(I have flown innumerable checkrides administered by the: USMC,USN,USAF active, ANG, FAA, and a major air carrier (all three seats).
1. -everybody gets 'checkitis' (anxiety of the unknown);
- the perfect checkride has never been flown;
2. on a checkride of this nature, the checkpilot's main concern is signing you off, to adequately perform when he is not there -there are other types of checkrides later;
3. dead/quiet time is bad-it can give the checkpilot time to throw a rock at you;
4. my advice: self-critique a quiet narrative as if you're the instructor, mildly. such as 'I'm a couple of degrees left of centerline correcting', 'airspeed coming back'. 'turning downwind -abeam' etc;
5. objective: shows your connected, and hopefully ahead of the aircraft. This is what a checkpilot wants to see, ie: what's this guy thinking, what will he be doing when I'm not here?
6.although I've never flown a piston engine AC nor had a ppl, any checkride can feel overwhelming. You will make mistakes and think: oh did he see that? do your best to not fixate or get hung-up on what just happened. this is normal and costs critical cerebral bandwidth as other things are now happening, so just press-on pretending you're a composed airman,
Good Luck!
(sorry for the gloat-back to lurking)
