Webinar: How to Pass Your Checkride

thanks program passing your checkride and I'd like to introduce our host our panelists for this evening Jayson Blair he's the executive director of the National Association of flight instructors he's owner and CEO of a flight school on naffy master CFI he's also a designated pilot examiner and a designated sport pilot examiner and Jason we'd like to welcome you and give you control here they are all yours well thanks much for everybody who's joined in with us here tonight it's a pleasure to be here and let me start by saying first and foremost I know exactly where anybody watching this has been because to get to the point where you become an examiner you also have to take a number of check rides so I know exactly what it's like to go through check rides and have had the fortune for the last couple of years of conducting practical exams as an FAA designated examiner I still do actively instruct students so I know what it's like to send students to them as well and be just as nervous sometimes as the applicant is going to take the test but what we're going to do tonight is talk about a few things that I see regularly that might help you do a little bit better job at passing your check ride if you've got one coming up or if you're planning on taking one I'm hopeful that some of these tips will be things that are useful for you and help you be a little bit more comfortable as you go through it as we do this tonight this isn't really set up just to talk about any one particular check ride we're going to talk about general tips so you're not going to see something that says here's how to pass your private pilot check right necessarily we're going to talk about the tips that will help you pass any check ride that you might be preparing for whether it's your sport pilot your private pilot maybe you're taking an instrument or commercial ride or maybe even you're out there ready to take your airline transport pilot certificate when I look at this from the side of the examiner it's a little bit easier sometimes for us to see what makes applicants successful and what doesn't then the applicant does they're going through the check ride so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I see from the examiners view and hopefully some of the tips will help you if you're preparing for a cheque writer even if you know somebody is that you can help them think about some of the things we talked about tonight get ready for that next check ride and a little bit more successful as they go through it first let's talk about the basic purpose of a practical test generally called a check right we usually call them check rides the FA calls them a practical test really though if this is the place where you're going to show somebody an FAA designated examiner or an FAA official what you learned and whether you're meeting the practical test standards along the way it's not there to try and find a way to trick you it's not there to try and fail you it's just a way to determine if you as you have trained have safely learned material that you've been studying that you've practice and you're able to go out and then use that the information that you've learned to take friends and family and passengers with you on almost all of the check rides that you're going to take there is a practical test standard set forth the FAA sets these standards and they're basically minimums that we have to meet as we prepare for a check ride and then demonstrate them as we go through and really this is basically a checklist or a road map for the examiner and they're going to use that to evaluate your abilities as you go through the entire test when you go through a practical test or a check ride they typically have two different portions the first is usually a ground portion where there's oral questioning and then there's a flight portion of the check ride where you're going to demonstrate your abilities to perform certain maneuvers and to fly the aircraft now the first thing that's going to happen before any of this though is in some cases a fairly lengthy time period of evaluating the documentation that has been prepared to make sure you're eligible to even take the test most cases now this is done through a system called AI Accra along with a look at the applicants logbook to make sure all of the proper endorsements are there to take the check ride from their instructor and a verification that all of the appropriate training has been completed I typically find that when I do check rides this takes at least a half hour so in most cases by the time we sit down and talk about what we're going to be doing and brief the app a little bit about what the check ride is going to consist of and then we take the time to look through the logbook make sure everything is there and make sure the endorsements are there and then we actually get into either the ayack or digital processing or in some cases we still fall back on a paper application it's called the 87 pen form some of you may or may not have run into these already and really part of being an examiner is making sure we can examine to make sure that everybody has the proper requirements completed and the proper documentation so when we finish a practical test and send it off to Oklahoma City for processing in a few months down the road you actually get your license in the mail at the certainly part of being an examiner as well so you can expect the first portion of your check right even before you begin the oral questioning or the flight to really just be a documentation period so that's something a lot of people haven't thought about before they get to their check ride we hear stories of check rides taking three and four and five hours and really when we think about it it's not that you're being grilled for three or four or five hours but the process of actually completing the check ride takes time - and you can usually expect to get half hour so that just to be in the beginning of verifying the documentation that it's been prepared once that's been completed we usually dive into the oral questioning portion of the check ride and the FAA actually says we have to complete the ground portion of the check ride first before we go do the flight and as we look at this it makes sense sometimes it will have somebody that flies fantastically but their ground knowledge may not be quite perfect so if we come through as an examiner and we were to do the flight portion first it'd be it'd be a little harder for us to go ahead and issue a notice of disapproval for somebody if we found the ground knowledge weak if we had just flown perfectly with them so what we do is we we get into the oral questioning first in most check rides this will take an hour and a half to two and a half hours it doesn't mean that you're going to be sitting there under a hot light with somebody quizzing you it just means we're going to have a conversation about flying that's probably the best way to approach it think about it as as if you were having a friend take a ride within they were just asking some questions maybe you sat down with them and they asked you well with all this stuff on the chart me and you were going to sit there and talk with them think of it that way as you're going through a check ride and that's going to make it a little bit easier as you work with the examiner a couple of check rides will have longer orals especially somebody who's pursuing a flight instructor certificate sometimes those will take three to four hours all of the information that will be covered in the oral questioning is right out of the practical test standards now if you've never seen practical test standards and you're getting ready for a check ride I'd strongly recommend visiting the FAA website and just doing a search on there for practical test standards and you'll find a document for the appropriate certificate or rating that you're looking at and that is again basically a road map for the examiner and that's really where most examiner's get the information that they're going to quiz you on it's actually set forth of certain areas that we have to quiz you on once we finish the ground portion or the oral questioning of a check ride will typically proceed into a flight demonstration period or the flight portion in most cases this is going to be an hour and a half to two hours and again the maneuvers that are going to be conducted in that flight portion are set forth in the practical test standards let's imagine if you're testing for a private pilot rating and we look through the practical test standards you'll find something for ground reference maneuvers and what the practical test standards will say is we have to conduct two out of three ground reference maneuvers on the tech rack so the examiner will typically select two out of the maneuvers either a s turn across the road turn around the point or a rectangular pattern during the check ride as we look through the practical test standards they say we have to do two so if you look at them you'll see that the examiner is going to select two of those and you know what to expect on the check ride most of the time check rides are going to have an hour and a half to two hours sometimes that can be a little bit longer especially if you're at a very busy airport that forces traffic control a little bit too to move you around I'm just lying to take a little bit longer many times that non-towered airports you'll find the check rides go a little bit quicker they're a little bit closer to the hour or hour and a half time period simply based on the the lack of other traffic in the way as you go through the check ride you can expect the examiner to collect the fee for it before they begin the actual check read kind of a common-sense thing from an examiner standpoint if we we head out there and we do the whole check ride and things don't go quite how everybody planned we don't want to have the question of whether we're going to get paid for the time that we do it so don't be a don't be surprised if as you get to the beginning of the check ride when everything's done paperwork and the examiner has determined that the check ride will be able to proceed they're going to ask for their payment at that point as you prepare for your check ride there's certainly some things to consider the first one that you want to make sure you look for is are all of the training requirements met I can tell you many times as an examiner I've had somebody show up for a check ride and as we look through the documentation we'll find a little discrepancy for example maybe there's somebody's preparing for a commercial check ride and we go through the logbook and find that they're missing that one night cross country it's pretty embarrassing for the applicant most of the time when when they show up and end up going home because we're missing something I give you a little thing so make sure all of the training requirements are met and this is going to take sitting down with your instructor before you go through and sign up for the check ride to make sure you look through the federal aviation requirements that are there for the particular rating or certificate it's also not a bad idea to run that through with another instructor just as a cross-check to make sure that they're there this stops you and the examiner from ending up there on the data check ride and having both of you have to go home to finish more requirements before you can actually complete the check ride sometimes we find that applicants come to check rides and they said well yesterday I did steep turns and I was well within pts the first time I ever did it let's kind of think about that and it's probably better if you're going to go take your check ride if you can consistently perform all the maneuvers to meet or exceed the practical test standards that are set forth we don't want your check ride to be a day of I hope I get it right like I did yesterday the first time I did it so make sure you take the time as you prepare your maneuvers on the flight portion to make sure you can consistently perform those maneuvers at least a little bit better than the practical test standards if not significantly better than what the practical test standards set forth we always have the question of does your instructor think you're ready I can tell you a story I had a couple of years ago where an applicant was coming for a private pilot check ride and about a half hour before the applicant arrived I got a phone call from the instructor I said ah how are you doing today mom I'm doing okay I said everything okay your applicants still on the way right he said yeah he said but you're going to fail kind of stop for a moment a suitable how can you be sure he said well he's not ready so okay well why'd you sign him off and he said well he said the applicant was demanding a check ride because all of the requirements that were set forth for the Private Pilot check ride were completed and he was confident that he knew at all as it turned out he didn't he needed to go back and do a little bit more studying and clean up some of the things take the time just because the requirements are met doesn't necessarily mean that you're absolutely ready for the check ride as we come back to the conversation a little bit ago but making sure you can consistently perform the maneuvers to practical test standards just because the requirements are done doesn't mean you can meet all of the standards so make sure you take the time to work with your instructor and make sure they think you're ready as well as you thinking that you're ready in many cases I think what you'll find is the opposites true were the applicants a little bit nervous and the instructor said oh you're all set let's send you on your way and that's when the nerves start to kick in for most people when they realize that check ride day is coming upon them make sure all the paperwork is completed this is one of the things that really can hold a check ride up and happens fairly regularly little things can get in the way something as simple as when you took your written test you didn't include your middle name in the application submission and then we come back to do the flight test and we log into I Accra and your medical certificate may have been submitted with your middle name and now the two pieces won't match up things like that can make an examiner unable to continue a check ride paperwork is really unfortunately a pretty important piece of making sure the check ride goes smoothly and correctly so it's worth taking some time a couple days even before you do the check ride to make sure that you get your paperwork squared away this isn't something that you want to leave for the last minute right before the examiner shows up many times where the last few minutes before I show up I know the applicant has been rushing around trying to finish the paperwork and make sure it's completed so that we can finish the check ride this adds extra stress on the on the applicant and makes it even beginning the check ride a little bit tougher for them so make sure all your documentation for yourself is ready but also make sure you have required documentation with you for the aircraft for the check ride if the examiner comes out and finds the aircraft is missing the airworthiness certificate or it's missing a weight and balance they're not technically able to continue that check ride so before you even start make sure the aircraft has its documentation as well and make sure that the inspections are up to date on the aircraft if you do get to a point where you think you are ready and your instructor won't sign you off there's a pretty simple solution to this let's go take a ride with another instructor I'll make sure that the instructor that you're working with is aware of it take a ride with another one and do a progress check it can also be called a stage check or basically what you're doing is you're taking a mock check ride with another instructor just to get another opinion and see if those two opinions match up think about your time scheduling as you try and schedule a check ride I typically schedule my check rides either at 8:00 in the morning or at 1:00 in the afternoon and the reason I do that is it allows me about 5 hours per check ride and if I need to I can conduct 2 in a day it's a little bit tougher to do in the winter when we have earlier nights it's much easier to do in the summer when we have long nights yesterday I conducted a Private Pilot check ride that we started at 4:30 in the afternoon and had a wonderful daylight all the way up until about 10:00 o'clock at night so you have those longer days to work with but think about your time scheduling when you schedule a check right if you schedule a check ride for 8 o'clock in the morning how early does that mean that you have to get up think about your travel time and think about the little contingencies that may get in your way of making sure that check ride the schedule comes off the way you want it to if you're not an early-morning riser it's probably not a good idea to schedule that 8 o'clock in the morning check ride if we think about our preparations we may have to do some last-minute calculations for a cross-country plan that the examiner has given us we may have to drive a little bit to the airport or get the airplane ready I've known many times where students have said they'd have to get up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning to get to an 8 o'clock check ride with the students not an early riser five o'clock wake up can certainly put a damper on their ability to be and really at the top of their game as they go through the check ride give yourself enough time to get to the airport ahead of the examiner you want to make sure that aircraft is ready and you can prepare some of those last-minute needs before the examiner shows up once the examiner shows up the the pressure seems to feel like it's a little bit more on even if the examiner is standing around having a cup of coffee most applicants feel like they need to get started right away when the applicants there so it's not a bad idea to get there a little bit early personally I'll tell you as an examiner I try and show up right about on time I try not to get there early on the applicant just so I don't add that extra pressure for them after-work is sometimes where many people tend to schedule their check rides or at the end of a workday maybe it'll take the last couple hours off that sometimes can work but if it's been a really long day at work that can make it pretty darn tough to you already come into your check ride tired from a long day of work you're still probably not at the top of your game so it might be best to schedule it at another time maybe you pick a weekend afternoon or even take a day off of work to go ahead and get that check ride scheduled and completed as we get into the check ride we'll talk a little bit about the ground portion here and really the first and foremost thing is to know what you're being tested on if I've mentioned the practical test standards here a couple of times there are a number of publishers that produce these you can also get them for free on the FAA website and either view them digitally or print them off really this is basically what it's going to take to let you know what the examiner is going to test you on something that you should see throughout your training as you work with your instructor and try and make sure you train to the standards it's hard to pass your test if you don't know what you're going to be tested on so make sure that as you prepare for your ground portion that you look at those practical test standards and expect that that's what you're going to see on the entire portion of the check ride sometimes the applicants think that the check ride has to be completely memorized but they can't look anything up it's certainly worth bringing reference materials with you to the check ride my personal philosophy as an examiner is that there are things that are sometimes outside the realm of what we normally do in our flight operations and I may ask questions on that for example many times I ask the question of what happened if I had an airplane that was capable of flying a little bit higher and maybe I found there was a really good tailwind so I decided to fly at 15,000 feet what I'm looking for there is somebody to say jeez I think there's some regulations maybe about oxygen maybe they'll tell me a little bit about hypoxia at that point but typically they may not fly at that altitude so if they know there's a requirement up there and then they can go look it up and find me the specifics that's generally what I'm looking for so it's good to bring some of those reference materials with you as well as we go through the check read we don't have to be perfect we have to meet practical test standards but there may be some things that your examiner might tell you go ahead and take a look at it see what you can find see if you can get me the right answer on that so bring with reference materials as well that certainly doesn't mean you're going to get the opportunity to look everything up but you may get a few opportunities a tip on that is make sure you bring with current reference materials as well on the occasions where somebody shows up with the two or three year old Federal Aviation Regulations I personally find it a fun endeavor to start switching through the book and looking for the changes that have been made let them go ahead and look up the information because I know they're going to find the wrong information at that point probably not the super nicest thing to do as an examiner but make sure you bring with current reference materials so that when you do look something up you're getting the correct answer that's most current as well as you go through the ground portion of a check ride it's not a race take your time answering the questions and really what I find is for most people when they go through a check ride the place they get in the most trouble is when they start rushing to answer or start guessing take the time to think about the questions that the examiner has posed to you there's no rush most cases the examiner will have set forth plenty of time to go ahead and work this out and if you take some time to think about it you're probably going to have a much better shot at getting a correct answer out to the examiner just because the examiner asked that question doesn't mean that answer has to be spit out immediately and in some cases the examiner may be looking for you to really think about what they're asking and not just give back an answer that say a memorized answer but give back a logical process something that correlates the different things that you've learned through your training and really applies to the real-world type of situations that you're going to find when you're flying so think before you speak don't just answer to spit an answer out there take your time as you go through it if you don't know something it is much better to never guess what I find in the cases where somebody guesses it is first you can usually tell based on the inflection of their voice and the confidence that they have in the answer and second it's a good way to start digging yourself into a hole part of the examiners job is to take the time to understand where the weaknesses are in an applicant's in knowledge and information base if we start finding where we can pick away at it through guessing that's where we're going to dive into it a little bit deeper if you don't know something just tell the examiner you don't know now certainly take some time to think about it before you you tell the examiner you don't know and see if you can draw upon your knowledge and come up with a correct answer but if you don't know it tell them that maybe one of those opportunities where they give you a chance to go ahead and look the information up I kind of mentioned it earlier but think of the oral questioning portion of a check right is basically conversation that's really what it is we're having a conversation about flying and some of the things that relate to flying where the examiner is going to try and get an idea of whether or not the knowledge base that you have is sufficient to keep you and your instructor out of trouble as you go forward making sure you have enough of knowledge base to to sufficiently navigate the airspace system and plan flights when the ground portion of the check ride is completed you'll proceed into the flight portion and this is where everybody's kind of looking forward to not as many people think the ground portions as much fun we all want to get into the air and demonstrate what we've learned certainly I'll tell you as an examiner I still love flying very much and it's still the fun part for me so once we get into the flight portion we've got some other expectations the first thing to think about is know what the role of the examiner is when I conduct a check ride I'm not there to instruct the applicant I'm not there to make the decisions for the applicant really they're just to watch and when we conduct a check ride for a sport pilot or for a private pilot checkride ineffective the examiner really is their first passenger we don't accept pilot-in-command responsibilities we're there just to kind of watch so we're really the first passenger and we're there to take a ride and our expectation is the applicant that we're testing is going to do all of the pilot and command duties that includes whether we even go flying if you're out there on a day and it's 15 to 20 not crosswind and you you look at the examiner and say geez I don't know if we should go what do you think the examiner is probably gonna look back at you and say you're the pilot and come in today you tell me what to do so think think of the examiner really is a knowledgeable passenger along the way and somebody who's going to be there to watch what you do but they're not there to instruct and they're certainly not there to fly the aircraft for you on that day it's your job to do that on that day and that's what they're looking for Oh feel free to use the examiner as a knowledgeable passenger though most of the examiner's will say that that's what they're willing to do you know they'll probably tell you they know how to use their seatbelt or they'll get their door for you but if you ask them jeez can you tune in the ATIS and tell me what the weather's doing in most cases they're going to pretend that they have no idea how to do that because again that's your job as you go through it you can have them help look for traffic however in most cases they're going to expect you to be the primary individual looking for traffic when I conduct check rides I'll usually tell the applicants you know if I see traffic in an area that I know you can't see it for example quartering off behind their head I'll bring it to their attention if I see something coming at us in the windscreen my assumption is the applicants going to do something about that and if I have to jump in and do something about it then where we might be at a point where we're going to talk about it on the check ride what we're looking for is to make sure that if you're flying by yourself as well you can sufficiently look for traffic you can probably expect the examiner to hold charts for you they might hold the door open for you on the summer to get you a little cooler air basically things that you would reasonably expect a passenger to do or in the case of one of my applicants I had the examiner come back and say I got to talk to you about what your student did today so what would he do vally he asked me to hold the charts kind of pause from and I said was there something wrong with that he said no he said but I asked him what I would do if I wasn't here it's why I'd have an open seat next to me to set it on and it just kind of caught the examiner that it was a logical piece so feel free to use the examiner to hold stuff feel free to you know use them as a knowledgeable passenger but don't expect them to take on the role of pilot through the check ride as we prepare for this flight portion of the check ride you're going to want to do a good thorough pre-flight inspection it's a matter of fact I might even recommend doing a pre-flight inspection before the examiner even gets there just to make sure you don't find any glitches that are going to stop the check ride from being able to be continued expect that the examiner is going to watch you conduct that pre-flight inspection what the examiner is there to do is make sure that you know how to conduct a pre-flight inspection that's going to make sure the airplane is is safe and sound for both of you to fly there's two reasons for this one the examiner needs to see that you can do it and two the examiner wants to make sure they're getting in an airplane that day that is safe to fly with as well little things can really put a stop to your check right here missing things on your chair pre-flight like chocks if there's an extension cord attached to the airplane for a pre-flight here is the airplane tied down still these are things that can certainly stop a check up ride before it gets underway even make sure the oil cap is back on and tight if you've ever seen an airplane that the oil cap wasn't completely on when it took off makes a heck of a mess and it scares both the passengers and pilots on board making them think there's a big oil leak so make sure all these little things are there and sometimes it can be a little nervous on the data check ride so take the time back from the airplane a little bit even before you get into it after you completed the check ride do about a 30 foot look at it and just make sure everything looks normal make sure all the maintenance is completed so little things like that aren't going to stop you along the way as well I can tell you a couple months ago I had a check ride that we got all set for in the applicant was a little nervous and we're going back and forth and we actually had to add a little bit of ballast in the back of the airplane that we were flying just for weight and balance and he had missed that so we ran back inside got a little bit of ballast threw in the tail came back out we got all set up in the airplane and started up and got ready and I said are we ready to go he said yeah we're ready to go I said you sure we're ready to go so yeah let's go so this is gonna be fun isn't it yeah this can be fun as excited as he could be and I said how about we go ahead and shut down for a little bit and he's wise do you remember where the chocks are and there was a pause for a moment his face kind of turned white he said oh I think so and the chalks were under the main wheels yet in his running back and forth he just missed that last piece didn't fail him for the track ride at that point but it certainly put him in a position where he was nervous he was rattled and it did affect his ability to complete the rest of the check ride as he went through it so take your time conduct a thorough pre-flight expect the examiner is going to kind of watch that and watch for all the little things they can catch up as you go through when you go do the flight portion of the check ride make sure you know the airplane study the airplane systems you're probably going to be questioned on some of the systems on the ground portion of the flight in the oral questioning in general if you have an aircraft that has a constant speed propeller or a retractable gear you're probably going to get questioned on those the fuel system is certainly something that you want to know the basics of as well because the examiner wants to make sure that you know how that fuel system is going to work during the flight but take some time to look through the other system as well brakes are common the flaps are common discussion points make sure you know how the instruments in the aircraft work there's lots of times where I've come out and in in more cases as an owner of a flight school seen this where somebody comes out to rent the aircraft and a couple minutes later they'll come back in and say oh the intercom doesn't work you guys got to fix it when you go back out there and we'll turn it on and let's not a matter of whether the equipment works it's a matter of whether the applicant or the renter or the individual flying the airplane is really familiar with it knows how to work it this could be pretty darn embarrassing on a check ride if you're not comfortable and familiar with it if you come out and you're not certain how to turn the radio on you can't really expect the examiner to do that for you so as you prepare for your check ride if you have questions about the avionics or the instruments in the aircraft make sure those last few flights you you ask those questions of your instructor make sure you're the one doing the work with those radios and instruments instead of just relying on your instructor to do it as you go through it know where to find things in the cockpit part of our testing is to look at the crew resource management or the resource management in general that an applicant is doing as they go through their check right make sure you know where things are we don't want to have you be reaching in the back seat to try and find that pencil as we're climbing out off of our take off and as you reach back you pull up on the yoke a little bit approaching stall so be a little bit organized as you get ready for that check ride make sure you know where things are on the airplane as well I'll tell you the nothing leads to more nervousness in the examiner then when when somebody doesn't know the airplane on the examiner sensitivity to whether the applicants really in command of the aircraft goes up quite a bit at that point so you shouldn't have to ask the examiner if something works as we go through the check ride think about the check ride is is really what the examiner is doing is looking to learn how you approach the material learn how you conduct the maneuvers when I conduct a check ride I'm not there to see if the applicant flies how I want them to fly or how they were trained in accordance with how I think somebody should be trained what I'm going to see is does the training that they have received meet practical test standards has it met all the requirements and are they able to conduct the flight and the questioning portions in accordance with practical test statements sometimes we get applicants that say well how do you want me to conduct this maneuver what I will to people tell these the applicant as an examiner is well do it how you were taught to do it and as long as that means practical test standards in some cases there are maneuvers that can be conducted in different ways I'm really not there to change how somebody flies so if the examiner says well this is how I do it if that's not how you do it don't experiment on the check rack do it how you know how to conduct the maneuver trying to do something new on the check ride is going to get fairly difficult and they make it hard to make sure you do the maneuvers within practical test standards the weather can certainly be a factor in a check ride and the examiner is not going to make that decision for the applicant of whether the weather is good enough and I will tell you as an instructor I won't make the decision for my app my own students on that day either I've had a couple of cases where students of mine have called me or even been at the airport and they said hey I got my check ride today and the clouds are at 2,500 feet should I go do it my answer to that is you tell me what we're looking for on the day the check ride is can you make the decisions based on what's out there of whether the weather is good enough to do the check ride the basic rule that I'll tell people is if you don't think you would normally go flying on that day with family or friends you certainly probably shouldn't be doing your check ride on that day we get a little bit of pressure on us when the check ride is scheduled that we think we have to go do it part of the decision-making process that we have as pilots is whether or not we should be flying sometimes and it shows good decision making it to the examiner if you can make a decision that's appropriate certainly if it's you know two knots of crosswind and a million miles visibility and no ceiling and you call the examiner and say the weather is not good enough they're probably going to question that but if the weather isn't something that you're comfortable flying with don't expect that you have to do the check ride think about the ceilings on the day of the flight you might have ten or 20 miles visibility and no wind but if you have a 2,000 foot ceiling you may not be able to conduct some of the maneuvers that are required on the check ride to allow yourself to stay within ground clearance tolerances for them so kind of back into that math you know we have a minimum of a 1500 foot above ground level base to conduct things like stalls or steep turns and we want to make sure we've got a little extra so maybe we say we want at least 2,000 feet above ground level if we've got a 3000 foot ceiling and we have to stay below those clouds by our VFR weather minimums it doesn't give us much room to work with so think about that if we're doing something for a commercial check ride it requires a steep spiraling descent some of the aircraft we do these in such as a piper arrow might require a couple of thousand feet to do the maneuver and then you still have to have your recovery altitudes you might need a ceiling of at least five or six thousand feet to be able to complete the manoeuvre as you look at your day of the check ride think about these things and you know make sure you choose how you get through that check ride don't let the weather choose it as we go through a check ride if the examiner looks up and finds ourselves in a cloud and we're not on an instrument check ride with an instrument flight plan we're probably not holding our VFR weather minimums and it's not going to bode well for the check ride take your time as you go through the maneuvers we certainly understand that the cost of an airplane and in the rental of them it is not the cheapest thing in the world however retesting for a check ride isn't going to make that any cheaper so as you go through your maneuvers in the flight portion don't rush them take the time between maneuvers to set them up make sure you clear the area well and take the time to set them up so you're comfortable and it gives you the best chance to make sure that maneuver comes out how you want it to and with in practical test standards you may find where the examiners going along he says let's do slow flight and three quarters of the way through the slow flight he says yeah that's looking pretty good so far go ahead and finish it up and the next maneuver we'll do is a power off stall that doesn't mean right now you have to power off stall this just him telling you that you know next that's what we're going to do so take the time to complete them anew ver you're doing and clear the area again and set up for that next maneuver no check ride is a race so take up your time and work your way through it an extra half hour in the air isn't going to hurt in it and it's always kind of fun to have in the logbook anyway first and foremost I guess on the flight portions don't scare the examiner if the examiner feels like they have to jump in and take the controls to stop you from breaking you the airplane them or a federal aviation regulation it's probably going to reach a stopping point for that check cry so as you go through the flight portion do your best not to scare the examiner make sure you communicate with them and tell them what you're doing I'll tell you sometimes as I do check rides if somebody's a little bit off on something and they're making good corrections that shows me just as much as if somebody did a maneuver perfectly I can't tell you that we always fly perfectly and we're human we're pilots and part of being good pilots is knowing when to make good corrections however as you do this on a check ride if you're not telling the examiner what you're doing it they don't necessarily know if you're doing it on purpose or if it's an accident it can be hard sometimes as you go through a check ride to talk your way through it as you prepare for check rides may be a good idea just to start talking your way through maneuvers and talking about what you're doing to help the examiner when you get to that point understand fully what you're what you're experiencing so that's kind of the the flight portion of a few tips I'm going to give you a few general tips as we go through the check ride as well check rides not really a good spectator sport I've had number of occasions where people have brought our family and friends to watch them do the check ride if that check ride goes well it can be a wonderful moment if the check ride doesn't go well it can be a pretty sour moment generally leave your family and friends at home give them a call after and maybe they can come out if you're passing that first check ride and take a flight with you next day or later that day but having family and friends there to watch you to do your check ride is it's just add extra stress onto you even sometimes having your instructor there can add that extra stress it's a good thing to just make sure you take all the distractions away come on out do that check ride and make some phone calls after when it goes great for you expect that you're going to make mistakes along the way on the check ride the examiners aren't looking for you to be perfect they're just looking for good all-around performance we want to see that somebody is generally within practical test standards that they're making good decisions that they're safe and they have a good knowledge base sometimes making a good explanation of what you're fixing on the mistake will show the examiner just as much as if you did it perfectly we hear little things sometimes like oops oh oh darn when somebody's flying along and says oops that's my first cue as an examiner like my head up it's a goop oops what went wrong watch what you say though too so sometimes the examiner might miss what you did and you saying something like that my cue them into it so think your way through what you're saying and you know maybe maybe avoid those little cues that will help draw attention to the things that you did wrong try for your best performance on the check ride we've talked about the FAA practical test standards that are out there and really those practical staff standards are the absolute minimum a few days ago we did a check ride for an individual and we're doing a steep turn along the way and the practical test standards say that we have to be within 100 feet plus or minus on the altitude of where we started to where we completed as we went around our circle we were flying and we were plus or minus about eighty feet and it was kind of a roller coaster ride on the steep turn and we got done in the applicant Salalah that was within pts well it certainly was but it was it was basically a D in my opinion it met the pts did it passed yes it passed but was it really what we want to see on the checker I'd probably not make sure as you go through when you prepare for your check ride you look at those fa pts minimums and strive to get them as good as you can you know really we're looking for an a not the the minimum passing as we go through make sure you get a good night's rest before you take the check right sometimes it can be hard to do especially if you get a morning check rag to to go to bed and get a good night's sleep because you're nervous and you're excited for that check ride coming up in the morning but take the time to try and do that as best you can don't spend the entire night before trying to cram in that last little bit of information from a from a truly physiological standpoint most information that we try and cram in our memory doesn't remember anyway so you're probably a lot better off if you call it an early night most of the time when I send applicants to check rides I'll tell them you know if you're going to go home and review a few things maybe do so until five or six o'clock at night and then have a good dinner and go to bed so rest and that the good rest will give you a lot better performance on the check ride the next day than if you you spend four or five hours at night till 1:00 in the morning trying to get those last little bits into your brain and wake up tired and go to your check ride too tired to really perform well so get a good night's rest before you go take that check ride as well as we go through check rides and we start them the examiner is going to tell you we have three possible outcomes once the check ride actually begins one of those is what we all look for and that's the temporary Airman's certificate which adds on either a privilege for a certificate or rating that's the best and in most cases you'll see 70 to 80 percent of the time people do pass their check rides we have a middle ground somewhere and it's called the discontinuance if we find something that stops us from finishing the check ride halfway through wait we just stop you know maybe we come out and we do a pre-flight on the airplane and find out that we have a magneto that went bad and we just can't finish the flight portion so the examiner issues what's called a notice of discontinuance it's basically a letter of credits as we got that far you don't have to redo the stuff you've already done but we also didn't finish so we come back and finish it another day and then there's some times where we issue what's called a notice of disapproval what this means is something didn't meet practical test standards we'll talk a little bit more about it in a bit but I want to tell you there is no quota for failures an examiner who has just passed ten people in a row doesn't get out to the check ride that day and say well I passed ten this one's going to have to fail every time an examiner comes out and does a check ride what they're doing is they're looking at the practical test standards and they're evaluating whether or not the applicant that isn't working with them meets all of those practical tough standards and if they do they're going to pass if they don't they're not going to pass we hear hear things about the examiner passed a bunch maybe his time's up and he's got to fail somebody that really doesn't happen so what we're looking at is is to make sure those practical so use me practical test standards are within tolerances for us if by chance you don't pass a check ride it's not the end of the world doesn't mean you're bad person doesn't mean you're bad pilot it just means that there's something that needs a little bit more practice along the way might be on the ground portion for some study it might be in the flight portion but what it does mean is you're going to come back and retest many times there'll be a smaller fee for the retest however you're not going to get retested on the entire check ride you're just going to get retested on the areas that were found to be a little bit deficient or need a little bit more study the only time that you would end up having to test the entire test over is if you did not conduct your retest within 60 days so not passing a check ride is not the end of the world many many good pilots have failed a check ride and turned out to be wonderful pilots in some cases you'll learn just as much from a notice of disapproval as if everything went perfectly in most cases if you find something didn't work out perfect on the check ride you end up doing a retest for it it's probably the last time that you don't do that well because you really focus on it and make sure you sharpen it up after that try not to be too scared on your check right in we certainly know it's something to be nervous of most examiner's will take the time to try and get to know the applicant a little bit and try and put the app to these but we understand that taking a check ride is it's a meaningful moment something you want to accomplish and you get nervous for it one of the things that I recommend a lot of people do if they get the chances meet the examiner before the check ride if you get a chance to sit down and have a cup of coffee with your examiner at the airport before you even check or a day rolls around it kind of takes the the edge off and you get to learn that the examiner is human to we're there we want to see people pass most examiner's do not like giving notices of disapproval it's something that we do when we have to but we're excited about flying too and we want to see people succeed and have fun along the way so sit down and get to know your examiner they've been in the same spot that you're going to go to they've taken check rides and now they continue to do so as examiner's every year so they know what you're going through and you know don't forget on your check ride that the flying is fun too so even though you're taking a day where it's a test you can still have some fun along the way we'll go ahead and open it up to some questions here and certainly willing to answer as many as you have for as long as you have tonight all right well just like to start out by letting you know that Shannon says that this has been an excellent presentation and you've all but completely eliminated my checkride anxiety thank you so well pleasure to hear that a couple of questions here for the glider commercial PTS says the examiner has to create some distraction to judge how the examinee reacts what sort of distractions are they talking about you know and this this is something that fits in most of the check rides where the examiner has to evaluate some sort of a distraction that the applicant is going to have to manage and I'll tell you the my own personal distraction comes out naturally I have a hard time being quiet in the airplane in most of the cases I'll sit and talk with somebody and it might even be absolutely nothing related to aviation yesterday I had a check right that we gave and I found out the individual was a scuba diver I'm also a fairly avid scuba diver but halfway through the check rat I found myself talking about finding shipwrecks and diving on them and eventually the applicant looked you know could be quiet for a moment and that really kind of was my distraction what it was planned or not many examiner's have different things that they do and you know certainly it's sometimes worth talking to other applicants who have spent some time with an examiner doing a check ride to find out what their quirks are I do a lot of check rides at a university and I know and I've never gone and looked at it but I know there's a file on each of these examiner's that do check rides there and it's called a gouge book where every time somebody takes a check rat they go write down what they did you can find out what the examiner is going to do in a lot of cases the the distractions might be as simple as putting a chart up on the windscreen in front of where the applicant is going to be in saying you know pretending with a passenger and putting some things away really what the examiner is looking to do is see do you have good cockpit management are you going to make sure that you know if your your passenger does something that is a distraction you're going to say hey you know I need to move that map or can you be quiet just for a little bit while I finish this maneuver or now I've got some radio communications that I have to do here and I need you to just sit still for a moment it really kind of depends on the examiner but they will do some distraction type of items it might even be something as simple as saying hey look down there there's a neat you know farm field down there let's take a look at that they do that in the middle of your maneuver and they're looking to see are you gonna finish your maneuver are you going to focus on you know what they're trying to get you to do so they may do things like that as distractions usually it's pretty pretty innocuous stuff it's things you would normally expect a passenger to do while you were flying the aircraft all right q if you could just go over you know being able to look things up on the on the oral exam I mean yes you can look things up but at the same time that's a kind of double edged sword if you're looking up too much correct it certainly is a double-edged sword you know there are things that I will tell you as an examiner I expect somebody to know you know if we're looking at the chitara and I point out a Class C airspace I really kind of expect them to know that really what I'm looking for the things that they're going to come in to in normal flying are they going to be able to identify and know if we've got to look at the chart legend for every every little bit of airspace to identify it we're probably looking up too much but if I say hey what are the regulations for you know flying a or for a charitable organization I you know I could fully well expect the the applicant to kind of scratch your head and say geez I I know you can do it but I can't remember all the rules on it can I look it up that might be something that you know would be expected to look up if I say you know what what what's a meet our you know I kind of kind of expect them to know the basic weather things you know now that being said if I say how's the volcanic ash chart work I could probably expect that they're going to want to look that up it's probably not something that they've they've come across or looked at so it is a double-edged sword you know we certainly don't want to see somebody looking everything up we don't want to see somebody looking up the things that are really day-to-day knowledge like vitamins that are going to make them be able to fly safely and proficiently but there are some things that we can look up along the way all right in in general what's the percentage of pilots who don't pass their check right on the first attempt you know it really depends on the type of test that somebody is taking the flight instructor test is is probably about a 70 to 80 percent failure rate on the first time taking the test that's probably the the toughest pass rate of any of the the ratings or significance when we come down to the the more common ratings and certificates sport pilot Private Pilot instrument commercial check ride we find that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent is the typical pass rate you know most most of the time people are going to get through it on the first try and you might have a 20 to 30% rate where somebody has to come back and repeat a little bit of it so the Private Pilot tends to be a little bit higher the instrument pilot rating tends to be a little bit a little bit tougher to pass but the private sport pilot are probably closer to 80 percent on average is there much of a difference between the check rides for private and sport you know there's not a whole lot of difference between the two the practical test standards for the maneuvers that are conducted are the exact same standards for example if we're doing a steep turn we have to stay within 100 feet plus or minus of our altitude if we're doing a short field landing we have our touchdown point of designation plus 200 feet to work with the sport pilot check ride really is missing one piece in comparison to the private pilot and that is the demonstration of proficiency of instrument maneuvers or performing climbs turns and descents and unusual attitude recovery underneath the the hood or Falls that's really the only difference between the private pilot check ride and sport pilot check ride other than the sport pilot check ride must be conducted in a light-sport qualified aircraft are there any standards that were maneuvers that are more commonly the ones that people fail there certainly are in you know the probably the most commonly failed portion of a check ride and this goes all the way through including the private pilot sport pilot commercial pilot an ATP is the short field landing it's the maneuver that in most cases has the tightest tolerance that the examiner has to evaluate on the private and sport pilot levels we have a designated point where we we say we're going to touch our wheels down simulating a short field some people choose that to be the end of the runway some choose a point a little bit down adjust to allow for a flare out above the runway from a safety standpoint but once we pick our point you know let's imagine we pick the the numbers of the runway what the pts says is we have to land on that point or 200 feet beyond it and no more where our wheels have to contact the ground on the commercial pilot certificates we actually have 100 feet to do that and well that's a pretty tight tolerance to do that within them to demonstrate or I guess a tell you how tight that is we think about how tall a runway stripe is our runway stripes I think 80 feet and there's 120 feet between them so what that really means is from the start one stripe to the start of the next stripe is where you have to touchdown for private violent maneuvers and for a commercial pilot maneuver you really basically have the runway stripe and what it comes down to is it is pretty much a spot landing what I find is is that's probably the most commonly failed portion of a check ride and the easiest way to to fail that is to not have a stabilized approach on the way down for conducting a short field landing and we're a few knots too fast especially if we're flying in an aircraft that has a good glide ratio maybe a diamond or cirrus a little extra airspeed can carry us quite a ways and take us outside of that practical test and ER tolerance it's probably the most commonly failed maneuver on a check ride as we go through it so if you're going to spend some time really working on something before checkride that's probably one of the ones that you want to spend a little bit of time with all right Eric was told that if it's in the airplane you need to know how it works from an examiner's point of view is that is that on the money I will tell you that from my perspective yes absolutely you know I've done checker IDEs where somebody's come and said well I'm not going to use the autopilot because I have to hand fly everything well if you've got a model pilot in there my expectation is you should know how to use it I kind of I don't believe that somebody's going to go out and rent the airplane or fly to personal aircraft after and never use it so I want to see that they know how to use that equipment if you've got via wires in there you should know how to use the vor if you've got a GPS you should know how to use the GPS and know how to use the equipment that you do have in the aircraft now some of the old tricks on that a lot of people don't like the ATF's anymore and I'll tell you there's a lot of airplanes out there that have an in-app sticker on an ADF when they go to an instrument check red because they don't want to do that that NDB approach anymore but if you have an inoperable piece of equipment in the aircraft you should know how to use it at least at the the basic levels to get the main functions out of it mark is asking if he does all of his training in a tailwheel airplane and will he be expected to demo we landings you know there is no practical test standards requirement to demonstrate a wheel landing depending on the aircraft and you know certainly some tailwheel aircraft may or may not even want to you may not want to conduct your landings but depending on the type of aircraft but I will tell you in most cases the examiner is probably going to ask for a demonstration of a wheel landing if it's an aircraft that is probably going to be used with a real landing but what the practical test standard says is we have to see a you know in most cases a short field landing a soft field landing and a normal landing so there's no requirement to do a wheel landing however it would not be something that you know that I would figure on the examiner not asking for if you took in this is just I guess my own question if you took all of your training in a tailwheel airplane and passed your private pilot check right do you have to then go back and get an a tailwheel endorsement um you know that's an interesting question and you actually do have to have a tailwheel endorsement and I can tell you I had an odd situation with that one time where we I had an applicant show up to a checker ID in this case it wasn't a tailwheel aircraft it was a complex aircraft with the gear that went up and we did the Private Pilot check ridin and we got thinking about it and you know certainly they had been endorsed to solo that aircraft but those endorsements expired upon the receipt of the Private Pilot certificate actually what we ended up doing is going back up flying after and I gave some instruction after the check riders passed to give them a complex endorsement the same would hold true of a tailwheel aircraft so if you do all of your training in the tailwheel aircraft ask your instructor to also give you the endorsement for a tailwheel aircraft you do need to have that to be legally amplified as well great question and here's here's a follow-up to that robert asking what exactly is a wheel landing wheel landing is when you when you conduct the landing in a tailwheel aircraft on the two main wheels it's a little bit the more pitch forward of a landing in tailwheel aircraft you'll find two different styles of endings of the primary styles one where you contact the ground in a full stall configuration with all three wheels landing at the same time including the two mains and then the wheel on the tail in the wheel landing you'll find that the tail wheel stays up off the ground a little bit higher attitude and the pilot lands with the two mains rolls down with me a little bit and then settles out the tail a few AC written and oral test do you get a break on the flight portion great question you know and this is really something that depends on the examiner I I kind of I kind of look at this as if you got a hundred percent on the written I may ask question of so how'd you study for that and if the answer is well I I picked up that knowledge test prep book and memorize the questions well that doesn't tell me you knew anything that just tells me a memorize the answers sometimes if somebody has a hundred percent I'm more apt to ask some questions than I am if they got a you know an 85 or 92 percent certainly if I see somebody squeaked by on the 70 percent I'm probably going to ask a few more questions as well but it's really examiner dependent in most cases for me I'll tell you that the written test score does not change my ground portion of the check right very much you know I to separate test ones a knowledge test and the practical test is really that for me it's a practical test instead of just asking simple questions you know like what is the FAA required minimum for fuel at night you know I'm probably going to ask questions that are more looking to see if the individual can make good decisions you know like you know we're going to fly at night and we're going to fly to this Airport what types of considerations do we have and I'm looking for people to get the the bigger decision making process not just the basic answers and I kind of consider that knowledge test the the mechanism where we're going to make sure somebody has that knowledge of the the kind of spit of back to me answers and the practical test is really a practical test I'm going to see can somebody take that knowledge that they've learned and apply it to real world fly so I can't tell you that you know 100 percent or 70 percent doesn't change how I question somebody at all but it probably doesn't change them a whole lot and sometimes that 100% makes me question a little bit more than somebody who got a 92 or 95 for the Private Pilot test because the flight tests include the entire cross country leg that was planned for the test or is it just discussed during the oral portion in most cases on the and this will really apply to a sport pilot and commercial along with the the Private Pilot check the applicant is going to be asked to plan out a cross-country and really what the examiner is going to do with that is look at your planning see if it is really going to work out make sure it's correct you know if we come down and we look at your planning and you've got a 200-mile flight you get an airplane it does a 110 knots and you say you're going to get there in 27 minutes there better be one heck of a tailwind or we know there's something wrong so we're going to look at that planning and then usually what will happen is on the flight portion of the check ride the examiner will ask the applicant to start out on that cross-country we are not almost ever going to fly that whole cross-country but what we're going to do is we're going to start out on it and what the examiner is looking to do is see if the applicant can find using pilotage and dead reckoning those first couple checkpoints along the way and our times and planning generally working out usually I'll go to the second checkpoint you know 15 to 20 miles away from the airport if everything is working out I'll have the applicant break off from the home from the cross-country portion of the check ride I may do something where I say hey the weather up ahead all sudden got really bad I guess we're going to have to divert so what are we going to do and that's an opportunity for me to test whether the applicant can make some changes in the air and kind of figure out what they're going to do if if something changes so yeah you wouldn't expect generally to fly the whole cross-country you'll expect to fly the first a little bit of a make sure everything's working out and then either break off for a diversion or potentially just break off into the practice area and it'll go start doing the rest of the maneuvers kevin is currently a student pilot he's done most of his training in a piper Pacer with only basic instruments and no no vor it's been suggested to him that if he tests in the Pacer the navigation sections of the flight tests are going to be more difficult so he's wondering if you'd recommend taking some instruction and possibly check riding up like a Cessna 152 172 it would have more of the navigation instruments well I can't tell you that the the test is going to be harder without vor as a matter of fact it might even be easier you're missing something the examiner can test you on especially for the visual based types of tests the private and the sport pilot what the examiner is going to be looking at is can you navigate using pilotage and dead reckoning and looking outside the aircraft and matching up what you see on the ground the map that you have for a private pilot checkride you will have to demonstrate some of the instrument maneuvers no climbs turns and descents with the hoods you'll at least need those basic instruments but there's no requirement to have a vor or other navigation system other than your ability to look outside and navigate and use the chart for a private pilot checkride then I actually think it might even be easier for you to do it that way the examiners is - one thing they can quiz you on on that check right now certainly if you find yourself on the check ride and you're a little bit disoriented or or even worse lost you may find that a vor would have been a helpful thing to have but if you can maintain good position awareness you're not worried about that it shouldn't be any detriment for you and certainly the pacer can be a great airplane to do a check right when an examiner is asking for a stall in this particular question refers to gliders but it may go for powered aircraft as well does the examiner want an insipid stall in recovery or a full stall in recovery um you know as you go through this the the practical test standards will be explicit about this in most private level maneuvers they are looking for a stall that actually brings you to a Buffett where you're actually inducing that stall on commercial test maneuvers they're looking for imminent stalls so they do not necessarily have to end up in the stall itself you can probably expect that you're looking for you know in most cases a stall that is going to you know start to get your buffett or the first indications of the fact that the stall is occurring and then recover for that and we like the recoveries too we don't want them to go too far along the way and scare us also for the the glider tester clearing terms required between every different manoeuvre even if they're coming kind of one after another you know and this is something you want to talk with your examiner about I'm usually pretty clear with the applicants on this and I don't expect to turn to do a turn to do a turn to do another turn however if we find we have gaps between maneuvers or we're transitioning out of the area that we already cleared you know maybe we're doing a maneuver that's taking us a mile or two away it might be a good idea to do another clearing turn this is something you want to have a discussion with the examiner about on the ground you know what what are their expectations of clearing and in the absence of the examiner giving you good feedback on that it's probably a good idea to clear the area again just make sure you know most examiner's aren't going to try and trick you on the neck and say well you only did 90 degrees of current I was expecting 180 so we're going to go back however if we did a couple maneuvers and we haven't done a clearing turn in a while you don't do one before we go into steep turns or stalls they may say geez you know it's kind of expecting you to clear that area again so you know just be logical with it and communicate well about it I'll tell you in many cases when I do check rides I'll tell the applicant you know if you hear me say the words I consider the area clear that's my cue to them to say look at you know we just did a series of steep turns and we're going around in a circle and we both been watching outside and we're going to transition into another maneuver I consider the area clear we don't have to do another turn so I'm usually pretty clear with the applicants on that as we go through all right this question is looking for the required aeronautical experience regarding night cross-country for private pilots form 87 10-1 we'll see if you know your forms it doesn't look like it shows night cross-country where did the requirement to come about and where can you find more information about it the requirement is actually from the FARC and the 87 10-1 for does not necessarily always reflect the requirements that are needed for any particular rating or certificate there's certainly requirements in many of the ratings you know across country requirement of across the country over 250 miles for a commercial or over 100 miles for a private pilot those aren't going to show up on 8710 form but they are required based on the FAA requirements in the ratings so if you look through these certification requirements in part 61 for each of the ratings you're going to find specific things that have to be completed for the checkride this is one of the things that examiner's as we go through the paperwork before the checker I'd have to take the time to go through and make sure that we've seen that all of these requirements are met they we spend some time looking through the individuals logbook and many times the instructor has done the same thing make sure making sure they've totaled it I carry a checklist with me for each of the ratings and certificates that I do check rides and I literally just go through the logbook and make a checkoff list but all of those things will not necessarily show up on the 8710 - one former or - ten or - 11 depending on the certificate that you're taking now do you have your applicants open a flight plan for their cross country and then close it I typically do not the only time I do that is if we are actually conducting an instrument check ride in instrument conditions simply because we're going to have to be in the instrument conditions however I will certainly ask the applicants about the procedures and how they do it and you know this is another area that I find and is a common weak spot of knowledge of how do we do that when we're in the air or how do we get weather information when we're in the air and what I'm looking for is can the applicant and we'll look at vor frequencies and flight service information on the charts or refer back to their AFD and find where information can be dredged up to try and figure out how they're going to contact flight service when they're in the air or on the ground at an airport so I will certainly ask questions about the flight plan process I don't typically have them actually open flight plan or or file1 for the check ride but no many cases they'll ask them to fill out a flight plan form as if they were going to file it and then tell me the procedure how they do it all right for commercial glider does the applicant have a choice of flying from the front seat or rear seat of a tandem glider I wish I knew the answer to it it's something that if if we want I can try and find the answer for if the email addresses here I don't know the answer to that of a very little glider time but I'd be interested to find out all right Michael was wondering he hasn't flown for ten years and he'd like to get back in the cockpit how much difference is there going to be with the flight review now than it was ten years ago um certainly there's going to be some differences the I guess the biggest things you're going to probably find our are in relation to airspace changes if you know if it's been ten years you you were at least flying when the new airspace came and I can tell you when I did my original training about Oh probably five or six weeks before I took my my flight test all the airspace has changed and I kind of went to the check ride scratching my head going I don't really entirely know this fortunately the examiner was kind of in the same boat I was at that point some of the airspace issues may have changed you're going to be looking at temporary flight restrictions that are more commonly found now for since 9/11 really they've kind of stepped up that procedure depending on where you're flying we've got some special use flight areas around Washington DC and New York that you know if you're in those areas people are going to find that the flight review is changing a little bit however the majority of the material is really quite similar to what it was before in or somebody's going to take the time to go through a flight review with you they're going to be looking at a lot of the basic material that you've always done general aerodynamics and flight characteristics and you know knowledge of systems of the airplane making sure that you can transit in and out of controlled airspace so it won't have changed a lot but there will be some little tweaks here and there that you may want to pay attention to and could you maybe Chronicle the differences between a sport pilot instructor checkride versus a regular CFI check read the differences are not overly large in terms of what the examiner is going to be looking for the individual to be able to do and what I what I can tell people is in most cases when people do not pass a flight instructor check right of any sort the main reason is is the they've approached that checkride as how to demonstrate manoeuvres and how to do them as opposed to how to teach them on both the sport pilot and regular certificated instructor checkride really what the applicant is going to be asked to demonstrate is an ability to teach material the sport pilot checkride is going to be more focused on LSA type aircraft and training while the certificated flight instructor check ride will be a little bit broader where the the applicant is going to be asked to have a little bit more knowledge on some of the instrument flight procedures and because they're also able to train individuals for commercial pilot certificates have a little broader base of knowledge relating to commercial operations as well the sport pilot is going to be a little bit more focused on the type of operations the days for pilot is going to be trained for so the CFI checkride in instead of the sport pilot instructor checkride will be a little bit longer a little bit more broad-based but again the standards are going to be very very similar and the type of approach to that checkride is really going to be looking at can the individual express and teach information in a way that the that their students or customers are going to be learning material so the approach of the check rides is going to be similar just a little bit more broad-based information coming out on the CDFI checkride from the sport pilot checkride earlier in your presentation you referred to the examiner as a knowledgeable passenger and Kevin is wondering if you think it's a good idea to give a passenger briefing to your examiner just to show that you have that knowledge most examiner's will expect that you give some sort of a passenger briefing to them and basically expect you would give them a briefing that you would to you know somebody that's coming into the airplane a normal passenger that maybe it written with you before even expect that you're going to be giving a briefing to that individual you know telling them the basics about what your expectations are going to be of them as a passenger and really you know it doesn't have to be anything super super detailed but the basic gist of you know what the controls are doing and what you like them to do and you know what happens when there's radio communications and what if there's an emergency and things like that a standard passenger briefing should be given to the examiner and in most cases they'll expect you to do that all right and Eric has a rather odd situation that happened done on his check ride during the check ride the examiner asked him to check the weather from the air and he wasn't able to contact the flight service station the station was down and neither Eric nor the examiner knew it at the time have you ever had anything like this happened to you in and how would you handle a situation like that you know I've certainly had some odd things happen on check rides I think the more you do of them you know just like flying the run into those odd situations I think that's an interesting thing you know because that draws out what would you do if it was real life and were I the examiner in that situation I probably would have said well if you know 120 2.15 whatever the flight service station was coming up on wasn't working what would you do and if we needed to get weather well maybe I'd climb a little bit and go to one 22.0 and call flight watch that might be my backup option and maybe the examiner did or didn't think of that at that point but you know certainly you sometimes have backup options but there are things that surprise you as an examiner sometimes and um you know you work through them and strange things happen I had an applicant probably about two years ago now we were headed back to the airport we started at and it was an airport that he'd normally didn't fly up I met him there and as we were navigating our way back to the airport I watched the airport go by we were navigating along and it's a good examiner does I I wasn't instructing so I was just kind of watching we got about seven miles away and landed at another airport and the applicant is beaming as possible if it's that was a good landing wasn't it it certainly was I said but can we go back to the right airport now and there was kind of a moment of pause and so this isn't there before we started it is it so no it certainly is it so strange things do happen um you know and if you run into something work your way through it take your time think your way through it and think if you have other options all right and checkride day can be tough to be the student but to also share your skills is pilot-in-command any a advice or tips on how to follow instructions of the examiner but yet still make the decisions as well you know I think the the biggest thing on a check ride is make sure you have good clear communication one of the areas that I find personally when we're in an airplane it's a lot of the loud environment and I ask somebody let's do a Power on stall sometimes they hear it but you know maybe we go through the maneuver and I see a power off stall if you have a question of what's you know being asked make sure you clarify that with the examiner good communication is probably the best thing I can tell you to do in terms of making sure you know what the examiner wants making sure you know what you're going to conduct for them and making sure the maneuvers get get done the way you want them to get done you know communication is really really important with the examiner you know that's where you're going to iron out that question of what does the examiner Specht expect me to do and am I the pilot command that's making the decision to do it the way I want it done and finally his student never scared you on a check ride and what happened um yes and actually this was a you do your best to to not show the fear and make sure you stay in control of the aircraft but this was a situation where we actually had an FAA inspector onboard as well at least once a year an examiner is given an overseen check ride and this was kind of a snowball type of process where we got to this and an applicant show up for a check ride and we went out and did the ground portion of it and when we got done with it we were checking the weather and we were about 15 to 20 knots gusting mostly across the runway and the applicant said let's go flying and I kind of said geez it you sure well yeah I think we can do this you know as we look at the practical test standards if everything's within the tolerances of the airplane hypothetically we can go on we mentioned earlier that the make sure the weather doesn't decide the outcome of your check ride you know if the applicant can do the maneuvers in adverse conditions and pass well then they pass but it can be one of those moments where it makes it harder to do so and as we taxied out and set up for the first takeoff we were probably about fifty or sixty feet above the ground you got hit by a pretty strong gust and it lifted the wing of the airplane quite a bit the applicant let go of the controls and kind of let out a screech at which point is the examiner I jumped onto the controls and brought us back to level and the looked back and the FAA inspector in the back was a little bit questioning too and we kind of said well maybe we should take it back around the patch and call it a day you know certainly there are moments where things can can catch you as an examiner and the same thing as an instructor on the check right day we're looking for good decision making processes and you know make sure you make sure you think your way through things I've been very fortunate most of the check rides we've conducted and have been wonderful usually when people come to a check ride we find that they're very well prepared that they may be nervous but you know we instructors don't sign off students that they don't think are going to pass in most cases so as much as you're nervous you've got somebody behind you as your instructor that thinks you're ready and when we know when somebody comes to us for a check ride there they're probably going to be perfectly ready and we're going to have a good good ride with them so most the time it's a lot of fun to do and Jamie has about 30 hours of flight time but this is 20 years ago and we'll be taking the first sport pilot lesson tomorrow how many of those previous hours are going to count toward training all of those hours will technically count toward your training in the logbook what I will say is it's been quite a while plan on doing some of them over just to gain the proficiency level back that you might have had when you stop the training but all the hours are there in the logbook they never expire and they're there for you so alright Jason we've cleared the question board any last words of wisdom that you can leave the audience with tonight well I think the the last thing I want to tell you is the examiners are humans too we're not there to try and trick anybody we're not there to try and make sure that somebody has a bad experience most of us want to see people pass on the data checkride and we're there to have a little bit of fun certainly for us it's a you know it's a job where we get paid to do it but we wouldn't be doing if we didn't love it too so we're there to have a little bit of fun you know take some time get to know the examiner talk with them take your time on the way through the check ride and in most cases you're going to have a wonderful experience and you might get to you know in many cases fly with somebody who has many many years of experience as an examiner and has seen a lot of things and you might learn a couple things along the way too so have some fun with it and if you do have a check right coming up soon best of luck and if you have any questions I can answer you see the email up on the screen here feel free to give me email me and I'll do everything I can to help answer and help you get through it as well all right Jason thank you for spending your evening with us tonight and with your presentation and answering all the questions and I think as you said in one of your slides about being nervous it's yeah I've always have to remember flying is fun and that's that's always a paramount in there remember if you're not having fun you must be doing something wrong right I certainly agree all right and again thanks to all of you for joining us tonight and sticking with us I know we ran a little long but some some great questions along the way and again Jason say email is there J Blair at EA hor G and I'll just put a quick plug in for the webinars that are coming up next week Jeremy Manette with the Sonics electric aircraft update on Tuesday Young Eagles first flight lesson on Wednesday with Brian olena and Adam Smith who is in charge of features and attractions at AirVenture we'll have our final 2010 update that is coming up next Thursday night the survey will pop up as we all log off thanks again for joining us and I hope we will see us again at another EAA webinar have a good night

Channel: EAA

Views: 70,782

Keywords: EAA, flight, instruction, learning, to, fly, flying, help, tips

Id: NFY9CC2NLxs

Length: 84min 37sec (5077 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 04 2011