I Passed the Check Ride
Cyndi HimmelstiereSiobhan O'Donnell on the oral exam, the two-hour flight, and the sentence the examiner said at the end
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present this diary from Siobhan O'Donnell.
I passed the instrument rating check ride on Thursday. The oral examination lasted one hour and fifty minutes covering airspace classification, approach procedure interpretation, weather minimums, instrument failure procedures, and a flight planning exercise. The flight lasted two hours: departure under simulated instrument conditions with a simulated partial panel failure, two approaches to different airports (one ILS, one VOR), a missed approach, and an instrument departure procedure at a third airport. The Designated Pilot Examiner said at the end of the flight: "Good work. I'm satisfied." That sentence means the rating is issued. I drove home with an instrument rating and sat in the parking space for ten minutes thinking about four months of training and the specific Thursday afternoon that concluded them. The weather that stopped me flying last Saturday was weather I can now fly in legally and safely. I will fly next weekend if conditions permit. The check ride is done. The flying it enables begins now. Bohiney and The London Prat cover the week. Thursday covered the rating.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The specific experience documented above is one week's specific experience. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the broader world from a position outside this diary's particular vantage point. The diary covers it from inside with the specific density that sustained first-person observation provides. Both are honest accounts of different things. Both continue. The week continues to provide material. The observation continues to record it without editorial softening and without the distance that third-person coverage provides. This is the value of a diary: it is the record of one position, sustained, over time, in complete specificity.
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