Never Again: Wild card

I had been diligently practicing and studying for the checkride for more than a year. I had passed the knowledge test in February, and completed the hours requirements in March. I couldn’t wait for my checkride with the FAA examiner. He is near Chattanooga, Tennessee, at an airport nestled between two ridges and well-concealed by tall trees. You are almost on top of it before you see it. I’d been nervous for several weeks, but this spring morning I was in the zone. I left Dekalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta, wheels up at 8 a.m., heading northwest under a broken cloud layer at about 6,000 feet. I cruised northwest in the Cessna 182 at 4,500 feet, happily anticipating a successful outcome to the checkride.

I had told the FAA examiner to expect me at 8:45 a.m., and the wheels touched down at that small hidden airport at 8:45:09. Couldn’t have nailed that any better. It was a good omen. The examiner had tested me for my private pilot certificate almost two years earlier, and although he tests hundreds of pilots, he said he remembered me.

He started the oral portion of the checkride by asking me what I needed, as pilot, to be legal and safe, what my airplane needed to be legal and safe. We reviewed the long instrument cross-country flight he had me plan ahead of time (from Chattanooga to Nashville), what I would do if I lost communications, chart symbols, weight and balance, and weather questions that typically only a meteorologist on Channel 2 action news would know. After a little more than two hours, he declared I knew my stuff. We headed out to the airplane to fly. I was starting to feel pretty confident.

The examiner wanted to see a few things as he followed me around while I was doing the preflight inspection. Is the registration on my airplane current (yes), did I have an identifier plate on the airplane (yes), did I have the pilot’s operating handbook in the airplane (yes), and on and on. All was good, until we got to one thing.

My airplane has a Garmin GPS. When all else fails, you can always navigate by the magnetic compass. An airplane’s compass always needs to show any deviations caused by magnetic influences within the airplane—it’s a requirement for a compass correction card to be in the airplane, typically located on or by the compass. There are 12 cardinal compass directions that should be tested, and the deviations should be easily locatable on the compass in the airplane.

My airplane is a 1978 model. I did not know if the magnetic compass was original to the airplane, but I have certainly seen the compass correction sticker attached to it. Honestly, I never paid much attention. On this day, the FAA examiner pointed out that the sticker only showed six of the 12 required compass headings. Half of the compass card sticker was missing. This old faded sticker looked like something from my grandpa’s toolshed.

Sometimes you can’t “see” what is right in front of you. I have photographic and video evidence dating back to when I first bought the airplane that shows the bottom half of the sticker was never there, and neither me, nor my instructors, nor anyone who flew with me ever noticed. Until the FAA examiner noticed on checkride day. So, we couldn’t fly legally.

What happened next is called a discontinuance—meaning, after I got this darn compass thing corrected, I could go back and complete the flight portion of the exam. And I have been happily (and safely) flying in the clouds ever since.

Karen Atkins is an instrument-rated private pilot who lives in Atlanta, Georgia.