Originally Posted by PearlPilot

I am excited to say that I will be taking my checkride in less than a week. Needless to say my adrenaline is already up and running and I am in full flight mode. I have been flying ILS approaches pretty good. GPS approaches are made easy on the G430 and I have many times flown the VOR-A approach that I will probably be doing on that day. I have two concerns about the checkride and one is holding patterns. Thanks for the previous thread, I will review everything and try to make the best out of it. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of holding patterns The next concern I have is about busting minimums. Being so focused on staying at altitude, for an example, leveling off at MDA (on a VOR-A) and scanning for the runway at 1200 MSL, if I stared at the altimeter I make a power change, uh oh, now am descending, so I add power and if I didn't lower the nose and reduce power I am going to go over 1300 ft. and I do this over and over. This is definitely not something I want to do on the checkride. I want to lock in a power setting, trim, and make minor adjustments. I have done everything I can so hopefully it goes well. The good news is that I am doing it with the same DPE as for my PPL so hopefully I will be at ease. Any checkride tips for and tips for not busting minimums are highly appreciated.