CardinalFlyer
New member
I really don't want to post this publicly for fear of someone I know seeing it and it coming back to haunt me but I need advice. I have been training with a flight school. The flight school is owned by the ONLY DPE available to me. To get another DPE will require that I take a commercial flight to another state. I am ready for my checkride. I have the hours, my instructor says I'm ready, I feel good about it. Everything is good. HOWEVER
I bought a plane so that I don't have to deal with scheduling conflicts at the school, and ever since then the owner of the school / my only DPE option has become very...aggressively opinionated about me. He has told my instructor repeatedly that he needs to make sure I am 100% ready because he's going to be very strict with me. Because I own my own plane (And therefore will not be renting from him after my checkride), he says that he has to be more strict than with a normal candidate who doesn't own a plane and that I need to do everything perfectly or I'll fail.
He refuses to do the checkride in my plane because it's uninsured, which I get, I guess. My ******** detector says that he holds that stance to force me to continue renting his planes, because of his attitude toward money, though. Ever since my plane purchase he has become very aggressive in regards to money. The way we pay here is normally after the lesson via direct deposit into the school's bank account. He texted me last night after 9PM with my total due for the day's lesson and then texted me this morning before the bank was even open reminding me that he's waiting on his money. I have yet to screw him out of money and I don't intend on starting now.
All of this has added up though, and now I really truly don't know what to do about my checkride. Part of me wants to just take a commercial flight elsewhere, fly a few hours with an instructor in the new location, and schedule a ride there to avoid the obvious bias that's happening here. Part of me wants to take the checkride and nail it so that there's nothing to do but pass me. At the end of the day, I know I'm capable, but I fear that this crap has gotten into my head and that I'm not going to perform "perfectly" and will have wasted more money on the plane rental and the DPE only to have to do it again and again until he's satisfied that I'm perfect.
Thoughts? Opinions? Do I go with him, try to do it perfectly, accept my likely failure and try again or do I just bite the bullet, go somewhere else, and get examined by someone who doesn't have pre-conceived biases against me?
I bought a plane so that I don't have to deal with scheduling conflicts at the school, and ever since then the owner of the school / my only DPE option has become very...aggressively opinionated about me. He has told my instructor repeatedly that he needs to make sure I am 100% ready because he's going to be very strict with me. Because I own my own plane (And therefore will not be renting from him after my checkride), he says that he has to be more strict than with a normal candidate who doesn't own a plane and that I need to do everything perfectly or I'll fail.
He refuses to do the checkride in my plane because it's uninsured, which I get, I guess. My ******** detector says that he holds that stance to force me to continue renting his planes, because of his attitude toward money, though. Ever since my plane purchase he has become very aggressive in regards to money. The way we pay here is normally after the lesson via direct deposit into the school's bank account. He texted me last night after 9PM with my total due for the day's lesson and then texted me this morning before the bank was even open reminding me that he's waiting on his money. I have yet to screw him out of money and I don't intend on starting now.
All of this has added up though, and now I really truly don't know what to do about my checkride. Part of me wants to just take a commercial flight elsewhere, fly a few hours with an instructor in the new location, and schedule a ride there to avoid the obvious bias that's happening here. Part of me wants to take the checkride and nail it so that there's nothing to do but pass me. At the end of the day, I know I'm capable, but I fear that this crap has gotten into my head and that I'm not going to perform "perfectly" and will have wasted more money on the plane rental and the DPE only to have to do it again and again until he's satisfied that I'm perfect.
Thoughts? Opinions? Do I go with him, try to do it perfectly, accept my likely failure and try again or do I just bite the bullet, go somewhere else, and get examined by someone who doesn't have pre-conceived biases against me?
