside the 1000/500/2000
rule, but he didn't, and that was that. I don't blame
the DE for failing me.

I think the hardest part of the whole episode was
looking my instructor in the eye, telling him how I
busted. He knew I was ready, I just f**'d up.

When I took my IFR checkride, my instructor once
again admonished me that "these things are really
harder on the CFII than they are on the student."
I did not want to screw up, and luckily, this time
around I did not.

I did make some mistakes on the checkride. One of
which was flying on a vector right through the FAC
on a partial-panel VOR-A approach to TCY. I was
behind the plane, had not dialed in the OBS as
quickly as I should have, when I did, the needle was
already on the wrong side.

I'm just refreshing myself on the regs getting ready to re-enter flying
after several years off, but I seem to recall that you could have
something like 2/3 or so needle deflection before you are out of
tolerances on VOR tracking. Unless you had FS deflection, I don't see
why the DE would have or should have failed you.


I caught the problem right away, correcting right
away, and said so out loud. The rest of the approach
was sloppy by my standards, but within PTS limits.
Still, the DE could have failed me right then and
there. He elected not to. Luck.

On my instrument ride, the day was very windy giving moderate turbulence
down low and probably a 40K wind higher up. It took me about 3 circuits
to get the holding pattern nailed on both wind correction angle and
timing, but the DE saw that I was getting it closer each time and that
was all he cared about. I think demonstrating good judgement and good
situational awareness is much more important than holding the needle
centered all the time.


Matt

On my instrument ride, the day was very windy giving moderate turbulence
down low and probably a 40K wind higher up. It took me about 3 circuits
to get the holding pattern nailed on both wind correction angle and
timing, but the DE saw that I was getting it closer each time and that
was all he cared about. I think demonstrating good judgement and good
situational awareness is much more important than holding the needle
centered all the time.

Me similar. I got blown right across the inbound track on the first
outbound. Luckily I caught it and my SA recovered enough that I was quickly
back on the inbound course. The only thing he dinged me for was not using
the localizer for added SA on an NDB hold (I was trying to do the NDB hold
without "cheating", I guess).

-- David Brooks