A student pilot says "Hello EuroGA"

My checkride was today…and I passed!

My examiner was a 70 year old veteran pilot, instructing for 45 years, who used to fly fast jets for the Luftwaffe and did formation aerobatics for a long time. He exsuded (sp?) a calm aura of someone who’s seen it all.
The weather was “sub-optimal” but once I had seen my examiner I was certain that whatever happens I’d get back on the ground in one piece.

It was raining when we met at the field, like this:
METAR EHGG 280925Z AUTO 10009KT 070V130 9999 FEW007 FEW015CB
BKN021 BKN026 17/16 Q0997 TEMPO 5000 -SHRA SCT015CB=

But my instructor had looked at the radar data and proclaimed we had 30 more minutes of rain and thereafter a gap of about 3 hours before the next wave of rain showers and TS would hit us. Along with me, another student had his exam, so the FE decided to try and fit both of us into that weather gap after briefing us while it rained.

I went first. The FE put a lot of emphasis on climbing with Vx until flaps up and then Vy. The stall warning beeped intermittently so he turned it off because “it warned too early and was thus a distraction”. With Vs at 48 flaps down and Vx at 60 he may have a point (the beep starting at 70 sometimes). After climbing to 2000 ft we began flying the route as prepared. He wanted me to fly the track as precisely as possible using only terrestrial navigation, map and stopwatch. GPS was turned off at startup.
Weather and vis was okay for me, vis certainly above 10 km and only a little bit of rain. Once at the first waypoint, a gliding field, we performed an engine out practice landing and resumed our flight. The next waypoint was a small grass strip which we also approached low once with engine idle. Thereafter the FE announced that we would abandon the prepared course and made me find my way to another field ad hoc. Before reaching it he told me my terrestrial nav skills were satisfactory and made me intercept a VOR radial. The VOR kept flagging out, but again my performance was deemed good.
We then started stall practice. The FE wanted me to enter and maintain the full developed stall after deeming my slow flight and turns at 60, 55 and 50 kts adequate. I was hesitating a bit but he took control and got us into a stall with about 18° nose up at cruise power and 45 kts. He centered the stick firmly with hands and knees, pulling it all the way back. The plane banked violently back and forth, trying to get into a spin, but he always recovered with the rudder at about 70° bank. I never experienced as much bank before. This was more a demonstration than anything like an examination, but he wanted me to see what you could do with an aircraft and still maintain control.
I was a bit shaken after that. Still the next test was steep turns, this time 45° bank being asked for, and I performed ok. I did not maintain altitude perfectly on the right turn, dropping about 70ft, but it didn’t seem to bother him. We then navigated back to my home field, performing one normal landing with full flaps and then another with flaps up. Crosswind was about 10kts. Both landings were satisfactory.

And that was it! After 1:29 h I was told I had passed and my colleague was taking my place in the cockpit. He also passed after another one and a half hour of flight.
In the debriefing the instructor simply encouraged me to keep flying, being afraid of unusual attitudes would ease off with practise he said. Though I must say I wouldn’t want to practice anything like this without an experienced instructor onboard who could manage the recovery if I botched it and got into a spin.
I found the method of spin prevention demonstrated here rather interesting: If you don’t move the stick sideways at all, you cannot get into a spin. Or so the FE said and showed me. Although I’m fairly certain that if he hadn’t used lots of rudder in those steep banks in stall we would have spun as well, right?

Whatever, the checkride is behind me and my license shall arrive by post next week. Hooray!