MOCK Check Ride w/ Todd Shellnut | Gold Seal LIVE

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you this really special program it's a topic that every pilot is forced to confront at one point or another the checkride I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one that had trouble sleeping the night before a practical test anxiety about the test is a common problem for applicants the best way to combat that is to be prepared and that means knowing what to expect now that's not too difficult since your entire check rod is spelled out for you in advance in the airman certification standards now think about that you have a chance to know exactly what will be expected if you'll simply study the ACS tonight gold seal is giving you a front-row seat on a private pilot practical test oral exam this will be just like the real deal Steven Lee has bravely stepped forward as the applicant even though this is a mock exam it will be conducted just like the real one and he has scheduled in a couple of weeks steven has been training at the Swanson Airport in Washington State with his flight instructor Andy Swynford sitting in the examiners seat is Todd shell nut AOPA is 2015 flight instructor of the year Todd has conducted thousands of practical tests over the years and I can't think of a better person to lead this presentation tonight Todd thanks for joining us and thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules I know you have one of those thanks for us I appreciate you having me okay over the years you've done a lot of check rides and had most of them in primary most of them been instrument I know you do everything up to ATP and yep everything up to instructor add-ons so I've done the whole grommet of check Roger finish this will be your first well you're your applicant tonight is going to be Steve Lee so Steve how are you doing I'm doing good how about you guys great great I know I tell you Steve I've seen I can't although we're not really face to face right now and I probably will see your face there in a minute oh there you are outstanding there's two handsome men there anyway you know it's when I come across the table to someone that's dped the anxiety level it's just usually the biggest factor to have to get over plus I have this this face it always looks like a mad at the world which is not really the true thing this thing I had a friend over but you're gonna find out today that when we actually go through this actually probably I'll get you pretty relaxed within the first 20 or 30 minutes of it it may not be exactly right off the bat because just meeting with a dpe itself can be somewhat pose a level of anxiety but I don't think you're gonna have any problems we'll go through it pretty smooth and we'll get started here in just a minute all righty okay we've already looked at will imagine that we've already looked over all his log books as 8710 you've got this paper working lines so why don't you just dive right into the ACS and that's sorry we're gonna try to abbreviate this and keep it and keep it at about an hour we can definitely do that so with that being said er what about it Steve you ready I'm as ready as I'll ever be okay man so like I said assuming that we've already done things like get it into the waiting I mean the proven the airplanes are worthy and proven you've proven your application everything is correct now we can actually get on with the check ride so what you're going to see here what I have up on the screen is the copy of the ACS which we actually deal win that the ACS is divided up into different sections and we simply just take each section one at a time and remember that the ACS is meant to be a just a big scenario so the today's scenario is going to be that you're gonna take this flight that you previously plan and you're going to take a family member over to a wedding and it is very important that you have this family member there on time because they're actually going to be in the wedding and and you're attending the wedding so it's very important this year that you have this person there on time so we're gonna really put the whole entire scenario around that entire event that you're actually have to be their own time and you're the pilot and command you're making all the decisions you go with that I'm good with that okay but so let's get started first we'll start right off on what we have here called the the pre-flight preparation side and pilot qualification so again each question I asked you will be scenario based so again if I if I ask you a question that you don't understand just ask me that you don't understand or ask me to rephrase the question that's well within your duty as the applicant to when you're talking with the examiner just if you don't understand just ask and I'll help you out okay all right so the first thing we're going to talk about is the the pre-flight the pilot qualification size of things so as you're at the flight school and you're out by the airplane in your pre-flight of the airplane walk around the airplane maybe even putting some bags in the airplane an FAA official comes up to you and the FAA examiner I mean the FA aviation safety inspector comes up to you from the local Fisto and introduces himself and he says hey how are you doing I'm John Smith from the local Fisto and are you gonna be the pilot and of course you would say what I would say yes I am yeah absolutely so then he says well if you're gonna be the pilot I'd like to be able to do a ramp check quick ramp check on you and I'd like to see your credentials so what would you have to show the FAA safety inspector at this time all right so there's three things I'd have to show them one would be my medical ID it's showing that I've got either a class one two or three medical and ID photo ID so driver's license whatever and also a pilot certificate so those would be the three things that he did basically need to see for me to know whether I was good to fly or not good and so in our airman certification standards we have to ask one question from the knowledge area one question from the risk management area one question from the skills here so you've actually just answered one of the questions from the knowledge area now after the area of operation one I won't break this down any more I'll continue just to go through it but this is what we're talking about right now is this is line one here dealing with the certifications requirements courage and record-keeping so based off of that before this flight today it's actually been about two weeks since you have flown last and during those that last time you flew you actually just spent about an hour in the pattern doing some touch and goes it was during the day time is that going to be good enough for you to be current for carrying passengers on today's flight yes it is why is Olivia well the you can go is ninety days without having you know if you haven't been any touch-and-go so from the past 90 days then you can't haul pastor theirs unless you've done at least three of those so good good good so although you've you've done some recent flying lately and you did the to our that our worth in the pattern about two weeks ago tell me about this word proficient versus current do you think that you may be proficient for this flight even though your current and what does that mean to you proficiency than me basically means that you know whether I can fly okay if I feel like I'm competent to fly whether you know in the area I'm going in with the weather I'm gonna be having and you know even health-wise and you know how I'm feeling how much sleep I've got and stuff like that so that's kind of the proficiency to me is just how good I'll fly you know how good my landings are how good my radio communications with the control towers are and if they're not good I would definitely want to brush up on those before and or just you know you just I guess as I'm going for the flight there I wouldn't even just study up on an ugly song good good now it seems as that you're gonna be gone all day on this trip and your return flight is actually gonna be at night on the way back tell me about these takeoff and landings that you did at the airport during the day a few weeks ago how's that how would that help you with your night currency it will not help my night currency at all to be current at night I've got to have three full-stop landings yeah at night within the past many days as well so it's the same thing as you know the day flying but you need full-stop landings good good good all right so with our risk management side of things you've basically already told me your difference between your your proficiency and currency so I'm satisfied with your definition of that and we can move on to the skill level side of things so under the requirements to act as pic4 this visual flight you said you have to have some documents on you which you've already told me that would there be anything else that you would do I'll tell you what why don't you just go ahead and tell me everything that you would have to have to be pic4 this flight in addition to your certificates would you have to maintain it I do I would have to have at least a buy-in your flight review so every two years I'd have to have one of those as far as I can think of right now that's basically the only thing you have to have and of course you've got to be able to fly the plane so if it's a twin-engine you have to be twin engine mated that kind of stuff yep and of course since we're just doing it today and I there's an assessment that we're using saven yes it was just a Cessna we don't even have to worry about that because it's just one engine so we're good to go on their feet let's talk about the next stage of our check ride which is going to be our area of operation one task B which is air worthiness let's talk a bit a little about that okay so now the inspector that you were talking with out on the ramp Stephen he has senior paperwork but he's getting a look at the aircraft and he wants to know about the aircraft and is the aircraft air worthy and so tell me about general airworthiness requirements and compliance for airplanes especially the aircraft you'll be using what would you need to what are some of the things you would probably need to show that in safety inspector alright one of the things that be just the air worth and your certificate that comes with the plane you'd have to be registered both federally and state you've got to have the Poh and the plane to be able to operate it at all times with that and then you've had you have to have your weight and balance lungs filled out on that and I don't know if I'm just running the plane like that I would I doubt I would have the engine logs in the airframe with me or he could look in that but those would be another place you to look out just to make sure that things are worthy as well good so I mean you ditching something about an air were than a certificate can you tell me a little bit about that and does it expire no and everything certificate never expires but it is not valid if your airplane is down because it has been deemed by an ia or any P that it is not air worthy at the time but if you get it fixed and get it back up in the air then it goes back to being valid good what about the registration what is a registration and how long is it good for if I remember my numbers correctly it's gonna be good for two years for how long and two years two years I believe I'm not I'm not positive on that but that's what's on the top of my head it is a little bit longer but we'll talk about that after the check ride okay so an examiner should respond to your question he can't tell you whether you're right or whether you're wrong or shouldn't but if you do happen to get a question and it is not correctly cuz up to them they can either talk about it or discuss it but it's three years is actually really what it is three years okay okay so again in the checkride the examiner can't teach this is meant to be a very close to a check ride so I'm actually going to ad-lib a little bit and come back and kind of assist you a little bit but understand then check write examiner can't do any teaching so you may not know that you actually get questions wrong so sometimes that's good for your anxiety level as to not knowing that you're getting questions wrong so you said air worthiness registration and tell me about this poh thing do we have to have that in the airplane yes we do know the buicks is basically going to go over all your airplane specifications as far as what your best glide is if you have an engine failure it's gonna tell you you know your ratios of climb what that is Klein for different things and it's gonna have your cruise performance and stuff like that and so it is required by the FAA to have an airplane at all times good so I noticed you have this other book with you it's called a pilot information manual or it's like a copy of the poh I guess that you've been using to study with is that okay there is also an airplane for that it is it is copied directly out of the poh but I can use it in the airplane as long as the poh stays in there as well yep so you just want to make sure that you don't replace that poh with your copy of it because there's only one graph in the Poh and it's the only one that's legal for the aircraft okay okay now turn about this weight and balance is that like that like the weight and balance with you and I in the airplane or what weight and balance does the FAA want to see the weight bones they want to see is basically the empty weight of that plane and of course it's gonna have add-ons on it if he does it adds anything along as far as radios and stuff that'll have that good where can I normally find the weight and balance data for this airplane well for us we have kind of like a dispatch book so it's a in a binder as and every other information is in there as far as you know poh you've got the weighting balance sheets and everything in there so that's what we need to keep ours okay good so you've showed that the FAA inspector this information they are more than satisfied with this information that you are showing them and the safety inspector says okay have a good flight we'll see you later on and you say hopefully not and then he leaves and so let's let's talk about your pre-flight so you're doing some pre-flight around the airplane walking around the airplane and you see that upon your initial pre-flight for this day flight that your landing light is not working is that gonna be a showstopper for you on the day's flight no it's not landing light actually is going to be required by any by the FAA the flight would fly weather night or day unless you are renting the aircraft from somebody else okay so in this particular case we have noticed something that is inoperative on the airplane what is your responsibility as a pilot in command for this particular equipment that you have found to be inoperative what would you have to do in order in order to stick with the rig's and make sure everything's in compliance one thing I have to do would be just to check and make sure that it's something that I can do without it's on the flight as far as you know legally I'd be checking in the manuals are they if they are sore something like that to find out if I can legally fly it without that piece of equipment and normally if it's a VFR flight you can fly with something you know okay so would you need to do anything and inside the aircraft or anything - like the light switch for that lane and like to ensure I've maintained the legality of that inoperative equipment I would I would put a sticker on it that says a knob oh so you know good alright good so we'll talk about talk about that and let's look at some other things here so it says in the in the ACS now if we look back at the ACS we can see that we've completed the risk management side of things you've told me that the landing light is not a big deal for the day flight and it's not a legal requirement so I'm good to go with that we did talk about this airplane coming back at night would be a factor and uh although not required unless you're renting do you think that you as a pilot would make this flight if you knew the landing light was inoperative depending on how late at night I'd be coming back and also with the urgency of the situation of having to get there me personally if the runway has lights running landing at I would be worried so much about a landing lane being out oh c'mon if it was a runway that didn't have much light I definitely want to get that fixed first alright so you'd probably get it fixed first before you made the night flight right that's correct under yeah there's no less yeah the decision to make Stephen outstanding good job so let's talk about now about some skills that you would have to have for this everywhere that it's requirements let's see what the ACS says you've already told me about the air worthiness and registration but where is this located at inside the aircraft the air worthiness is registration is usually located on the side panel of the airplane on the pilots side usually a balcony level or that's how it is anyways on the planes we fly all right that's actually what they're located up yeah so do they have to be visible yes they do good good deal so in this particular scenario where we do have this particular landing light that is inoperative is the aircraft air worthy for this day flight yeah yes it is yes it is good now it says here that we actually have to look at some procedures for operating with inoperative equipment so as you're looking through the this box of things that the flight school gives you or wherever you're renting from and has everything on there like maybe a squawk sheet like things that are wrong with the airplane and you actually see inside of this all this paperwork with the with the aircraft that the transponder has been actually been labeled as it's not working so the squat may read something like transponder stopped working on last flight if we're looking at your your hole in your route that you're doing today which if we can look at the the route here on the screen we can see that that you're actually going to be flying from this - whiskey 3 / - Hotel Quebec Mike so along this route today that you actually see here at your planned altitude Steve would you actually need a transponder for this flight today no the only time I need a transponder is within Class B or C airspace okay good what would be some of the positive uses I mean even though you don't have a transponder that's operable what would be some of the good reasons to actually have a transponder though one of them would be having flight following means you're flying it can tell you if there's other planes in the area or they can just track you as you go in case you go crash yep that's always a good thing to have the transponder know where you are especially an ELT in the event of a crash like you said hopefully you would never have to deal with that but if it does happen to the transponder would help you actually to get there so that will be the satisfying their mark for operating with inoperative equipment let's move on to the next section of the check ride which actually going to start talking about your weather you've got some weather charts that you've have printed out and you have shown me so let's first off let's just look at some very basic things first enough it seems to me as an examiner whenever I'm asking someone about weather I get all different types of answers in regards to where they get their weather from so where do you get your weather from alright I get it from a couple different places normally in sky vector and just looking at the different airports and just seeing what the weather is right at the vicinity I can also pull up some wind Barb's and some radar stuff before flight has got basically the same thing maybe a little bit easier to use on that but then I also go to aviation weather gov I believe it is and find out some more weather from them and I can usually change that to basically get whatever I need have you ever called a weather brief I don't know it's that's that's probably something that your see if I would probably want to go over with you that's a very valuable - it's all the difference between that and looking at other things is that they briefers a real live person and so if you actually don't understand something while you're looking at your weather briefing you actually have a live person that you can actually ask hey what does that mean and they're they're pretty good people with understanding this weather they get paid to understand this weather some of them are pilots some of them are not but what we really want to get into the questions that a scenario want to ask you is what do you think is an acceptable source of way their data when you're out weather data when you're out for flight planning purposes and would that mean where you just may be on the way out the door you heard the weatherman say it was gonna be a beautiful day today and you look outside and you see everything's good to go what do you think that would be good enough for you to actually go and actually perform a flight in an airplane no I don't like I always say they're the ones who get paid to lie so I don't I normally don't go by what they say yeah but I think when we get a weather briefing we also give some other things besides just the weather from these briefers don't we we do we usually get you know winds and fronts and stuff coming in you can see that you can see basically where it's gonna be bad weather and where it's not going to be yeah so that's and they do really good job of getting the weather but besides the weather do they give you anything else besides the weather like maybe some notices which would be very important to let's say Airmen they I guess they would they and that would be just you know there's under storms in the area stuff like that they would let you know as well as PI reps and stuff you know you know I like to forecast good yes if we just kind of stuck her head out the door we couldn't be you wouldn't be able to hear about things such as PI reps and those things called no Tom's if you're resident our current president is in the air or very close to the area you would probably want to know about that stuff right yes so would ya cuz your brand-new certificate will be forfeited if you penetrated a presidential TFR very high probability I'm not at aviation safety inspector I couldn't say that for effect so it's would you see that it's very would you say that it's very important to have some definitely some source of acceptable source of weather data I would say it's very very important thing so let's look down at some of these risks that would be involved what it's our ACS saying in regards to the risk that would be involved with this so we're looking at some weather reports that you have and we'll look here on the on the screen we have some weather reports here and this particular weather report here is it's a good weather report because we can use this weather report for multiple different things this is our winds attempts aloft chart so as we get into talking about the weather that can actually help us when we're starting to plan our nav log as well so I'm looking at the the weather here and of course you'll have to help me out Steve and tell me which one of these identifiers on the left-hand side of this chart that I'm looking at this winds and temps aloft chart are going to be the airports which you're going to use for your winds and temps aloft data so I can follow along with you that's the closest one I've found to the area that I've got about the same weather okay so on your flight today we can see that on your flight that you have chosen alpha community of what is that 3000 feet correct yes okay and would that be a proper altitude for direction of flight it would be it doesn't as long as you're 3,000 feet below you don't have to be like the you know if you're heading west you have to be in even 4,000 500 is good so this is very good a lot of people don't know that Stephen that's very good if you're if you're operating at or below 3000 feet AGL that then the cardinal rules of flying don't apply to you very good so let's look at your winds and temps a lot chart for Seattle and if you could could you read me the winds for 3000 at Seattle yes it is 21 knots at 3 5 0 yep so 21 say that one more time can we just make sure I understood you correctly 21 knots coming out of 3 5 0 if I'm sorry 2 months you're coming at 35 knots I like that answer better I think that's the more appropriate answer yet winds with 2 1 is 0 yeah 35 knots is what we actually want to look for on that particular one and just for informational purposes so she kind of hiccup a little bit on that can you go ahead and review the winds for 6,000 as well for Seattle yeah for knots and what's that outside air temperature there Steve zero 5 Celsius yeah - negative negative very good ok so that's one of the weather charts that we want to use and what are some reasons for us looking at this winds and attempts a LOF chart why would this chart be important to you as a pilot feel free to name as many reasons as you like ok though mainly the number one reason I want to know what the winds are going to be up high is how much field burn I'm gonna have you know with this with this winds up that high right now in the direction I'm going it's gonna be basically a direct Edwyn which is gonna make the my field burden a lot more okay what about anything else anything else maybe I feel free to name as many as you like I'm trying to get at least 2 or 3 out of you I hate so India that's a good one so you'll know how fast you're gonna be going across the ground that's a pretty good one what else yeah that's not gonna rag of that idea what about that temperature thing is that important to you it is it is important although it's because it's gonna increase your engine performance up that high with that colder temperature it'll definitely increase your performance by a slight bit right well I know that these Seattle areas are relatively dry area is that correct no it's not you get lots of icing it's not yeah so if I see these negative temperatures up close to where I'm going to be going and I know that the local weather in my area is for you know very predominantly kind of very moist and rainy area would that be effective for our aircraft today it would be you don't if you go up to I think it's too cold you're gonna be in pretty good icing conditions which stop right there with that weather it will be in the clouds yep perfect so we've talked about our performance for our airplane we've also talked about we could possibly see where maybe some icing conditions would be can you think of anything else the other thing we would just be like wind shear turbulence stuff like that if it gets too windy just kind of blowing your plane around and if it's too bad it can damage the plane in areas okay good good so let's look at some some other charts to see what kind of weather we're looking at along our route and I think the other chart I'd like to look at is the one that actually covers your meet ours here so you're looking at that particular chart there again yeah you're gonna have to walk me through the these meters here I think I see Hotel Quebec Mike and I don't see the airport you're leaving from but is it from Tacoma Narrows in that area where is it down below that's just south of Tacoma it's it's southeast of the coma so to kpl you it would be so right now ten miles here every salad so if we're looking at the chart here on the big screen we can see that Steve's flight is going to be originating from right up here around the PLU area in this area that's up in the upper right-hand quadrant there PLU and it's a straight shot basically some couple of bends right over here to Hotel Quebec Mike and let's look at his chart you can see there where the airport is and how his route goes straight up to Hotel Quebec Mike alright so let's go back and look at these meet ours so when you have a chance if you would are you familiar with actually looking at these station models like this would you feel comfortable reading me the meet are off of a station model Steve I would slightly a bite get some of the wrong of course but I do know as as far as like the wind Barb's and stuff like that I do know that as and you know your temperature and your visibility well why don't you do do the best job you can and if not we'll probably probably try to find something else or we can just we'll bypass this but just do the best and tell me for PLU what are we looking at for PLU what is that what does that station model telling you as base models telling me that the clouds are scattered right now at about 4600 feet you've got a your winds are coming from 3 9 0 and you have about 15 not when they're coming out of that one you're it's altimeter setting is gonna be at 9 9 0 and let's see your temperature is 46 and then it's hard to see on this one I'm not quite pulling everything up but yeah that's about looking at where the DPE in in the on the check ride is sometimes the answers were literally in front of you of course if you were being very astute you could probably have seen already that the answers were in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen right that's these weather charts if we actually get a bonafide weather chart in front of us unless it's been modified you can actually read most of the answers just right off the weather chart where it becomes a problem is if you're looking at some of these weather charts that are in for flight or any of the other mass-produced items here that we use for pre-flight planning they actually don't have a lot of the of the features decoding features on there so you kind of really need to know what you're looking at so along our route here you said twenty-four hundred foot scattered is that 2400 foot scattered MSL or AGL 2400 that is gonna be that's gonna be egl AGL very good fifty shot you got it I was trying to I was just trying to recall all my studies there's hey I understand it's see if I have to learn about all the time it's actually called recall failure so you're doing good to have recalled as much as you have already so keep up the good work let's see let's look at our just overall weather from here to hqm just if we're looking at just these meters here Steve what do you think about the weather going from here to HQ M good or and not so good it's gonna be kind of mediocre it's gonna be heavy winds flying as although our ceilings gonna be high enough that's gonna be you know roughly around 4500 feet and we're gonna be flying at 3000 so as far as about we are gonna be good with that although it's gonna be pretty good head wind yep absolutely agree we could use some some other weather charts just for time restriction we're not going to try to get too involved in this with this with the weather charts and everything but just just cuz we won't try to do as much of this as possible for the viewer on benefit and your benefit as well so well actually gonna click over I mean look at some other things where I should just go back and look at our chart but so with the weather that you're going here it looks to be a pretty good flight today so we've already talked about some of the weather sources that you would use involved with that and some factors let's talk about some factors involved in making that go no-go decision so what would be some things at your level and your stage as a pilot like a brand new certificated pilot what would be some things on your end if you're looking at the weather that you would look at the weather and you'd like nope I'm not going one of the things should be is at the airport I'm heading to if it had some pretty good cross ones there I probably wouldn't go landing on that one I you know either find a different airport or wait a little bit or something but currently as it is it's gonna be almost a direct ed one which is gonna make landing pretty easy a couple other things I'd be looking at is if the ceiling was any lower I would kind of hesitate to do that because you with the route of the one you don't want to go too low with that with some mountainous country they're just little hills and stuff as far as I know that would be about the only thing that would keep me from going to sit with clouds be too low or too much of a cross one at the airport I'm going to so there's only a couple things in aviation weather that we probably need to be on top of more than anything else and that is the winds the clouds and the visibility that's currently what kind of holds this up as a pilot from going forward as those three things it's as the top three answers on the board Steve so we've already talked about what type of weather sources that you use let's talk about along your route although the weather looks very nice along your route you see that after you get past that last at middle waves meet are there that there's actually a large fire that's just south of you and this the winds are blowing the fire right across your route and it is really starting to affect your ability to see your landmarks on your nav schardt and you just having a lot of problems seeing where you are currently going right now of course this is a it is something that you would actually find on a weather report but it wasn't on the weather report when you talk to a briefer or either got your weather through for flight or weather or whatever source you're using so tell me as a pilot how would you handle this phenomenon the smoke that's blowing across your Rutan's basically making it almost I far for you how would you handle that well depending on how big it would be I would either go around a trend go around it down to the south of it if the wind is blowing up towards towards me and on north of it I die you don't try and go down below it so it lets you know just climb on it it look like a pretty thick down south but there seems to be like an airport off your right-hand side just a little bit before we get to that halfway point what's the name of that Airport Olympia Virgil yeah so let's look at Olympia and see about Olympia Airport it looks like it's right there along your route the smoke is just getting really thick so if you decided to just kind of abort your flight and land at Olympia what you need to do to land at Olympia well some of the things I would have to do was horse talk to the control tower before coming into them and I would also be listening on there ADIS and get there ATIS information and have that beforehand way before I fly into the airport and contact the controlling tower and with that it's just basically contacting the chowder and also having an airport diagram available to me real quick to know you last right get off the runway good so you know what this process is called when we actually get off of our route and start to go someplace else that's kind of unplanned it would be called a diversion a diversion yep the diversion is kind of that one thing that whenever I'm out on a check ride and doing check rides when I used to do check rides everybody would have problems with this particular one but it's just sex was just a it's just that you're second-guessing what's going on it's perfectly safe it's perfectly part of risk management and aeronautical decision-making so let's talk about the diversion and exactly how you would make that diversion so is this airplane equipped with a GPS it is not it's just it's got the basic six back-end that's done ILS and a via wiring so did you I'm sorry I really couldn't hear did you say that it was equipped with a GPS or not no it's not it's not okay even better I like that so do you plan on using a heads-down display you plan on using an iPad on this route using charts what I've tried yeah cool well I like to hear that I like I like that Oh in a way of the wave of the future the way of the future here I like to hear people still sticking with the paper side of things so the first thing we do when we do a diversion is to look and see where we would actually be heading to tell me how you would do that as a pilot how would you look and see what heading you would need to be heading without just looking down at your chart without putting a plotter on it how would you do that well for me find that go sailin but you're gonna be able to see a my know where it's at of course fly in that area so I wouldn't have a problem with that but if I wouldn't know and it's being area strange to me I would look on my chart and I would see that Olympia doesn't have a vor and I've got a vor in my airplane so I was just to my vor to the Olympia channel listen to the identifier in and turn might be a wire to pick up the correct heading and make sure it's on the two heading and not the front and fly the heading that the vor would gives me yep I like that there's a vor right there on the field it's easy for waiting for you to go directly to it you can also just ballpark it just kind of look and see well it's kind of a northbound heading you can do that back in the day we used to have come within so many degrees of the heading that kind of dissipate if they did away with that a few years back but but that is that would get you going directly to that particular Airport and that's good so that's the vor usage there and that's exactly what I wanted you to tell me about so let's look at some other things now we've preflighted the weather we've preflighted the aircraft but I'm really concerned with with you and preflighting you how can you pre-flight yourself as a pilot well some of the ways I could reflect myself as a passive pilot is just going over the well there's an acronym for that called I'm safe and that's just basically trying to find out trying to put yourself on a list kind of like a checklist as you do for your airplane to make sure you're all good you know one of those is you know if you're ill you probably don't want to fly because your judgment isn't gonna be that great and the same goes with medication lack of sleep if you've got a lot of anxiety piling up on you it does affect your decision-making in the air you want to be have food in your body because if you don't and that will also deprive you of your brain slightly because it'll be working on some other stuff than just with external pressure from other sources so that's you know that's some things I've pre-flight myself like just to make sure I'd be ready to go and up for the challenge good deal good deal okay so now that we've kind of got all that let's we've talked about the weather we've talked about your yourself your pre flying yourself we talked about the aircraft aircraft seems to be a worthy we want to be able to make sure that what we're planning from our airport to our destination is actually going to get us there so with that let's turn to your nav log and let's look over some things with your nav log so I'm looking at your nav log here on the screen and right now we just want to just kind of talk about the the first leg of your route so if you would talk with me about how you designed your first leg of your route and tell me how you got the items in each one of those boxes how you derived that information all right well it was a progress but I got it so first of all I was looking at my map going from Swanson field to Hoquiam and flying along that route like I can fly direct to it but I'm not going to I'm gonna fly deviate a little bit south there and that way I missed the MOA that's right there in the area as well as stay out of Olympia Class D airspace and so I came down to a little town called 10 I know right on the bottom of Olympia and that's you know where I kind of I'm gonna kind of cut a corner and go up just a little bit to get some other areas but just looking over the map there and the route I traced out there I what I'm looking for is any obstacles what the heights are of those obstacles to determine what my altitude is gonna be at at that route with the weather being the way it is and then just you know on the weather charts that I had found I put down all my weather information winds the velocity to the winds the temperature and then just calibrated my air speeds my truth war setting did those little deviations come with that and yeah I got my compass heading so that's how I got those things okay good let's look at your this first leg you said that this first leg was gonna be around 11 miles is that correct that's great okay so if you arrived at your first checkpoint and you it took you 15 minutes to get there what would you be alarmed by that would that cause any any issues with you it would cause a lot of issues with me because you know to start off with it was only supposed to be almost nine minutes to get there so that would mean that I've got a lot of bigger head wouldn't than I had thought I would have okay so if we went past each one of these checkpoints and each one of these checkpoints you were around three to five minutes behind on each checkpoint and you had only planned on being at your destination with you with a minimum fuel that you needed to be legal for VFR flight on board would that bother you it would bother me I would have to swing either north or south with my route basically midfield and grab some fuel I hear out of Olympia or Chehalis which would be to the south of me good so the bottom line is is that when in doubt you should just always do what you should always stop and fuel up yep always that's good so that's good with the information we could probably go through a little bit more detailed information on each one of those boxes and some examiners may want to actually ask you questions like what is true course what is true heading what is magnetic heading again the check rides not really push to be an old question and answer style pts style check right it supposed to be scenario based but in essence here I think that you have enough information to cover that line one I see that you have your your NAT your mileage and your time and route and your estimated fuel burn and how much fuel is gonna left on board so the scenario that I gave you would actually you'd have plenty enough fuel by the time you got your destination you wouldn't be in jeopardy or rolling out but I did have to try to change that around the scenario so that way I could yeah examine you on whether or not you knew about the fuel stuff would you change anything about this flight or altitude today if you were say in mountainous terrain I would if they did be really mountainous terrains and not just little rolling hills I would definitely have a higher elevation to fly at as well as how flight following going with me as I'm going over mountainous terrain good so how low do you think on this cross-country I mean if you had to go actually look go down low you know due to this heavy smoke that's going across and you decided not to divert how low would you actually take this airplane down in altitude is there something on the chart or something that we could use to kind of help us understood we're a safe altitude would be and there is you can of course look at your direct route once it's on there exactly what's going to be your obstacle if you follow the route you know give or take 10 miles on either side but another way you can look at it as if you look at the chart and you've got some big numbers printed in blue and those are your highest obstacles in that area of your latitude and longitude the lines so that's that's one way you can tell you know where that biggest obstacle is Amanda course you can look on that to find out exactly where it's at so right there south of Olympia there's a 1/9 what can you tell me about that number that means that's the height of the highest obstacle in that latitude longitude squared that Dutt's did you say that did you say that with an MSA is that what you said oh I did sorry I didn't say whether it was MSL or not but yes it is in this cell okay good it is an MSL so it's actually the altitude of the highest obstacle rounded to the nearest 100 plus 100 just to let you know that a lot of people don't know that it's kind of old-school info let's look at some some other things that we have here on the chart so I can test your knowledge of the of the sectional so if you'll stay with me we're going to bring up the the chart here and look at the chart and I'm gonna point out some very specific things so hopefully you can see where the mouse pointer is we're still around that that one nine that is just south of Olympia but we'll look at some things there's another number right here it says 735 and 214 in parentheses well can you tell me about that all right so my understanding on that is you're the base of that obstruction well okay sorry to start off the top of it is gonna be 735 feet low and I am NOT a hundred percent positive on this but either the obstacle of self is gonna be two hundred and fourteen feet high or then that is going to be your mean sea level that's gonna be your altitude at mean sea level for the ground yes that's that is absolutely correct that top number is what you're gonna see on your altimeter when you hit it and that bottom number is how far you gonna fall to the ground after you do way but that's that's how we joke about in the industry if you like to joke like that there's another this town here and of course I may actually Massacre the name of this town here but is it Toninho it's tonight no tonight no there seems to be like a magenta colored flag popping out of the out of that what is that all about that would be a reporting station coming into via regional you know as you're in touch with the tower coming in that's like a check point that you can tell them you know this is where I'm at and it just kind of gets in the heads-up know how far out you are any good where you're at good let's look at some some other things that are long your route here these things may be a little simple but they just seem to see where your mindset is there is this little black thing running down here these little tick marks on it what is that that would be a railroad track good those things are easy to to follow right yes they are yeah what about this double grade line right here that's interstate 5 running up through there yep so that's also a good way to get to Olympia there right yes yeah that would be IFR I follow roads and if you are on the railroad it would be IRR which is I follow railroads yeah so there's another line that that we're gonna look at and this way over here in the right-hand corner of the chart it has a 16 e on it and what is that all right those are the isogonic lines you have and that's basically your deviation according to your location from North Pole to where your actual magnetic heading is gonna be yeah is that important to you for this route it is very important to me for that otherwise I am gonna be very far away from my actual destination it is very important down here in the south we really don't have a lot to deal with on that 3/4 around Georgia and we'd probably still get to our destination with no problem but 16 degree of deviation wood lines a variation there that would be a pretty good pretty good snag foo there if we had to do that let's look up here just a couple more items here and that is right off of here we're Renier that's not Mount Ranier is it no it's not it's just a little town called Rainier that's right there what are these there's a magenta combed areas here those would be military MOA areas yes you can fly through that and it probably you know if you want to know whether it's gonna be used or not you just either call Seattle tower and find out if they're in use or just contact the controlling tower for that ask them for permission to fly through you know you don't have to do that but it's gonna be at your own risk good deal now this is part of the exam where I could just really spend a lot of quality time with you because there's just so many questions on these sectional charts that pilots don't get asked a lot or them you they really should know it however we are limited to an hour and just as the time travel goes through check rides you have actually spent an hour with an examiner so hopefully you feel proud of yourself a couple of snags there but I don't think it's anything that would inhibit you from having a private pilot certificate and with that I'm gonna turn the show back over to our friend Russ and he'll close this out okay Steve you did a great job and kudos for you for going out in front of tens of millions of people on live television and pulling your pants down for everyone I think you did a great job you've got your reel check ride coming for and I hope this was really gave you a preview on what kind of thing you can expect Todd's done these a lot of them he did abbreviate this for you but I hope this really gave you a preview of what to expect so finally coming here and in doing that I'm sure everybody got a lot out of it Todd and to you thank you again for coming Thank You Russ I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share this knowledge with people okay an area that we we really need help on in the industry to kind of break that anxiety level of that check ride I got you okay well thank you so much for sharing evening with us everyone we do a lot of these live streams and they only succeed because of you we understand how fortunate we are to have you as a member of our flying community gold seal offers complete online training programs and we are proud to tell you that we are number one on the Internet in fact we were the very first company to offer an online private pilot ground school since then we have delivered over 4 million private pilot lessons to over 70 thousand student pilots and a few instructors out there make a note see if is joined for free at gold seal and monitor their students progress online for private pilot instrument pilot brief and remote pilot come to gold seal and take a look see for yourself how we offer you something completely different for gold seal I'm Russ still thanks for joining us tonight good night and good flying pass your written test and your check ride with gold seal the Internet's number one ground school take a free test drive today and see how much fun learning to fly could be online ground school comm [Music]

Channel: Gold Seal Flight Training

Views: 178,774

Rating: 4.8720889 out of 5

Keywords: FlyGoldSeal, Oral Exam, Mock Check Ride, Private Pilot, Flight Training, Gold Seal, Gold Seal Online Ground School, Russ Still, Todd Shellnutt, #GoldSealCheckride

Id: UITURVxnqn0

Length: 57min 46sec (3466 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2018