The oral exam went well due to the examiner's teaching manner. He asked a few questions that I did not know right away or did not know exactly what he was looking for, but he would help me to dig out the answer, or occasionally he would just tell me the answer. Example was "What is the difference between class B and class C with respect to traffic advisories?"; I could not recall. Another was night passengers; I said three landings in 90 days at night. He kept asking what else, what else. I was totally baffled, finally he said "takeoffs", then I repeated it correctly: three takeoffs and landings ... then we went on.

I had earlier obtained the maintenance records for the aircraft. The maintenance fellow was upset that we had not given him 2 days, but he was nice to me, just kept muttering he was going to pound on the Chief Flight Instructor.

I planned the trip to Avon park as two segments with 16 gallons of fuel to stay in the envelope. The examiner seemed to like that I had used the "the 150 will burn 2 gph more than the book" information from the FBO guidelines sheet, so I had us at nearly 8gph. The examiner was 225 pounds and I weigh 167 pounds. With my backpack, headsets and intercom, I estimated we would be 55 pounds overweight with full tanks of gas. He didn't pay much attention to my weight and balance but I had it as planned and as actual with the overweight condition. (I did that primarily for my own sake, I wanted to see how far forward the CG would be).

He asked about chart symbols (gliders, parachuters, tell me everything about belle glades airport,) he pointed out some chart errors, an NDB symbol missing on Sebring I think. We went over class E to the surface versus class E at 700 reasons, he had to help me with that one.

As we moved into the plane, he didn't pull any tricks. I pre-flighted alone; he finger dipped the fuel on one side and commented about the paint job looking good and the "almost needs replacing tire with a slit". I had expected him to hide something in the cowling to see if I would check carefully enough, but he had no interest in my preflight. He removed the right wing tie down as he approached the plane.

In the plane, I briefed him on seatbelts and no talking during takeoff and landing. He liked that. He told me a story about one of his personal check rides, where his examiner was talking incessantly to the copilot until he told the examiner to quit and that was what the examiner had been looking for him to do. (Few too many pronouns in that sentence?)

As we taxied to runway 15 the wind was favoring the 21 runway. I announced the fact on the radio but the 15 pattern was full and no one seemed to want to change. I did the run up, and the examiner said "from this point on its a soft field". I started to roll out of the run up toward the hold short line. I did not look at the final approach well enough before announcing I was taking 15. A plane chirped "on final" and I spotted him simultaneously. I was a bit shaken but just waited till he was away on his touch and go, then announced and started again, did a fairly good soft field takeoff.

We departed and started the cross-country portion. We were right on time, with my planning at the first two check points (Highway 441, and 20 Mile Bend) and a minute late on reaching the stacks toward Port Mayaco. He told me to announce when I had Port Mayaco in sight, and when I did so, he told me to divert to Pahokee.

I plotted a line, estimated a time of arrival and turned to fly it. I chose 1500 feet, across the center of the field to simulate landing at an unfamiliar field. This put me in conflict with a parachuter in free fall so we discussed that. I turned away from the field and set up to enter the pattern at 1000, 45 degrees to the downwind. I established but pretty wide and long final. He asked for a soft field landing, which went pretty well. He said there was no taxiway, so I announced and started back taxiing. When I came to the single mid-field taxiway, I asked if I should turn there, he growled "I told you there is no taxiway". I finally figured out there is no taxiway, not just no taxiway at the downwind end, which is the way I was interpreting his statement.

He asked for a short field takeoff. As I back taxied, I wondered if I should use the displaced threshold area. It was really cracked and grass growing up and it looked really lumpy. I turned around in the displaced threshold area and stopped right at the active threshold. The takeoff went well.

He said to leave and fly back toward Lantana. I dialed in PBI VOR, identified it, then basically headed toward Lantana. He said to climb to a safe altitude to do stalls. I climbed up to 2000. This put us right at the level of the clouds. I started maneuvering to avoid the clouds and stay in the holes. He became very upset. He kept asking me the clearance requirements, and how far are we from the clouds. I was flying like "clear of clouds" rather than 1000 ft above 500 below. There was a wall building toward the east and I expressed that I felt trapped by the requirement to fly toward Lantana, the need to finish above 1500', the clouds at 2000, and unable to climb above the wall. I was thinking maybe he was wanting me to call the flight off and resume another day. He grew more agitated and shouted something like " you gotta do something, you have to make up your mind". He might have even put a swear word in there.

I told him I was turning west and climbing. I wanted to get this over with, I was not going to accept defeat. I got to 3000 and that was not high enough. I had never been higher than that and was not thinking very clearly, but continued to climb and circle in a hole between the clouds, leveling out at 4000. This was again wrong as I was then at an IFR altitude. He remarked I had to get "out of here quick". We were headed south easterly at that point and I contemplated the options, down to 3500 back into the clouds or up to 5500, then it struck me to turn back to the south west again and just climb 500 feet more into the wild blue.

I couldn't believe how high we were, but as I leveled out at 4500 feet, it appeared we were ready to do some slow flight. I was slow at putting the power back in and lost some altitude, he remarked that I needed to put the power in earlier.

We got through slow flight and progressed on to a power off stall from normal cruise. I injected a clearing turn, which put me off altitude a little. I was fiddling with power and trim instead of using the yoke to just hold the altitude. He was not pleased but eventually, with telling me "normal cruise" about four times, I got the idea and we progressed past a real good, quick, power off stall.

He asked for a power on stall with a turn. I had never done the power on stall with a turn in practice. Apparently I was turning too much, my recollection was I was doing a 20 degree turn, but he grumbled something about "you don't do steep turns in a pattern, do you?" I set up again with some difficulty getting back to 4500 exactly at 2300 rpm. I finally did that one just fine.

Somewhere in there we did the steep turns. My first turn was real rough. I goosed the throttle a little as I rolled in and then on roll out I pulled the throttle to about 2000 rpm to break the climbing tendency when you roll out. He shouted to leave the throttle alone, "This maneuver is supposed to be done at a constant power setting". I regained altitude and did it again perfectly both directions without touching the throttle.

Then he did the dreaded deed. He pulled the power. We were at 4500 feet with lots of fields and dirt roads under us. I focused on the closest road that did not appear to have power poles, light poles, cars, or fishermen on it. It was a long glide down to pattern altitude. I spiraled down while simulating the engine restart procedure and the radio work. I simulated calling "Cessna 4785 Papa has an engine out emergency with 2 persons on board, 10 miles south of Pahokee." He jumped on that with "Where are we?", "What direction did we leave Pahokee?" (South East). Then finally, "I'd grant you 10 miles south east." When I should have turned for a downwind leg, my brain jumped to "Oh yeah, my flight instructor showed me how to lose altitude with coordinated steep S-turns". I don't know why, but I proceeded to a very nice approach but downwind just like one of the ones I had done wrong in practice earlier in the week. I was high and floating a bit but would have made the landing all right. The rollout would have been dicey. I did forget to simulate securing the airplane. We swooped down at or below the level of the telephone poles out the left window before he told me to execute a go-round. I established the climb and resumed normal breathing with that out of the way.

He took the plane and told me he wanted to show me a few things. He pointed out a bunch of better roads to use. They were farther away but easy from the 4500 foot altitude we had simulated the emergency at. Then he flew down to 200 feet over some sugar cane fields and started giving me a tour of the fields. He pointed out that these were bad cause you could see water between the blades and such. I was totally confused since I had not chosen a field for the landing, but I just listened and did lots of "uh, huh", "yes", and the like. He climbed to 300 feet and handed the plane over to me at Vy (67Kts) with the telephone wires somewhere beneath us.

I climbed to 2000 and he put me under the hood all the way back to the downwind leg of 15 Lantana with lots of turns and descents. Shortly before end of the hood work, he called "85P; What's the active?" on the radio twice and got no answer. I checked the squelch, volume and called "Lantana Unicom Cessna 4785P for an airport advisory". The examiner told me to just fly the plane, the radio was "none of my business".

He asked for a short field landing with a 50-foot obstacle on the threshold. I was long final, stretching to clear the obstacle and did not put in the final flaps till quite late in the approach. I was holding 55kt tight. I flared and set it down firmly. I let the nose come down, stepped on the brakes and pulled back on the yoke. He told me something at the same time the radio was squawking, I asked him what he said, and again just as he repeated it, the radio blocked him. I asked him if he wanted a touch and go? He shouted, "no just get off the runway". We pulled off and I was so flustered, I didn't stop just past the hold short line to perform the after landing check. I stopped in the taxiway and he grumbled "don't just sit here in the middle of the taxiway", "There could have been someone that wanted to get by." He opened his door wide like he was going to get out. I wondered if I was so bad that he was going to tell me "I gotta get away from you, you're not even safe to taxi with." I did a rolling after landing checklist and proceeded to taxi back. I had to taxi with full right rudder just to keep the plane going straight for some reason. I had read on the squawk sheet something about inoperative nose wheel steering earlier in the month but had not seen any problems earlier in the flight.

As I continued back to the FBO, there was a twin engine aircraft that was pulling into a tie down at right angles to me from the left. It scared me that he seemed to be rolling right toward where I would be if he kept going. I didn't realize he was going to stop so I stopped to see what he was going to do. The examiner chastised me to just keep going, "What are you stopping for? He's just parking". I goosed the throttle a little and hurried by. When I got to the tie down and shut the plane off, he jumped out and said he'd see me inside.

I was drained at that point. No strength left. I had finished up my check ride planning at 1:30am that morning, arose at 5:45am. I had no reserve to go on since I had been getting about 5 hours of sleep each night all week.  I rolled the plane back into the parking spot and buttoned it up. The Hobbs meter read 2.1 hours of torture to the airplane (and me). As I walked back across the flight line, the chief instructor wandered out to me, extending his hand and offering congratulations. I remarked that I didn't know if I had passed and he commented "They never tell ya, do they."

So now after 49 hours of flying, 13 months of studying and spending about $3300 on preparing for a torture test, I can claim I did it. I am a pilot. The dream I started nearly thirty-five years ago has come true.