ASK A DPE | Live Stream | DPE, Checkride, Private Pilot Questions and MORE

all right I think we're live you ready for this hello Internet hey guys welcome to our first live stream ever we're pretty excited here I've got my good friend Jim Pitman who is a instructor and dpe and he's gonna be answering your questions live so I hope you guys have a lot of questions Jim why don't you go ahead and take them home and tell us about yourself well thank you Carl and you know thank you for putting this together I think it's important that we all use technology to stay connected and social during this unusual time of scythe of self isolation so this is fun and as far as my background with flying I I'm the first one in my family to start flying got into aviation at a young age with radio controlled airplanes when I was about 10 or 11 years old and my dad got me my first flight in a real airplane when I was 15 immediately caught the bug know something I wanted to do started taking lessons when I was 16 got my private pilot's certificate when I was 17 and did my instrument and commercial I knew right away that I wanted to be a career flight instructor and that was mainly looking at my own flight instructor and how much fun he was having so even before my first solo I I set my sights on being a career flight instructor and that was back in a lot of New Year's Day 1993 I remember well was my first solo and then fast forward a few years I became a flight instructor Oh at the ripe old age of 21 that was a 1997 and I've been a flight instructor ever since it's been a been a great career done a lot of different things within management was chief flight instructor at large flight school for many years worked at Cessna Aircraft as a regional manager for Cessna pilots thinners in the western US and Canada for several years well for a few years I was up until the last rochette recession hit and then been a freelance instructor for several years and started doing the designated pilot examiner gig last year got on board and may start doing check rides last June so still pretty new at that but having fun with it and happy to come and share some answers hopefully I helped out some people who are looking for information great thanks for sharing that so how this is gonna work today guys is I'm gonna be monitoring the chat and feeding the questions to Jim and he's gonna answer them a lot of the answers from Jim will probably be his personal opinion as a designated pilot examiner and if it's gonna be a legitimate FAA answer he will look it up and he will show it to you guys on his screen which is a great way for you guys to be able to learn how to look these questions up as well so again I'll be monitoring chat if you have a question put it in the chat I'm gonna copy and paste that over to another screen here and then I'll be relaying those to Jim so super excited for this let's have some fun hi to Rodney who is said hello to me hi to Brian who I know here locally and hello there someone from Turkey I can't pronounce your name but hello Turkey yes so we're gonna dive in here and the first question Jim as a DPE what lists the three most important things about the checkride three most important well first of all thank you for mentioning kind of that little disclaimer I I will do my best to be factual with my answers a lot of this I'm sure will just be from my own experience my own opinions observations so please understand that that's where I'm coming from whenever it's appropriate I will do my best to find an official reference so when you ask about something that's the most important let me just rattle off some things that come to mind and then maybe I will prioritize them from least important and most important so what are some important things about a check right well no matter what checkride you're going for and keep in mind we do have an international audience today but everything I'm talking about is from the FAA perspective for training you know people here in the United States so we use what what's called the Airman's circuit the Airman's certification standards or the ACS and that's what people are gonna be using for private instrument commercial for some of the advanced ratings as of today people are still using the older version which is called the practical test standards or pts so we're gonna keep our answers mostly focused on private maybe instrument training today and the first thing that comes to mind is for applicants to be very familiar with the ACS for whatever checkride that they're doing make sure you read through understand what's in there a lot of people don't realize that some of the best stuff is in the back of the book in the appendices goes through in great detail and talks about what it takes to pass the test what it takes to not pass the test what expectations the examiner has for you and what expectations you should have for the evaluator and whether that's an FA employee or a designated pilot examiner d PE or some large flight schools have what's called examining Authority where it's an employee of the school that does your checkride so regardless of who that person is we'll just call them the evaluator which is the language that the ACS uses so that's that's probably the top of my list is just being familiar with what's in there understanding how it works maybe later we'll talk a little more detail about how to use it as a tool the next thing that comes to mind is having what I call the pilot-in-command mindset no matter which check read you're doing even starting right with the Private Pilot check ride the and a quick aside on that it's important to use the right words we have a lot of nicknames for things though so the official term is practical test and then check write is the nickname but it's it's pretty soon ominous so we use them back and forth anyway Private Pilot practical test or check ride it even right there it's important to have that pilot-in-command attitude mindset demeanor sometimes there's a fine line between being confident and being cocky certainly you don't want to act like you've got a you know an attitude that's cocky but there is something about being confident knowing that you've been trained properly and that you're ready to be the pilot in command on the day of the check ride the evaluator should brief you on the fact that they're pretending to just be a passenger and you are there as the pilot in command to take control of the overall situation so those are the first two things that come to mind I suppose we should mention that it's important that you know what you should know that's outlined in the ACS and there is a certain amount of room for interpretation as far as how well you need to know certain things and then the last one being you need to perform in the airplane and do things within the standards that the ACS outlines there so I think that's probably a pretty good order starting with knowing being familiar with the ACS having the pilot in command mindset having the ground knowledge that's required by the standards and having the flight proficiency so do all those things you shouldn't have any trouble passing and if anyone wants to Carl we can go into more detail on any of those ok no I thought those were three very important things I liked them quite a bit so and we're getting a lot of great questions here so let's go ahead and move on to the next one and what is the most commonly failed item on the oral or the flying portion of the Private Pilot checkride don't know so I specialize in instrument training as an instructor and it worked out when I started doing check rides last June that I actually got approved to do instrument check rights first and then it was a couple months before the FAA got around to giving me more certifications which is normal it was unusual though for me to be doing instruments only and I I love doing instrument training so just a little side note that's where most of my experience is that as as an examiner I have done several private and commercial single-engine check rides which are the ACS is very similar there's just a few different maneuvers for the commercial and things go into more detail but thinking specifically with the private pilot from my experience for the the ones that I have done I don't know that I've recognized any trends of where someone would be unsatisfactory on the ground or in the flight I can tell you that the things like the short field landing have pretty tight tolerances when you look in the ACS you know you're you're not allowed to lane short on the short field landing and I remember I had one applicant that did that by a good 30 feet and there's so yeah we're there some things are just black and white so watch the standards keep in mind that when you read the ACS it talks about in one of the appendices in the back that it's up to the discretion of the evaluator and they use words like making sure that you don't consistently exceed the tolerances but when it comes to something like the short field landing you really need to know it you know with fantasy for the private it's no less than not before so zero feet before in 200 feet past doing that by memory so you you've got a pretty tight tolerance there to work with things like the steep turns maybe you've got you know plus or minus so many feet or so many degrees of heading if there's updrafts down drafts the evaluator can take those kinds of things into consideration but it's really an overall how is this person performing you know can they do the can they be the pilot in command and safely operate within standards most of the time those kinds of things so I'll let you know if I think of anything else specific on that but just my myself don't have a lot of experience to say that there's trends that I've noticed him someone has a follow-up question of that how many people have you failed Jim so we do keep records I know that my pass rates 85% and I've done have to go look at my spreadsheet but I think I've done a little over a hundred check rides in the last year so the only only a 15 you know give or take so yeah and and most of those have been instruments so there's really been only been a few private or commercial single-engine that were unsatisfactory for me huh okay and that that's actually reassuring to me whenever I go for my check ride for my instrument because you know eighty-five percent is pretty good that's you know about where I land on most of my tests anyways there we do have a question coming from a lot of people how much did it cost for you to become a dpe which I already know is a loaded question because it really has a lot more to do with time and experience go ahead yeah so well let me talk about a different aspect of it and there's not going to be a specific dollar amount answer for that it's a fair question but so when I started flying in 1992 the pricing was a lot different and you know I'll be 45 this year I don't I don't feel like that's terribly old but maybe do a lot of people watching this I'm middle-aged at least so but I don't want this to turn into a you know when I was a kid story but just to put it in perspective the the inflation in aviation has been comparable to a lot of other areas of life where we've had an inflation over the last 25 30 years and I remember when I started I was using a an old piper tomahawk it's a two-seat piper over at Glendale Airport here in the Phoenix area and it was thirty-six dollars an hour for that little two-seat trainer that included fuel and I was taking a ground school to Community College and the ground school instructor was advertising that he could do dual instruction for 24 dollars an hour and I met my instructor who was only eighteen or nineteen years old just a couple years older than me who was a student at that Community College and he was advertising twenty two dollars an hour so being that I was paying for it myself and trying to make this all work I start that's how I started is I went with the cheaper guy saved me two bucks an hour and ended up being a real blessing I had the same flight instructor spread out over five years for my private pilot through CFI which I don't normally recommend that someone stick with the same instructor for every certificate rating it's good to get variety for me um it worked out because my instructor was good at pulling from a lot of different places so that's a tangent though so how much did it cost well I once estimated and I was on the fast track to becoming an instructor so I really worked to be efficient in my own training and once I became a flight instructor in early 1997 that's where most of my everything I did after that someone else was paying me to get the experience so that's an important step in the process and I will estimate you guys you gave me you're gonna hate me for this but to the best of my ability to kind of add it up without keeping good records over that whole time I figure it was about $14,000 is what I paid for my own training from zero all the way through ATP right thank you so what's that I do hate you so the keep in mind prices were a lot lower back then and I was I took a lot of the advice that you share with people Carl some of the videos you've made about how to be efficient with training I took a lot of that kind of advice to heart during my commercial I remember I connected with a gentleman who was who owned Bonanza and he didn't care about log in the time and he was doing business trips all over the southwest and he would let me be the pilot in command and log time in his bonanza and then I would take care of the plane when he went to his meeting get it fueled up cleaned up ready to go when he got done with his meeting fly back home and I got a lot of flight time that way so there's there's ways to network and do things on the cheap if you're creative and you're not you're not afraid to to meet the right people and network so after I was a flight instructor like I said then it started that wonderful time when people started paying me to do things even though it wasn't a lot of money it was great experience and it really doesn't cost a lot to become a DP I I like to think of it more I'll make a comparison like a medical profession okay whether you know someone in the middle profession or not everyone watching this is probably watch TV or movies and you can kind of use your imagination so there's all different levels within the medical profession of someone going from being a medical student to being an intern to being a doctor and there's all different types of doctors I get that but imagine someone that's going to be a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon something very specialized and I don't know what people like that typically get paid but I think to make a comparison with general aviation flight training and someone coming up through the ranks being a designated pilot examiner is kind of like being that heart surgeon or brain surgeon where you know if that that surgeon might get paid $5,000 for a three hour operation I'm just making up numbers I don't know did they really earn $5,000 in three hours we'll know their their whole career that prepared them to be able to do that surgery and to do it with confidence and to be able to lead the operating room and you know it's it's more than just the time that they're doing the surgery that money that they earn it represents the value that they provide to the marketplace and a lot of that has to do with supply and demand and there's a lot of screwed up things in flight training finances just like there are in the medical field okay not everything is fair not everything is the way that it necessarily should be in a perfect world but when you when you hand that money to your DP on a check ride just keep in mind you're not paying him or her just for that three four or five six hours whatever it is that you're together you're paying them for being willing to use their entire career of experience to help you get through that required step and a lot of it has to a supply and demand you know a check ride in the Midwest might be $500 but in California it's $1,000 you know here in Arizona were right around $700 for a typical check ride and so it does change region to region but just know that you're not paying the person per hour which is a common mindset that we have as flight instructors working per hour so that's that's part of it Carl do you want me to talk about what it takes to become a DP is that's something our audience really cares about if you could recap that well quick because we've got some great questions so so basically it there's an application process with the FAA and it depends for different regions what their need is for DPS in that area I was very blessed from the time I put in my application til I was accepted and on board was only one year I met people in training two had been weighing several years before they got accepted to even do the training so if you guys know someone who's thinking about being a DP I you know encourage everyone to go to give it a go the they what are they looking for usually experience flight instructors people that have the the real-world experience usually several thousand hours of dual given in you know variety of operations and I'm going throughout the website it's a designee FA gov I'm doing that by my memory my browser remembers it but that should be the right website anyone can go create a free account and start an application right there designee FA gov all right Carl what else we got thanks for that recap on that cuz you know I might submit mine no I'm not someone asked me the other day if I were here wanted to be a dpe because of the thumbnails that we're using I'm like I am nowhere close but this is a good question inside of the check ride the oral portion of it how much is needs to be memorization versus being able to look up the answer if you don't know it exactly okay so that's a great question and the answer will probably vary depending on the examiner some evaluators probably feel more strongly about certain things than others for me I really work to keep it focused on a scenario based situation a realistic situation so for example if I'm say we're doing a scenario that has to do with heaven forbid we experience a bad landing and the airplane gets broken we go off the side of the runway the landing gear collapses the propeller hits the ground what reporting requirements are there you know so we're getting into a scenario that has to do with NTSB 8:30 and that's a scenario where okay we're on the ground you know obviously if someone's hurt we want to get them to the hospital but now we can look in the regs and we can see what's required to be reported do I need to notify the NTSB or the FAA you know those kinds of things can be looked up so I feel like those details can be looked up in the checkride just like they could in real life the you know hopefully the applicant has a general you know they know what NTSB a30 is they know where to find it they can find it quickly you know they've they've had this discussion with their instructor at least once so but but but the details are something that can be looked up that's how I look at that a different example would be were in a scenario that's and we're on the ground talking about it lost communications and you're coming into a towered Airport with no communication and you're looking at the tower they're giving you leg on signals you should know what your leg gun signals are okay that's you know if you're entering the pattern flying an airplane that's not the place to be looking up what flashing red means versus steady green so just kind of think of everything in a scenario and ask yourself is this something I need to know to do my job as a pilot or is this something that I would have time to look up in real life I think that'll give you a good idea that's a great right there that says it all oh you're still there just staring at me nice I was just saying yeah I agree I'm ready for the know recently so I had to think about it they do vary a little bit but I usually schedule six hours from the time we walk in to walk out and the actual briefing times right how long do check rides for you typically last so like how many hours yeah time frame we talked about this 1.5 to 1.8 of actual ground if they go to two hours that's that's pretty long for the ground or the oral portion the actual flight is anywhere from 1.5 to 2.4 depending on what type of check ride where we have to go the instrument ones here tend to be longer because we have to go pretty far to get the instrument approaches we need but you know I add in the the pre-flight and you know other preparations dispatch procedures and the briefings that were required to do then it's it's usually a good and then the paperwork at the end it's usually good six hours from the time we say hello to all the time we say goodbye okay all right another fun question have you seen a trend of will say habits from different applicants that you would say are things to look out for things that you shouldn't be doing or things that you should give up after you become a pilot yes I actually just posted a video today about some of the ones I feel most strongly about so put in a plug for my youtube channel I trust it'll be in the in the links in the description below right Carl so fly with Jim calm is the name of my youtube channel which happens to be my URL and I just posted earlier today a video about using checklist properly and the reason I did that I don't do a lot of videos on YouTube I leave that to the the people like Karl that enjoy doing editing more than I do but the I really felt strongly about this checklist one because I do see a lot of bad habits not so much in the training environment usually on the check rides checklist usage is very good where I see this as the experienced aircraft owners that I fly with I do a lot of specialty training usually in higher performance airplanes retractable gear airplanes and it's it's really unfortunate how common it is for pilots to get complacent about their checklist usage and there's no excuse for it there's been so many studies done not just in aviation I mean this is in the medical field in construction I mean pretty much choose any industry where there is risk of physical harm and you're gonna see good checklist procedures being taught and you're gonna see a wide range of people who either follow or don't follow or something in between and there's so many studies there's so many facts to show that using checklists is the way to be it's the way to perform and so I'm passionate about that go check out the video you can see a few tips and links that I put down below one of them goes to a series of videos from gentleman that he specializes in human factors and he put together a few short videos that I I put into a playlist and have that on my channel and that's linked in that video so definitely checklist discipline other kinds of habits the pre-flight I guess that kind of goes along with checklists but I see people especially aircraft owners the they keep their plane in a hangar and from the time they put it away the time they take it out they're just assuming that nothing changed with the airplane and it's really important to do a post flight inspection after every flight and a pre-flight inspection whether you think anything's changed with the airplane or not and if you know it's one of those things that you might go 999 times with no problem it's just that that 1000th time that there's a problem and is it worth it to check every time the answer is yes it's worth it so I guess that goes along with checklist discipline but you know just watching that habits I think I'll let you know if any others come to mind but this is it's worth mentioning why this is important early in your training flight instructors are taught and learned about something called the levels of learning and well that's related so what do we call the is it the principles of learning now I've got to remember anyway the first one is or one of them is the law of primacy that's what there are laws of learning so the law of primacy says that the things you learned first are best remembered that applies it's just the way our human brains are wired the way we learn to do something is the way we will tend to do it forever more and it's difficult to change the way we do things so hopefully you've got an instructor that is helping you learn good habits early because the law of primacy says that what you learn first and how you learn it is what's going to stick the since I mentioned it the levels of learning let me go and throw that out because that's important for check rights to the levels of learning there's four of them goes from it's rote understanding application and correlation and those build on each other like building blocks rote is just a memorize something understanding is to know what that something means you understand it application is being able to apply it to real life and then correlation is being able to connect it with other things that you also know and understand and and can apply so it's you know we learn something just by start by memorizing it then we work our way up to application the ACS guides us evaluators to grade you at the correlation or the application and correlation levels so anytime you're wondering like well how well do I have to know something or how detailed do I have to know something the answer is you need to know it at least the application level and preferably at the correlation level where you're able to apply it to a real-life scenario and that's one of the reasons that we do scenario based teaching and scenario based evaluations so a little bit of a tangent there what was the original question and I can't remember you're just all right hopefully no I think you did good there it was about bad habits and actually you know on my last video I know two videos ago I showed people while I was flying instead of the pattern and I had a nice man named Steve who I've met out in the field comment and he actually commented in here again he's like one of the worst habits that he seen people have is to yell clear prop and then hit that key mm-hmm he says yell clear prop give people a couple seconds to turn and look and get out of the way before you go ahead and start up and so that is a good way to be a bad habit to get into so all right let's go back to a good de question what is when you have an applicant show up you want them to be organized how would you like to see them be organized to set the mood per se for the check ride great question being early is a good thing most of the applicants I work with are at-large flight schools that do a good job the instructors do a great job at helping them be prepared and part of that is when I walk in at our start time the applicant is already there their books are organized their weight and balance is done their flight plan is done they've already gotten all the current weather information for that day which is required by the ACS and they're ready to rock and roll and they look like they've been sitting there for at least a few minutes they've had a chance to catch their breath relax you know get whatever favorite beverage they want for the check ride and so that that's a great start I've had a couple times where I show up and the applicant is obviously running a little bit behind even if it's only a few minutes I can see the stress level really go up because they're like oh hold on I'm still just you know let me grab the maintenance books or hold on I'm just finishing my weight and balance and and I'm always okay with that it's usually just a few minutes but that's a big one it's just be early be prepared you know if I were to go in chronological order let me back up to the night before there is a point no matter what kind of test you're getting ready for there is a point before the test where you know everything you're gonna know and the best thing you can do is get a good night's sleep get up nice and early so you're not in a hurry have a good breakfast you know if it's a morning check read for example just make sure you're well rested and relaxed and maybe even like 24 hours before your check ride don't study anything maybe flip through the ACS one last time just to kind of refresh your memory on what's in there because that's the guide for the test but you know do all your studying several weeks and several days before the check ride and leave that last I'll say 12 to 24 hours before the check ride to just relax and get a good night's sleep so that's that's some advice for you show up on time be prepared and then all the paperwork so the first part of every check ride after we say hello is to check the eligibility of the applicant and its really nice when the flight instructor is there in person that's not necessarily a requirement you know I understand if they have another flight they weren't able to schedule around whatever but more often than not we really like to see the flight instructor there to help us with any last-minute things that might have been missed so we keep the check ride going so making sure that the logbook is neat and tidy total up the latest page on your logbook with a pencil so we can see the totals that's nice making sure everything is correct and I accra all of that stuff goes a long ways to just helping things not only go quickly and efficiently but it helps keep your stress level down because things are just moving along nice and quick and easy and that's a great way to start the check read so awesome good advice especially the getting sleep and your brains so full just just roll with it at that point here's a fun one how different is a commercial check ride versus a private check ride so the ACS for the private and the commercial single-engine are very similar like almost every area of operation and tasks have the same numbers and the same titles what's different are the tolerances when we're talking about the flight maneuvers there are a few additional maneuvers on the commercial and and actually one taken out so like the commercial does not require you to do a forward slip to land if you do one that's fine but it's not required the way it is on a private pad so there's a few differences like that on the oral side very similar as far as the list of topics with a big difference being on the level that you need to know things to you know when and and we're taught as DPS that you know we take that into account when we're asking a private pilot applicant about thunderstorms or you know weather or whatever the scenario is we expect different answers than we do from a commercial applicant so if you are getting ready for your commercial check ride expect that with every single topic digging deeper and just you know again rote understanding application correlation take it all up a notch or two or three for your commercial knowledge and especially if you're on track or you're in a program where your next step is going to be to be a flight instructor pretty soon after your commercial you're gonna be needing to teach this stuff to someone who's new so I recommend everyone to treat their commercial training like like flight instructor 101 that's the level you need to know it at and then when you get to your flight instructor training you can just focus on learning how to teach not learning what to teach okay so someone is asking can you be too tall to get a chronica pilot license I mean do we just say someone's asking her do you want to do we don't get people a shout out as we go with all these questions I don't have chats moving fairly quickly for me so I am not aware of any specific limitations on height that would come down more to the particular airplane that you're choosing to fly and whether you can safely operate it and that is one of the jobs that we have is as evaluators is to make sure that the person is able to do their job as a pilot and that includes how well they sit in the airplane so from my experience Cessna 150 or 152 depending on whether someone's tall and their legs or tall in their torso somewhere around six foot three six foot four you're just gonna be too big for that airplane and some people even shorter than that because your knees hit the seat doesn't move in the ones that I've flown anyway so you only have so much distance from the pedals to where your knees would hit under the yoke so yeah as long as you can fit the airplane and comfortably perform your duties as a pilot I don't know of any minimum or maximum height or weight limitations good answer yeah the rules is that there's no actual age limit to be able to start learning to fly but technically I guess there's a height limit to learn to fly because like my four-year-old can't reach the pedals but we do have some minimum ages there happen so someone is asking a question this is more of an experience question for you being in a you know an instructor and dpe but more so an airline pilot after you become a commercial pilot where would you go to get a type rating so since you brought the airline thing I guess I should add that to my bio real quick like one little tangent there and tell you that I never plan to be an airline pilot nothing against it as a career I spent a lot of years in helping other people get to the airlines and it's it's a great career for those who choose it for me my personal desires with my family I chose to be a career flight instructor and then about four years ago got what to me was a crazy idea to go be an airline pilot and long story short I was a in a place personally where I was open to some new ideas and trying new things this is back in spring of 2016 and my wife was on board so I put in my application and was hired by Sky West and I'm a first officer at Sky West now so I will tell you it it's not a career change for me truth be known I I'm a full time flight instructor and I do sky West on the side and how that works is sometimes complicated but the quick answer is I bid long-haul reserved and that usually works out well where I can basically keep everybody happy so being an airline pilot has been amazing it it has made me a better flight instructor I mean even just being a student again and and going through the training myself was really humbling so the question about the type rating this whole coronavirus thing is changing our industry as we speak we still don't even know how much it's going to change or how it's going to change but just speaking from where things were four weeks ago when you get hired at a regional airline that airline will train you and pay for your type rating it's actually the training is all done in-house the Chuck ride is done in-house and you are earning a small amount of money while you're in ground school while you're in training and they pay for it wasn't always that way don't know if it'll be that way in the future we sure hope things will continue like they have been in the past in a good way but yeah well we'll see what the future holds okay a question from an International Stu here from Japan which is awesome whoa what he's asking and I know you have experience inside of this and it is something that you have to check for at the check ride which has to do with English proficiency and he's wandering he's worried about communication with ATC and wondering if you have any suggestions for him before he starts training yes there's a lot of guidance in fact Carl let's go ahead and share my screen on this one oh yeah one of the valuable things that I would like to share today is how to search for good references so you guys see in my screen yes so the tip is really easy go to Google I'm in Chrome so this is a Google search and start by typing in FAA if that indeed is what you're looking for the and like we said at the beginning we're going to talk about FA stuff today so um ICAO is the standard we call it level 4 so I'm just gonna search for IFA ICAO level 4 and that refers to how good someone needs to be at English in order to be a pilot that is to be tested by the instructor before their first solo and it's to be tested every step of the way really but especially at each checkride so by starting the search with FA you can see that we got official FAA references coming up here so I'm just gonna right click and do open a new tab on a few of these to see what we get I have some of these archived but I'm just going to show you guys how you could search for this yourself so this advisory circular is a great place to start this one came out in June of 2017 and this will go through and outline the standards we call these ACS short for advisory circular and this is official guidance regulation from the FAA so this is a great place to start and learning about what's required and then let's see that one's talking about the endorsement that's not as applicable and then what do we got here this one's not an AC they call this information for operators a lot of times these will be written to airline operators or part 135 but they they often apply to part 91 type training which is what we're doing in flight training so so that's a great place to start the one I'm thinking of and I'm trying to think if I have this linked somewhere is there sample recordings and I actually learned about this when I was in training and I'm gonna take BFA off the beginning because it's an ICAO reference so yeah my first training meeting that I went to when I was getting ready to be a DP they actually showed this website and it's a great resource so this is so ICAO is the International Civil Aviation Organization and you can see how I got that was just searching for level four samples and I believe that this website still requires you to have flash working so you will have to allow that but then and I don't even know if we're set up where you could hear my audio I'm not going to bother playing these but you can see they have several different languages and they have examples of what it means to be level one two three or four so this is a great way to test or to practice and see whether you're really at level four over here on the right side these are the areas that we're trained to specifically check you on if I hover over you can see its pronunciation structure vocabulary fluency comprehension and interactions and in each recording you can see the score that is given for these examples and the minimum is that you are at level four in all six of those areas so yeah that's that's a great resource I don't know if you know what Carl I'm just going to you this when this is done this is going be like any other YouTube video where you can have oh did I lose you Carl okay I'm like where did the browser go with Carl and there you are head you minimized it scared me for a second alright so I'm gonna I'm gonna send this link to you Carl and but are we able to put links in the description like we do on most YouTube videos yeah we should be able to awesome alright so hopefully that answers his question thank you for joining us from Japan ya thank ya it's a good answer I like that one oh right I'm just kidding you said you liked that one that means you didn't like my other answers you know you're doing great you're agreeing so here's a question I didn't catch his name but he's 13 and he wants to go on a discovery flight and he's asking would you recommend going with a private instructor or going with a flight school for your discovery flight I don't know I would have to talk to both of those instructors and then let you know which is the tongue-and-cheek answer to something that's very serious and that is that there are good and bad instructors everywhere now that I said that I don't really like to say it's good and bad let's call it effective and less effective I'm sure there are good and bad instructors everywhere but most instructors it's a bell-curve like like anything in life you know most of the people are average and then there's people on each extreme both good and bad effective and less effective so I do have a something that I wrote it's like 7 things to look for 7 questions to ask of your flight instructor if you remind me more done Carl I can I can give you that link and you're welcome to share it with everybody it's just a 2 page PDF of some of the things or if you want I can find it right now and read it to you but probably easier just to share it with everyone in the links will share in the comments that's a good so the you know if you go to that private instructor you know do your homework talk to other clients see what kind of reputation they have and same thing if you go to the flight school a lot of times it seems like you don't have control over who you go with they just schedule with whoever's available sometimes you don't know that you've gotten a less effective instructor until it's too late hopefully the school is doing a good job with their management and their leadership that whoever they have trained to do a discovery flight is going to do a good job and give you a good first experience but it kind of goes back to that law of primacy that I talked about earlier where the the first things that you experience really stick with you and that discovery flight is so important when I worked for Cessna that was one of the topics I as I traveled around my territory and I met with flight schools that was one things I talked about the most is training flight instructors how to do more effective discovery flights because that's so important that that be a good experience for you that is a good answer and we'll look for that PDF that you're talking about that that actually goes in line with a project that I'm working on right now as well so that should be very good yeah I know we talked about that did you you have a video that went up a few weeks ago don't you talks a little bit about discovery flight huh or is that when you're still working on the discovery flight when I did a long time ago the one I was working on was working with your instructor and just you know thrown this out there right now I'm working on picking the right instructor there you go so everybody right here okay I've copied so many questions over here someone was asking when you become a DP 'is there an exam yes there was a couple of exams so the FAA loves to give tests let me remember so I think there were two they're both administered online basically the well there's there's a series of interviews that start at the local level or at least one big interview and then some follow-ups but the official training involves online training I think it was like eight hours of online training go at your own pace kind of thing and then a test after that and then five days in Oklahoma City and a test after that and you know I I don't want to say it was easy I mean it was work I had to study but those of us that they select to be a DP you know it's not oh I need five days to get ready for this test like I've been getting ready for this test for like 25 years you know so it's it's stuff that we should know I think there was people in my class that we're getting back into aviation and becoming a DP at the same time it was probably more difficult for them because they had taken a break but for me being an active flight instructor it was really just learning how to do my job as a DP which I really enjoy themselves excellent okay we have some again younger pilots who are in here or future student pilots great what is what is the best plane to fly and follow up with that high wing or lowing so any airplane well I can okay let me let me be careful I asked not any airplane so when you learn about basic aerodynamics you learn about something called stability and there's a couple different types of stability but one type of stability is that when you move the airplane either with the controls or from turbulence or you know the wind that kind of thing does the airplane have a tendency to go back where it was before it got moved or does it get worse or does it stay the same and if you want to look this up its we're talking about static and dynamic stability so the most training airplanes what that means is they were engineered and designed and manufactured in a way that they are inherently stable meaning they go back to where they were before you bumped the controls kind of thing as opposed to an aerobatic airplane or a jet fighter airplane where people would say it's a very slippery airplane because you you move it a little bit and things get moved a lot and that's to make it maneuverable for the mission that it's built for so well side lesson there for stability training airplanes like pretty much all of the single-engine cessnas you know anything with a four-cylinder engine is certainly a great trainer they're all built with a similar design of being very stable good trainers time about the everything from a 150 up through the newer 162 light sport up through a 182 or 170 to 180 to six cylinders and and up which can also be a great trainer very stable the controls just get a little more complex as you get into the 182 and bigger on the piper side any of the archer warrior cherokee type 4 cedars also very stable so there's your basic high wing low wing there's been plenty of people who have learned to fly in a cirrus which is an amazing airplane that's that's more of a sports car you know it's a fast airplane and it's a little more complex but for someone who you know especially someone who buys that airplane or they're planning to buy that airplane shortly after they get their private pilot certificate it makes sense to do the primary training in that type of airplane you know not to leave anyone out we've got you know diamond they have some great four seed airplanes that are great trainers as well so high wing or low wing I have heard plenty of other people talk about it like it makes a difference I think that I was very blessed the way that my training happened I mentioned that I started in a tomahawk so a little more of that story when I was 16 years old way back in 1992 and my first 10 hours was in the tomahawk so primacy was a low-wing and it flew like a great trainer very light airplane I you know my heck it probably classified as a light sport and that company went out of business again apparently it was a regular thing for them and so I switched airports and airplanes and that's when I went from Glendale the Deer Valley and I ended up with the same instructor flying in cessna152 s so went from a low-wing two-seater to a high wing two-seater there was also about a two-week break in there while we figured out what was going on with the company what our options were what we were gonna do so that was the downside is after only ten hours of training I took two weeks off which was tough so I was getting back into it I was learning a different airplane I was learning a different airport but within a few hours I was very comfortable or at least you know I got back to where I was before the break and for me ever since then hi winger lowing really does not make any difference as far as how the airplane flies with a couple caveats so comparing a 172 to a piper Archer one of the things basic maneuver that you get good at during your private pilot training is a stall and for those who don't know it basically is is usually done by slowing the airplane down on purpose until you get to a point that the wing stops flying and that might sound a little scary but it's done in a very controlled environment and you recover from it and it's it's a skill that all pilots learn how to do we even practice those in the jet simulator at my airline we yeah a lot of the same stuff you do if your private pilot's check right we do in the in the full motion simulator in the jet so the basics never go away and a Cessna is known for having a nice clean break when it stalls whereas the piper warrior or Piper Archer it tends to just kind of be mushy and shake around and and doesn't really give you a nice drop of the nose that's just a characteristic has to do with the aerodynamics of the wing and the tail and and how it's designed it doesn't make one better or one worse it just makes them a little bit different it's kind of like saying you know what's better or worse you know my Honda Accord or my wife's Honda Odyssey you know one's a sedan and the other is a minivan well one's not better or worse they're just different maybe that's a bad comparison because you know warriors archers and and Cessna 172s are both for Cedars but you got the idea they're just they're just a little bit different what I find is the biggest difference especially for someone going from a low-wing to their first time in a high wing it is important to move the wing out of the way before you turn so I actually have my little Cessna sitting right here learn how well this will show up on your camera Carl but if someone's gonna do a left turn it's important to lift that left wing just a little bit and look for traffic make sure there's not someone right next to you before you do the left turn are we saying you're not a mirror image was that correct preview anyway so for someone who's never had that habit of lifting the wing and looking for traffic that takes a little bit of getting used to and then suddenly a more practical kind of stuff is here in Phoenix I don't know if you guys have heard but we get a lot of sunshine and it gets really here in the summer and I'll tell you just even a few minutes standing out on the ramp I really enjoy having that Cessna high wing to stand in the shade has nothing to do with how the airplane flies it's it's just that few minutes while the my client or my checkride applicant is doing their pre-flight it's great to get out of the Arizona Sun and get in the shade even when you're flying having the shade from the high wing is nice compared to always being in the low wing where you kind of feel like you're sitting in a bubble so in the summer that makes a difference you know for us that's about four months out of the year the rest of the year doesn't make that much of a difference so if you're thinking of buying an airplane in the future and you're wondering what you want to train in those are some things to think about should be factored in along with everything else awesome all right so we're approaching an hour here which is about what I wanted to end this so one last question for you for the Private Pilot checkride how much of the far slash aim do you have to have memorized that goes back I'm gonna give a similar answer to what we talked about earlier about putting it in a scenario so what I recommend to my own clients who like you Carl when you first were introduced to that lovely big thick book first of all I did ask you may be required you to get the paper copy I'm a big fan of the iPad and having things like for flight to hold all of our documents I also think for primacy and just for that first exposure there's something about hefting around that big old book and learning the different sections and where they are I'm not going to say it's necessarily a requirement but I think that there is value to going through with a highlighter and learning it and if you look like the a sa version is a popular that's a company that prints it or any of the other companies that print it usually in the front there a guide of what you need to study for each certificate or rating so that's a good place to start do you have to memorize it not really it's more like a dictionary you know none of us hopefully went to school and we're told we had to memorize the dictionary but we did have to learn how to use a dictionary it's a little more complicated than that you know it's kind of like having a dictionary and a thesaurus and you know a couple other reference documents and you got to learn how to use each one so getting familiar with the structure is extremely important learning basically what's in part 61 what's in part 91 what is part 141 even if you're not in a 141 program you should understand basically what that means when someone talks about it NTSB eight-thirty that I mentioned earlier part 43 part 67 I mean just off the top of my head these are things you need to know or sections you need to be familiar with to be a well-rounded pilot and I didn't really start memorizing sections as far as knowing exactly where something was for the most part until I was a flight instructor because when you teach it day in and day out that's when you can really learn it but even at the Private Pilot level you know there's there's memory aids like think of some air worthiness for VFR and there's an acronym called tomato flames sounds kind of silly but it's a popular one you can google it and I think that's great if someone knows tomato flames I think it's even better if they know to go look at 91 205 and they can explain or show where it is in the regs and and what it means for their particular airplane you know in operative equipment I think it's great when a private pod applicant knows to go look at 91 to 13 D to understand what it means or what the procedures are for operating within opera quipment whether that's even allowed in a particular scenario so there's just a couple examples there's only at the private pilot level I mean there's maybe 10 or 12 specifics you know related to regulations that you really should know the chapter and verse of where to go look for it so it's not that hard to memorize you know make some flashcards you'll be ok another big one for you know that's difficult when you're first learning is the VFR cloud clearance and visibility requirements that's right out of 91 155 if I remember right and you know being able to quickly look something up when you do have that brain freeze in the check read definitely helps so having the book with the you know colored tabs and highlighting is also a recommendation so short answer don't have to memorize a lot but definitely be familiar with the document where to find things I like how you refer to it as a dictionary you know know how to use it basically so all right well thank you Jim for being a part of this and answering everybody's questions we didn't really throw anything at you that didn't seem like you knew about so that was good I feel we want to thank everyone else too who joined us inside the chat and how do I always and these share aviation wherever you can yes that one just if you have the opportunity tell someone that you love aviation share it and try to get them into it we we love our community and the people who are involved in it so this is our first live stream I definitely don't know how to end this and if it's gonna just cut everything off so I know there's a 12 second delay between Jim and I and when you guys are seeing it so I'm just gonna count down from 12 seconds here and then hit end thanks everybody all right bye everyone thank you Carl

Channel: Fly With The Guys

Views: 5,073

Rating: 4.8773007 out of 5

Keywords: Private pilot, pilot, checkride, DPE, airman certification standards, flying, learn to fly, flight training, flight school

Id: uZ1-zn36GFU

Length: 62min 15sec (3735 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020