Frequently Asked Questions with a DPE - AeroGuard Flight Training Center

hi everyone and thanks for watching another training video presented by aeroguard flight training center my name is beth brown and we have our guest pete reading here with us hey pete hey beth peace joining us from the memphis tennessee fizdo and he owns uh vapor global aviation and so he's joined us again for the final segment of our three-part series and today we're going to be talking about frequently asked questions stand by all right pete thanks again so much for your time doing these videos my pleasure so i have a list of questions that our students have asked and they have uh we're hoping you could help clarify some things for their check right all right we'll do our best all right so first question is you are my first passenger but you're also a dpe so how do i treat you since you were really the boss okay so it's a great question and i'm glad it was asked so the real the most important thing to remember is that the applicant is the pilot in command you are responsible for everything from the flight planning through the pre-flight the fueling getting dispatched and flying safely in the airspace the dpe is only there as an observation or an observer of the airmen certification standards so yeah are we going to tell you what maneuvers to do yep probably are we going to give you radar vectors or headings to fly to kind of keep you in a certain airspace so we don't get too far uh into another state or into another country uh yeah we're gonna we're gonna kind of do that um and we're gonna kind of move you through the acs but bottom line is uh you are the boss okay and um come prepared come with a plan it won't hurt to have a plan and hopefully that plan will mesh with what the dpe has as a plan or it may be adjusted a little bit to help mesh with it and go out there and just be the pilot command make those decisions good to know awesome um yeah okay another question is in phoenix it's really hot in the summer and in the afternoon we get thermals and it makes keeping out keeping altitude a challenge how can i handle deviations in a steep turn if i get a thermal or if i cannot keep altitude with full power during slow flight okay so uh another good question again being the pic and kind of feeding on what we talked about before when you are setting up for your maneuver um maybe take note as you're climbing through the different altitudes um you know maybe 3 500 was more more smooth than 4 500 or maybe you want to go up to 5500 and see if it's a little smoother up there of course i think the further you get away from the ground the the more smooth it may be depending on mountain wave turbulence or what's what's what wind is coming over the mountains but um if you set up a maneuver and you begin a maneuver and you feel that it's either going to be out of tolerances or you don't feel it's going to be the best demonstration of your proficiency well in a case of steep turns just go ahead roll out terminate the maneuver demonstrate that you're safe demonstrate have good judgment demonstrate that you know what proficiency is and maybe this wasn't leading to proficiency because once the maneuver is done the the dpe has to grade the maneuver and there are no second chances so it's probably best for you to act as pic and go nope that that's not a good setup and we're gonna we're gonna pick we're gonna go back to original heading we're gonna do do the setup again and do that but take note of the different altitude maybe look at the wind charts uh look at the temperature charts and kind of see where potentially the the smoothest area is before you ever walk out the door okay good to know yeah i think a lot of students are afraid to take that pic authority to that level and kind of lay a little bit back on that and if you have full power and slow flight and you've asked a student to climb to 7500 and you can't do it yeah but you just can't do it yeah the student you know just as the as the applicant as the pilot command you say this is we are unable i'm identifying this and maybe provide a solution to the problem and say can i first descend to 6 500 feet and then i'll show you the client uh you know up to an altitude maybe back to 7000 feet so you know don't don't think the dpe is being demanding the dp is just trying to assess your abilities in the given situations um and if that's gonna if you know that that's gonna put you in a precarious position you know offer up a solution or or a different opportunity and i think i think that demonstrate that pic risk management kind of kind of uh kind of vibe if you will and it would it would probably uh score well on the on the dp score sheet that really doesn't exist no absolutely good tips um what are some trends you see or weak areas for applicants okay um so you know this is a an educational environment so we won't call anybody out by name um but some of the things that i do see with applicants is that um they really want to get their air speeds just nail they want to be perfect and a lot of applicants will focus on the airspeed indicator and then try and pitch the airplane looking at the airspeed indicator to get that air speed perfect and it actually works against them so on most check rides for private and commercial obviously it's a vfr check ride so look outside know where to put that nose on the horizon and just stick it on the horizon it'll keep your eyes outside it'll keep you clearing and as you learn and you become more proficient you'll know exactly where to stick the nose on the horizon and then when you look inside at your airspeed indicator you'll be well within tolerances of your climbout speed you see that on short field takeoffs you see a little bit of a kind of a pio pilot induced oscillation you'll see that on the stall recoveries for the recovery or a vmc recovery in a multi-engine situation they just they want they want to nail that air speed perfectly but they just keep kind of chasing it so just find where that that pitch goes and then memorize it you know take a picture of it and just always bring it back to that i think that's one of the one of the biggest critiques i have of any applicant is that you know they just and then for instruments you spend enough time in the sim and you spend enough time under the hood you should know that hey when i'm flying a pa 28 181 and i need to do a go around when i put the power 4 that nose should come up to about 7 degrees and then you can adjust in 1 degree increments up or down from there to help your airspeed you know to cage your airspeed perfect okay so that's one of that's one of the kind of many things that i i see um over and over again okay so definitely don't fixate on your instruments it's a vfr check ride yep so look outside probably you see that a lot in steep turns steering instruments and altitude because yeah those are the numbers right just peak around the corner and clear out ahead of you we're in the direction of turn you're going and and just have a little faith that where the horizon intersects the cowling is as good okay it's good for that two or three seconds that you look outside and clear and then come back inside and double check um yeah so work on training that way and when you're out in the practice area train with all your visual and that'll help you out on your check rides what that sounds like it one other thing it kind of goes along the same lines um be careful when you're in cruise flight trying to chase altitude and air speed at the same time when you get to cruise flight just set your power setting to where you want it and then just maintain your altitude right and allow your air speed to to go to whatever airspeed you're planning on to go into and you should already know that power setting so if you're going to set 2 300 rpm if it's a pa 28 it should go to about 100 knots and you know and just say hey i'm planning on cruising on 100 knots and then and then the dpe measures you plus or minus off of that um but don't try and change power and change pitch to maintain a perfect airspeed and maintain a perfect altitude because what you get into is that does that pio and actually works against you it definitely makes sense okay another question everyone says just know the acs this is so hard for me to read how do you use the acs okay that's a great question so um remember flight instructors are there to train you through the syllabus that or the training course outline that they have been provided that's been developed for your school that's going to cover hopefully everything you need to know to be a pilot now the acs is a specific exam proctoring tool that says the faa wants you to know all this information it gives you the references and you're going to be tested on this information and then the faa empowers a dpe to generate what we call a plan of action so for every individual check ride that we give or practical exam that we give we have to generate basically a new plan of action so no plan of action should ever really be the same or if we have multiple plans of actions we kind of recycle them over time because we have to make sure that we're covering every topic in the acs over over a time period so you know knowing that if you look at the acs as a bit of a lesson plan if you take the the first uh the first lesson or the first task and i'm just opening up a private pilot airplane you know the first task says pilot qualifications and right underneath it it says references and it has 14 cfr part 61 6891 faa h8083-2 i'm pretty sure that's probably the airplane flying handbook and the other one's probably the airplane fly or airplane or pilots handbook of aeronautical knowledge there's some advisory circulars in here and so if you take that those references and look them up because they're all free at the faa website they're all pdfs you can download them and then you go through each line and you say uh the applicant demonstrates an understanding of certain certification requirements recent flight experience and record keeping well if you look at those references and you write three or four sentences from those references on that topic well there you go you got you got that answer right and go to the next one and so you could work through the acs each line by line as you go through training so you're learning everything you need to know from your instructors but then at the same time you're looking at the acs and kind of in the military we say know your enemy and prepare accordingly so you know that the dpe is going to go through the acs and now you have each line by line you've developed an answer that you can confidently provide to the dpe and then probably make your checker out a little smoother instead of trying to think it up at the same time now the really big difference between the acs and and some training is that the acs demands that you reach a level of understanding and application right right so the four levels of learning right top level comprehension i think so you have to get to the levels of application and understanding not just root memorization so as you go through page by page in the acs you have to think about okay here's this information not only do i know it but do i know how to apply it so you know here we're talking about qualifications and everybody likes to go right to the the bold boxed items in the middle of the book so what we want to do is remind people that in the front of the book and what we would probably call the preamble there's a couple of four to six pages of really good information on how the how do you the test has to be given how the test how to kind of prepare for the test what to expect and in the back of the acs it gives you kind of some special instructions that are referenced out through these through the acs tasks things like if you're going for your multi-engine check ride there's some safety considerations of hey you can't do uh an engine a simulated engine failure below 400 feet agl you can't um commercial pilot you can't do um accelerated stalls below 3 000 agl so there's there's all that information in there and you kind of want to need to dig through that because it'll give you a really good picture when you're building your mental picture of what your check ride's going to look like the information is there we just have to you just have to dig it out okay yeah i think a lot of students just go straight to like you said the uh line items that say plus or minus 10 knots on air speed plus or minus a hundred and the acs is the check ride it has all the all the questions so you should know the answers okay ooh how many go-arounds is too many well that's a a good question um and i think if you i think that the answer may vary a little bit depending on on the dpe and on the situation fair enough uh so it's kind of like how often can i reference my reference material well of course you can reference material the whole entire check ride but eventually we're going to run out of time right so do you really know your information or do you not and i think go-arounds are the same way so you have to do at least one go-around okay um for the acs uh in most of the acs i think private and commercial demand one go around okay so one three so you get one that's going to be graded and then um i think it demonstrates you know good proficiency good judgment safety if if you're not going to make your point on your on your short field landing or if you know that you've you've floated too long or you ballooned or you balanced or what have you and you demonstrate a go-around for that that's a good thing okay i think that's good you're pic you're making good judgment now if every landing you come in on you bounce and you have to go around that could end up in a disapproval for sure okay so i think it's just really you know situation dependent i mean somebody who takes their check ride on a perfectly calm day and can grease their landings on and then someone who has a 15 knot crosswind it's the situation is different so there might be a go around or two more because of the crosswind the gusty winds right situation dependent um but again if you decide to fly on that 15 knot across one day we're going to expect you to to meet the acs um so you know we're we're nice but we're not we're not santa clauses either fair enough fair enough maybe you're too short on one you're too long on another but by the third you really need to figure it out yep okay um do i need to know the red numbers from the far the red numbers reg right numbers okay got it right okay so i'm sorry misunderstood so um the regulation numbers well am i going to ask you what this far is probably not what i'm going to ask you is i'm going to give you a scenario that covers one or a certain number of fars can you put those together and make it and make a an answer that can be comprehended by the dpe on the given scenario now if you don't know the numbers it's going to be hard to find what you're looking for but obviously you can always go to the front in the table of contents and kind of look for the topic and look for the number you go that way but there are just a couple you know off the top of my head uh 91 205. you probably want that 92 uh um 91 213 177 i believe is the vor testing so you know a couple of those you want to be able to pull pull out especially if you have a little bit of a data dump in your brain you get the question you're like oh my god i know the answer but i just forgot it you have those test jitters you want to be able to kind of just go right to the reg and point to it okay i see um a lot of folks on these facebook pages they're always asking what they should tab out in the frame and i just see this question a lot and then what should i tab out and it's more of the act of tabbing the book out because you're familiar with the book it's not that there's a right or wrong thing to tab right i i have a little people ask me that question all the time and i have a little kind of a zinger that i get back to when i go i don't judge arts and crafts right i just i just don't it doesn't impress me if you have all these tabs now those tabs and you're hitting on it exactly those tabs are for you what are your weaknesses if you know that you always forget how to do a vor check well you should have that tagged right because you know that question's coming and if it's asked because it's in the acs you can just go yep i got a tab i'm going to open it and i'm going to give you the right answer because i know i screw this up no matter how much i studied it i think that's a valid way to use your references okay good um is there a check ride that stands out to you where the applicant was exceptional and what set that person apart so um yeah you can say me yeah of course because yeah you're my private pilot czech ride um or so you know there there was one or two that really stood out and and i think the the reason why it stood out is because the student took the initiative from the beginning they showed up they had a plan they said this is how i'm going to do my departure this is how i'm going to show you pilot and deck reckoning i'm going to and then i'm going to break off of this and i'm going to go do my steep turns and i'm going to do this here and that there and this is how we're going to make it all flow together and um it was really good and so as a dpe you you kind of want to hey man that's great preparation how can i fold my plan of action into that because the student's really well prepared yeah and you know at that point it becomes more of a you know where the emergency is going to happen because the student doesn't know that right um and where is the divert going to happen the student doesn't know what direction you're going to force them to go in a diverse situation so um but that student was really well prepared and so instead of having a whole bunch of unknowns they only really had kind of four unknowns where was the engine failure gonna happen where was the emergency descent gonna happen uh where were they gonna get diverted to right um and i say four there's probably one more in there but i can't think of it i did three checklists today so but you know they've narrowed it down they've narrowed the unknowns down to just a handful i understood yeah i had a student once who was caught off guard on his check ride um that he was going to the north practice area here in phoenix and it's like you're planning those two points that was your nav log you know you're going there because that was your plan so you can always consider that um i was advised once to plan my points closer together at the beginning to have a more efficient check right well you know it there's there's all sorts of testament right and and i don't really think the dpe would care one way or the other um because there's that plan of action that they're going to fulfill anyway but you know if you're going to the north if that's where your scenario is taking you if there's three airplanes if there's three airports to the north i would be intimately familiar with all three airports because potentially you know we're talking testament shift now one of those three airports is going to be your divert but you're not doing that for the exam you're doing that because that's what you should be doing anyway because if you have a problem you should know hey i have these three airports in front of me and i need to pick the best one out of them so i always tell people planning is really where it's at because if you take the time to plan and something happens you've already solved it hey if i'm flying along this cross-country and i have an oil pressure issue i have airports on my left and i have an airport to my right but the airport to my right has crash fire rescue so i'm going to go to that one that's better guys right um that's better for that oh you know mother nature calls in the middle of my cross country well maybe i'll go over to this podunk airport you know and just land there because going to the tower field with the crash fire rescue just might be a little too much right for that situation but have those plants make those think think that through that that was really well said yeah definitely have a plan and not just because it's your check ride but because that's your job as a pilot anyway um how much weight does my written score carry um for me personally as a dpe it doesn't it's did you pass or not if you didn't pass what areas do we need to cover on the check crack and the good thing about it is the plan of action that i brought with me already covers your deficient areas so there's nothing added to the checkrod okay but if my plan of action doesn't cover what i've already chosen to test you on out of the acs if it doesn't cover those things then i have to add those things to the chatrod okay so obviously the better you do you're going to have a more efficient check ride because you're only going to have to go along with the plan of action the more questions you get wrong in your exam the more that may may or may not have to be added to the exam so it's kind of a dice roll with that okay so you know score the best you can um i'm not telling everybody to go out there and get 70s i'm not telling you to go and get hundreds but you do the best you can yeah the goal is to pass the test and move forward perfect i think that's it do the best you can on the writtens um i think that is all the students questions except for the number one question okay i'm ready how do i pass my check ride just like you said be prepared know the acs right so i would say um you know take the bull bot horns come up with your plan and if your plan is to become a professional pilot you're you're gonna go from private pilot to instrument rating and don't look at those as two separate courses they're additive so now you're going to be a private pilot instrument airplane okay and then when you go to commercial you have to bring forward all that stuff from private pilot and instrument into commercial so right so it's gonna it's gonna seem like a lot of the same stuff but the tolerances are tighter the maneuvers are a little different um and then if you have a solid foundation and you learn all you can in private instrument commercial when you go for that cfi initial check ride you shouldn't really have to learn that much you should learn how to you should now be learning how to teach what you've already learned so if you're going into your cfi uh your double i uh even your mei and you're having to go back and relearn a lot of stuff or maybe stuff you didn't know you were supposed to learn right you probably missed some stuff along the way take that as a life event learning moment and then don't let your students in the future do that you know kind of kind of uh you know drive home the fact that this is all additive because when you go from commercial to cfi double i mei you've done all that you got your 1500 hours now you go to atp it all carries forward right it all carries forward the questions on your atp ride for instrument departures are going to be very similar to those that are that were on your instrument check ride and those that were on your cf double eye check rod good to know just keep you got to keep carrying everything forward keep building that foundation well that's awesome thanks so much for your time being here no worries it was a pleasure to be here yeah we love having you here he comes out about once a month and spends a whole week doing a bunch of check rides for us so i hope these videos helped you um and please like and subscribe below and we'll see you next time thanks bye we'll see you thanks thanks to pete reading our special guests for coming out and doing this three-part series with us i really hope this helps you get ready for your check ride and know what to expect and how to prepare thanks for watching and we'll see you next time please like and subscribe below

Channel: AeroGuard Flight Training Center

Views: 17,078

Keywords: pilot training, flight training, flight school, pilot school, DPE, designated pilot examiner, faa checkride, checkride preparation, FAQs for your checkride, frequently asked questions for your checkride

Id: 7I_0gO6h0BU

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020