George Felix Checkride Gauge I took my checkride with George Felix this past fall. The ground was about 0.7. From what I remember, we got into density altitude and how it affected our engine. We also talked about what would happen if our tire fell off in the air. I talked about how coming in to land we would want to do a soft field landing with proper “wind” corrections to keep weight off of the strut without a wheel. He liked that answer, but wanted me to think “deeper”. His point was that although it is an emergency, it’s not something that we need to land ASAP for. We utilize our fuel to get to somewhere with the correct resources (aka firefighters at the field). In MKT we have the fire trucks, but firefighters are on call and have to drive out, which would take more time. That is honestly all I remember from the ground, there was more, however use the other gauges to help put you on the right path with studying. My flight was 1.2. Due to clouds being lower he briefed me that I would be doing the eights maneuvers (lazy and pylons). He said we would do maneuvers and come back in for landings and I get 1 go around for the P180. We went up and did just that. Maneuvers went well, I got slightly fast on my lazy eight (2ish kts out of standards), corrected, and he asked why that happened. I told him I held the nose down for too long and we moved on. Eights on Pylons went well, a little hard to find points up there since its all trees but TAKE YOUR TIME finding your points. He likes to try and rush by picking points for you. A friend of mine did that and got situationally unaware and unsat because of it, so pick your own points. Landings were a little tricky for me. It was still hot out and LOTS of updrafts from trees because of it. He pulled my power on base to final because I was a little wider than what he liked (I thought it was fine distance from the airport). I was going to make the runway and he just had me go around. The one thing that threw me off was that he picks your landing point for you which is the numbers. The sight picture was way in the grass for me and that kinda psyched me out as my aiming point is usually the numbers. P180 was super tricky with the updrafts. I was fast, pitched up to slow down with flaps and would balloon and get too high. Ultimately, that’s what killed me and I unsat in the last 5min on the 180. Upon landing, I was very upset as this is my first checkride fail. We slowed down and he turned to me and said “do you want me to tell ya or do you already know” and started laughing at me. It made me so upset. In the debrief he was kind of poking at me too about it. Overall, I think he is a super fair DPE, just maybe one that I didn’t connect well with. My biggest piece of advice is practice landings at the field. I wish I did that but the guy I went up with called dibs so I couldn’t. Also, TAKE YOUR TIME setting up. He tried to pressure me in rushing and I did things on my own time. He did not like how far from the airport I was (it was 7mi like we practice at MKT).