124 hours later. Finally passed my PPL checkride. A question for more experienced pilots and A&Ps

Posted by WorkingOnPPL@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 18 comments

It embarrasses me to write that 124 hour number, but it is the unvarnished truth. Four weather reschedulings with the DPE over three months certainly contributed, as did my first instructor (who I now believe may have been slow-rolling me for hours), but I still think a lot of it had to do with me. Even if I was paired with a top-5% instructor from the beginning, I still think I would have been a 70 hour student. The DPE was very complimentary of my flying and knowledge in the debrief though, which made me feel good. This is a bit of a funny story....heading into the checkride, my biggest concern was the short-field landings. For whatever reason, even after all these hours, I was still probably only nailing 40-50% of short-fields to ACS parameters. I seriously doubted I would be able to nail this landing on the checkride. So the checkride is coming to an end, and is going better than I could have possibly hoped for. The DPE calls for a short-field landing...the moment of truth has arrived. I landed within 200 feet of my chosen spot! I remembered to apply maximum braking pressure with flap retraction! I did it! And then suddenly as I am internally celebrating, **the engine dies completely right there on the runway.** For whatever reason, the DPE didn't bat an eye, and had me restart the engine and do a soft-field takeoff right there so we could do our final lap in the pattern and come in for our soft-field landing. Now the funny part: would you believe me if I told you that the most relaxed I have ever felt in a training aircraft during these 124 hours, was on that upwind leg one-minute following an engine failure that the DPE and I did not even pause to diagnose? That's how much relief I felt from nailing the short-field. Life can be....**ironic.** **A question**: in the debrief, the DPE suspected that the engine quit due to "excessive braking pressure with carb heat on." Have any of you more experienced pilots heard of such a thing in a C-172? Also, I noticed at times it felt like the engine was running a touch rough during the checkride, and seemed like it was topping out at 2200 on the RPM gauge in a climb at one point, when it was hitting 2300-2400 the day prior (similar atmospheric conditions.) If anyone has experienced something like this, or can make an educated guess I would be grateful, as this is now worrying me a bit more that I have had a bit more time to think without all the adrenaline. Thank you.