Multi Engine (Expanded)

My multi-engine checkride was scheduled for Thursday, March 16th. As always, I never get to do the checkride when it's first scheduled. I've been flying a Piper Seminole (PA-44 / 180) since the start of the semester. I had 11.1 hours in the airplane by the time I took the ride. So anyways, Thursday comes by and I get to the airport. Turns out the FAA had come by and took one of the Seminoles somewhere for something (I don't even know what). The other one was down for maintenance, so I was like "damn" and all that. I did the oral exam, which lasted for about an hour and a half and went fine. Scheduled the flight for Sunday at 9am.

Sunday 9am comes by and the clouds are pretty low. One of the requirements of the checkride is to actually shut down an engine in flight, which has to be done at a high enough altitude so that if it doesn't restart you can glide to an airport. I needed to be able to get to 4,500ft, and the clouds didn't let me do it. My examiner is leaving town for the week on Tuesday, March 21 so there's not much time. Rescheduled flight for 7:30am Monday March 20.

7:30am March 20 comes and it's the same thing. Lake Effect is causing a lot of clouds pretty low. Examiner says he can do it later in the day, like 3pm. Waited all day for the clouds to rise. About 4pm they finally start to break up and we decided to go. The ride went pretty smoothly. I was very nervous before the flight, but once I actually start flying I'm always better. I ran through the maneuvers which were okay. Then we failed the engine, which was cool and probably the last time I'll see a stopped prop hanging out there for a while (hopefully). Then we did the VOR-A approach into KSU with a simulated failed engine all the way to the landing. After all that, we took off one more time and did a short field landing and I was done! There's nothing more satisfying than the moment when you realize you passed a checkride. Glad to be done.

Now I can focus more on my Certified Flight Instructor work and it frees up about 3 hours in the middle of the day for me too. Woots.