hi everyone. I'm Russ Still and welcome to this Gold Seal mock check ride session. this will be an instrument pilot oral exam. it's going to last roughly between an hour and an hour and a half. in this exam you're going to see a real applicant hash it out with a real examiner. these two men will be sitting across the table from each other digging into weather planning decision making routing changes and maybe even a few oddball instrument approaches. for all intents and purposes this will be an authentic representation of what your own upcoming checkride might look like. so let's get started by introducing you to our pilots. Alex Hernandez our applicant is based here in Atlanta and he's one of our Gold Seal students so you better do good Alex. our examiner as always is a longtime friend Todd Shellnutt. so Todd this is just one more of many. you've got all the paperwork done. you guys are ready to go. so I'm going to exit stage left and leave it to you. thank you very much Russ. this ought to be a great night. we're going to have fun here. going to go over kind of like some little ground rules for you. I know that you've taken a check ride before but I'm going to brief you exactly about how we're do this tonight. I will be using this stack of papers over here this referred to as a plan of action and this is what a DPE uses when they go through a check ride and it's basically a series of predetermined scenarios and trigger events that kind of help us make our way through the Airman Certification Standards. I'll also be sharing some of the Airman Certification Standards here on our screen, helpful screen in the back here. we'll also be able to see your flight plan and other things as well. so when we talk about it we'll just both look over here at the screen and I'll ask you questions about your route and other things that you'll see here on the screen. sounds good. I will be writing some things with my fancy pen as we're going through here and so don't worry about what I'm writing. it's just because like Russ said we're going to be together for about an hour, hour and a half and I want to be able to give you a thorough debrief after this is all over with. so with doing that we got to make sure I keep proper notes throughout the ride. sounds good. all right well thank you very much and if you don't have any questions we'll go ahead and begin. awesome no questions yet. awesome. that's wonderful okay so first off, we'll just go kind of in line with the ACS we don't have to actually go like area of operation 1,2, 3, 4 like that. it can just be- as long as I cover everything by the very end. but we'll start off talking about your pilot currency. as an instrument pilot. okay? so just like you had to maintain currency as a Private Pilot, we're going to talk about this as a instrument pilot. so I- before this we talked about you having a pen some paper be able to write things down as an examiner talks to you about some things. so here's some dates and some information for you. you received your instrument rating today in 2021 and it's today 2023 and since you received your rating you've flown five approaches and you've tracked a NAVAID seven times and you've held twice. can you act as PIC in IFR under IMC? and if not what must you do in order to act as PIC? so I could not do that due to the fact that I need six approaches. I need- so the example you gave me is all I've done I'm assuming. I need to do 6 holds within 6 months and this is 2 years. I'm not exactly sure when these approaches were done, but within 6 months I need to do 6 approaches or 6 instrument approaches. I need to intercept and track, hold, and use navigational electronic equipment. very good. in regards to you going out and flying and doing everything that you're going to do flying instrument approaches and holds and stuff, tell me how you document your experience as a pilot. I have a log book I I put everything in a logbook. I actually have two logbooks. I use the one on my iPad and then I also use one on- a physical one. okay. in regards to that, do you just you just write down the time? or what do you add in the remarks section? so in the remarks I will input that it was exactly that. those- in reference to those what we call 6 HITS. I'm sure you've heard that before. so I try to put it so just for example flying over here in Northeast Georgia, I'd say I flew the ILS in into 5 or in Runway 5 for Gainesville. so I'd put KGVL ILS 5 and then I'll put CTH for circle to hold- or I'm sorry CTL for circle to land and I that's kind of how I- how I log everything. good outstanding. so before we started, we talked about the airplane that you're flying and you're currently flying a a newer model G1000 172 that is equipped with the the GFC 700 autopilot. so you were scheduled to fly this airplane for a flight but when you show up the only plane that they have available is one that has a a six-pack and a GTN 650 GPS with a CDI. you've never flown this airplane before. would you take this airplane into IFR? I would not. personally I would not. I have flown 6 packs before but I not IFR. or I have done them IFR but not enough. I have much more proficiency in a G1000. that is on my to-do list though, to to get proficient on 6 packs in case that was to ever happen if I really needed to fly and I didn't have the G1000. sure. tell me about some of the risk that you would have to mitigate for a pilot who did choose to do something like that. so could you rephrase the question yeah, why is it risky to do something like that? the instrument scan I feel like is integral in an IFR flight. you really need to be consistently having a I don't want to say perfect but a near perfect scan and when you have a traditional 6 pack, you know if you do it consistently you can do the way that you scan might be a certain way. if you have a shotgun, you know, layout then you'll be able- I wouldn't be able to do it, you know. I I'm not really sure where the attitude indicator is in comparison to the altitude or altimeter. so I would I that that's probably the the main my main reason to be apprehensive about it. okay on the day of your flight you show up and you notice that the G1000 database is actually out of date. could you still go fly IFR? I could not okay you're planning an an IFR flight and you check the weather the night before and you find that the forecast shows that the weather the next morning is supposed to be 100- 1,000 and 3 meaning 1,000 foot ceilings and 3 statue miles at the arrival. then you check the next morning prior to your takeoff and find that the destination weather is now 500 foot ceiling and 2 statute miles. you've flown just a couple hours in about the last 5 to 6 months, but you are current would you conduct this flight? personally? no. tell me why. the FAA has those quote- unquote currency requirements but I feel proficiency is is huge. I eventually I'll get better with my personal minimums and be able to push them a little bit further once I'm more comfortable but as of right now my personal minimums are are pretty conservative. I wouldn't fly for example I wouldn't fly single pilot IFR period right now but I wouldn't fly single pilot IFR in tough IMC you know you. know thick layers where it's not going to be like I I can break out way before minimums. but yeah the flying with lack of what I would call proficiency even- even though I'm current with, is just asking for trouble. okay. all righ.t let's move on into talking about weather. tell me what weather source did you use to plan for our make believe flight? 1-800 WX brief. I called. okay. excellent I love to be able to hear that pilots actually still do that. that's still a wonderful thing. I love to be able to have a little bit more feedback than just looking at a screen. ask people questions. I just love that aspect of it. yes, why do you choose to use that service? so ForeFlight gives me a a good weather briefing here and I know many of my friend pilots use that but I am not as trained as that individual is. right? if I wanted to learn how to cook something and I had, you know, a professional chef near me I would ask him how to do it. I'm not going to rely on myself to do- to look over weather data interpolated into whatever I believe is is the way to read it. I would like to ask somebody hey is this- so like- is my entire route going to be IMC? or could you tell me- I know that my route is 257 miles. I don't only want to know what it is at PDK or what it is at Jacksonville, I'd like to know what it is you know in Macon or in Dublin and just consistently going down so I know exactly where or how the weather is going to be out throughout my flight not just departure and arrival. okay outstanding. besides ForeFlight and calling a weather briefer, what other sources of weather products can you get and places you can get stuff? 1800wxbrief.com is a website that is commonly used. aviation weather I cannot remember the website I'm I use a certain- one thing it's kind of like what what I'm used to. if you were about a week out from planning an IFR flight, where would you start about a week out looking at the weather? I'm not sure. I couldn't tell you where a week out- I'd be looking at just weather.com for radar looking at the radar seeing what- what- what's around if you know there's a hurricane coming or anything. sure sure. well that's right. I agree that those are some good resources, even the week out, that would be a good thing. when- you did say you called and got a briefer, right? yes sir. what type of weather briefing did you ask for when you called? so I asked for an outlook and then I called back and I referenced my outlook and he gave me a kind of a deeper more in-depth look into my my flight plan. okay. and if- how long out- when is the outlook kind of made to be used for? like how many hours out prior to your flight? if I'm not mistaken it's 12 hours. okay about half of that. 6 hours. okay. that makes sense. okay all right. well that's good. well that's that's a very good way to get started and get a very thorough pre-flight. today we planned a flight from Peachtree-Dekalb airport down to Craig Field in Jacksonville Florida. so that's the what we'll look at here. we'll look at the routes in here in just a second and in the interim what we'll do is we'll just start off with a few basic weather reports and then we're going to look and see just based off what I show you. the reason for this is because currently right now it's extreme clear. yes. to our destination so we're going to look at some things that are not okay as maybe as nice so we're going to assume that these weather reports are actually from those particular areas and we're going to go from there. so without further ado, what we'll do is we'll pick up the- there we go. thank you very much. and we'll look at some of the weathers here. so we'll go to a place here that may not have some good weather. so I'm just going to put this particular METAR in and I'll blow this up for us just a little bit and if you would identify for me the weather report that you're seeing here at the top for Tupelo Mississippi. Tupelo, Mississippi. I couldn't couldn't tell you that that's where that's from. I never seen TUP before. no worries. so you are- what type of weather report is this? METAR. okay good. if you would just go ahead and read that to me until you get to the A02 in the report. okay I see. so seventh day of the month 30 Z- 0036 Zulu winds are going to be 350 at 21 knots gusting 26 7 statute miles of visibility thunderstorms and rain few clouds 12- 1,200 and scattered 4,500 broken 100 temperature 23 dew point 21 and altimeter is going to be 29.95 remark Alpha 02. what does Alpha 02 mean? it's a type- a type of something. okay, how about- we'll come back with it in just a minute. maybe you read it again. if you could do me just one favor and just reread the clouds one more time for me please. okay the ceiling of the clouds. few at 12- 1,200, scattered at 4,500 and broken at 10,000. okay very good. very good. we have another report down here at the bottom which is- what is this report called? that's the TAF. okay so if you would, right after the TUP if you'll start with the date stamp and go from there. so from the 6th day of the month 2334 Zulu 07- on the day- on on the 7th month from 0000 Zulu to 0 on the 7 month 2400 Zulu winds are going to be variable at 5 knots, more than 6 statute miles of visibility, in the vicinity there's going to be thunderstorms, scattered 3,000 cumulonimbus and broken 10,000 tempor- you want me to keep going? yeah. okay temporarily from 00 to 0200 it's going to be variable winds 15 gusting 30 oooh 2 statute miles visibility, thunderstorms with rain, broken at 3,500, cumulonimbus from, keep going? no. I tell you what- about what time do you think that the weather may start clearing up on us? looks like coming in at 0400. okay so what is the weather supposed to be there at 04? 5 statute miles, I mean its- it could be a little bit better after- clear up as in like extreme clear is looking like it's going to start at 1100. okay but it- it's getting better and better throughout the TAF. very well. so tell me, from your experience and your planning and everything, how would you feel about departing at this current time? so this is a from the current date stamp on the METAR if you were departing at that time. how would you feel about the weather? I would not like to depart during that time. can you tell me what is in this weather report that has you saying I don't want to do this? almost all of it. Okay. so thunderstorm, rain thunderstorm in the vicinity is scary enough. cumulonimbus clouds, 15 gusting 30 and it's variable so it's not even like you can kind of assume or not- you know, just oh let's put some, you know, left- let's adjust for the left cross wind. it's going to be coming from every angle on it. just too much. okay let's talk a little bit about some of these hazards. okay. thunderstorms. what is it? how does the thunderstorm form? it's an uprising force. I'm drawing a blank. I apologize. it's no problem. it's an uplifting force or an uprising force. heavy or low pressure and high pressure mixing. that's kind of where I'm at right now. I apologize. are they more prone to happen in maybe dry air or moist air? moist air. okay all right. so maybe does that help a little bit. so I mean just thinking of like seventh grade math- or seventh grade science of how you know evaporate- water evaporates and condensates into a cloud and then once it's full it rains down but I couldn't have- for some reason I can't- and I obviously studied this and I can't think of why or how a thunderstorm is actually made. no worries. would you say that moisture high moisture content is one of the factors? yes. okay can you tell me some different ways that moisture is actually added to the atmosphere? through evaporation and condensation would be one of them. being you know the dew and brought in from from the the sea different reasons as to how, but I couldn't pinpoint exact or ways. sure no worries. well let's talk about a little bit about instead of talking about the format of the thunderstorm let's talk a little bit about the life of a thunderstorm. does it go through some stages? tell me about the life of a thunderstorm. it does it has its developing stage, it's mature stage, and its dissipating stage if I'm not mistaken. yeah, could you just look at a cloud and tell if it was a thunderstorm going through the dissipating stage? it would start kind of- I don't know how do you say this. like coming upon itself. I don't know how to how to explain it but yeah it would become smaller I guess would be an elementary way of saying it. okay okay well you know that was one of the the things that you had there was the thunderstorms were a concern to you. I know you also would talk about gusty winds. yes. so let's talk a little bit about wind and how that affects a pilot while they're flying. what are some concerns for a pilot when we're talking about winds? when we're planning a flight? you can talk as much as you want about winds and every aspect that you want. just open up to me about winds. so the start of it all is the takeoff roll and obviously the taxi but as long as you're kind of adjusting for the while you're taxing at low speeds is a lot less risky than when you're actually on a takeoff roll at full power but you don't want to be you know pushed off the runway or getting pushed to the right or left too much while you're while you're taking off. you know the runway is the safest environment. you know you get pushed into a tower or something due to crazy strong winds wouldn't be a great day that's where it would begin it would continue on along your flight if you have a strong headwind you're going to be much slower over the ground which is going to cause- could possibly cause fuel issues. you know you planned on flying at 100 knots, you have a, just for example stake or a 50 knot headwind you know now you're going to be traveling roughly around 50 knots over the ground and you you planned for minimum fuel at your arrival and now you're going to be possibly hitting zero fuel before you arrive so it would be some wind concerns that I would be looking at. okay, when you're coming into land and the wind is really really bad, it makes your air speed all fluctuate what is that called? so when you're coming into land and you have winds and your air speed fluctuating? an unstable approach I guess. would- well let's see. let me ask you another question and may- I may actually give you the answer a little bit I don't mean to but let's just- let's do this. have you ever flown through wind shear? I have not. okay how would you identify if you were flying an airplane through wind shear? you're going to be losing air speed, gaining air speed, losing lift, gaining lift. okay so if you were on approach and you saw your air speed fluctuating, what could you probably deduce? that there's wind shear in the area. okay probably bouncing around a little bit too, right? yes. okay. what are some dangers of wind shear? it's a very very strong down force of wind that could almost push you directly into the ground without you wanting- wanting that and you're also when you're on- when you're in an approach or you're trying to approach the runway environment, you want everything to be stable. you're looking as you're doing your instrument scan, you're looking at your air speed and your altitude and all that good stuff and you end up seeing that you're at 65 knots and out of nowhere you're at 40 knots. it's due to- I don't want to say no fault of your own, but kind of no fault of your own, right, you you get wind sheer and and it causes a very unstable approach and just that's what I would be worried about. okay one of the other things that you pointed out in those weather reports was the clouds so we'll talk a little bit about clouds here in just a second. now clouds come in different families. yes. okay if you were flying along and you're flying through a cloud that has continuous precipitation and the winds are relatively calm, what normally type of cloud is that that you're flying through? I wish I refreshed myself on clouds before I and- I'll give you another hint. you're- before you descended into them it was just a flat sheet top got a very- bottoms just kind of dark and gray underneath it very- the tops are at 5,000. it's clear above. not lenticular is that what you're looking for? where would you find lenticular clouds then since you're saying it's not lenticular? maybe it is lenticular. so I don't want to dig my- dig a hole for myself here but I was thinking lenticular clouds were kind of in mountain- mountainous areas. lenticular clouds would be in- you are correct when you say that. so this would not be in a mountainous area. okay. yeah so there's different clouds have different properties do you know about the different families of clouds? all I could tell you about right now is lenticular, cirrus and cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds and stratus clouds. tell me about cumulus clouds. how about that? let's do that. let's start from that- start from that direction. tell me about cumulus clouds. cumulus clouds are the- I like to explain it as the ones that kids draw, you know they're like the the big poofy little marshmallow looking clouds and they're thick. tend to be like when you're going through them it's just like- well I guess i' would say that the only cloud I've ever flown through was a cumulus cloud, so it was just thick, a little bumpy, nothing too crazy but yeah it's just very thick. as soon as you go in, it's like somebody just puts a white blanket sheet over your glare shield. so clouds have been said to be the signpost in the sky. they can just kind of tell us a a little bit about the atmosphere and what's going on. in private you learned about stable and unstable atmospheres. tell me about the atmosphere that would probably be present around a cumulus cloud? so- man I am not there right now. so. you could always ask ask me to rephrase a question if you need to. yes, that would that would help I think. hopefully. rephrase a question? yes, please. okay, tell me about the characteristics of a unstable atmosphere? an unstable atmosphere is going to have really good visibility and it's going to be a little less- or a little bit more bumpy, more bumpy of a ride than a stable atmosphere. okay, anything else? an un- you asked unstable right I think? yes. if I'm not mistaken that- that's when thunderstorms are starting to be made. okay, tell me about a stable atmosphere. bad visibility, smooth ride and usually clear besides the visibility. okay all right. so there's this weather stuff. man, we could just really go really hot and heavy deep in this weather stuff, couldn't we? yes. and hopefully we don't. well at least at the very end of this we'll know exactly what would you need to work on. that would be helpful. definitely. now you know it's very important that when we're looking at these things we always want to look at, you know, we look at so many different things, but in essence the weather reports basically have just this- the bare bones basics. it's basically what the weather balloon sends out. you have the wind direction, you have temperature, a moisture content. just a couple of bare bones things. dew point, things like that. when you planned, let's look at your flight plan that you put together here for this flight, and let's look at the winds and temps that you had for yours. so can you tell me how you derived those particular winds and temperatures? and we're looking at this box right there. awesome, yeah. so I actually pulled a lot of that information from ForeFlight and went and asked- when I was talking to the weather briefer, I was asking if those are the- that that is what I should be expecting and he gave me basically the same on the second page. it kind of shows what he told me as well but I pulled some of them off of ForeFlight on- in the navlog there and also verified with the weather briefer. okay, very good. how often does these winds and temps aloft forecast, how often do they come out? I do not know. okay no worries we can come back to it if we have time. okay in regards to the weather that you looked at when you briefed this, can you tell me, did you have to choose an alternate? I did not have to choose an alternate, no. okay let's look at your flight plan here that you've put together for us. probably be the page two of the flight plan and here we can see that this particular box, this flight plan down here, it has 17 different boxes on it and I noticed that in there, box 13, which is by the way, it's the only box that's different between the VFR and the IFR Flight Plan, I noticed you put not applicable. so tell me what made you put N/A in that box. so from what I'm tracking, when you need alternates, it's when the within before or after an hour there's going to be lower than 1,000 ft ceilings- 2,000, I'm sorry, 2,000 foot ceilings 3 statute miles. I apologize for that. 2,000 ceilings 2,000 feet above ground level ceilings and 3 statute miles of visibility. anything below that, you would need to list an alternate. all right moving on to the next page. we have moved on to the second page here. that is good moving right through the plan of action. there are- of course we know that there's different hazards when we're flying as well. what are some of the hazards that pilots just don't like to get involved in on a flight? some weather hazards? could you- I don't know rephrasing the question. elaborate more on the question? sure. do you like flying through turbulence? I do not like flying through turbulence. okay can we identify that that's probably something that pilots don't like to fly through? that would be something that- what else do pilots not like to fly through? I mean I would say that clouds if you can avoid flying through the clouds. so IFR conditions? IFR conditions. okay I would say that was another good one. what else what do you think, when a pilot's flying along, may start to scare you if it starts to accumulate on your plane? ice. icing, so we don't like to fly through icing as well. definitely not. do we have weather reports that kind of tells us about these things? we do. okay tell me a little bit about these weather reports. the names and the conditions that they forecast. so AIRMET, SIGMET, and Convective SIGMET I think is what you're- yep. pointing towards. AIRMETs are reports that assist pilots. typically GA pilots, general aviation pilots, small aircraft, single engine. sometimes multi-engine piston aircraft, that it it could affect them you know due to light turbulence or moderate turbulence that's not going to, in a- that would affect a small plane's flight compared to SIGMETs can effect airliners and then Convective SIGMETs will basically put a ground stop on on any and everybody. like, for example, a hurricane would be a Convective SIGMET. okay very good. let's look at- circle the wagon around here back to this other thing here just a second. yes sir. is your airplane equipped with weather radar? it is equipped with weather radar. okay is there any- is there any good- what's some good good things, bad things about that? it's not exactly real time. it doesn't, you know, if out of nowhere it starts raining right in front of me it's not going to show rain popping up on my- on my- actually for for example today I was flying and it showed that we were flying through rain and it was clear. that rain must have been there you know several minutes ago while we were flying. so that's one of the negatives you don't want to rely on that weather radar to skirt by IMC or anything, paint me a bad situation in which that would really get you in trouble. you see some thunderstorms coming in and you're kind of like calculating, oh you know what, I'll definitely make it there before that the hurricane comes because I'm seeing that the hurricane's, you know, moving a lot slower than we are. well that hurricane or not hurricane. I'm sorry. I don't know why I keep saying hurricane. obviously cuz we just had one recently. this is all mock. yeah. you can do the hurricane if you like. so the hurricane that's coming, you want to try to- try to beat it there, but no you don't want to do that because there's- it's- there's a delay, right? or you want to try to veer left and trying to- trying to make this make sure you're not going to hit that that hurricane or bad weather. it could be on top of you and you- you're- you thought while you're looking at the radar it's showing that it's still a few miles away. okay good. let's- we've talked enough about weather there's definitely more we could dig into but let's go on to the next thing so we can kind of get on through here as quickly as possible today. let's look at some systems related to IFR. so probably one of the most important things that we have to rely on as pilots is everything working. if anything breaks while we're in flight we have to go down on a reduced load, right? and reduced and partial is not good in IFR . Does your airplane have any systems that are related to icing? either anti-ice or de-ice. so the pitot heat could be considered anti-ice. if it were to ice over, you could turn the pitot heat on and it could melt that out of there. it is fuel injected so it's not going to have any carb heat like I'm used to when I did my private but I think that's that's all the icing that my aircraft has. so when you're- if you were flying through icing or freezing rain or something, do you have some type of- in front of the Cessna, does it have like an air filter below the spinner? it does. okay what if that spinner was become saturated and freeze over? how would the engine get air? so if the intake is completely iced and- I'm not sure how it could get air. okay. definitely make a note of that we'll talk about that later. all right. yeah you're talking about just engine air? not alternate or anything like that? yeah, just engine air. okay and the only reason why I asked that is because you brought up the- because it didn't have carb heat. yes sir . yeah so that's just a spin-off question of that. okay, so how would you recognize that you did have- so now let's go back to the original question. how would you recognize that you did have pitot icing or some type of obscurement to the pitot tube? so your air speed indicator would be out of whack, or be out of normal usage. now your standby instruments that you have in the year model that you're flying, is it the G5 standby or is it the regular? the regular air instruments at the bottom? okay, so what would you see on your G1000? what type of indication on your air speed indicator there? it would show- so. and you may have just said it. just repeat it. so the air- my air speed indicator not working normally so for example if it was to be frozen it could show 0 when I'm actually moving at a certain speed or it could lock at a certain speed before- would your standby also show zero? it would. okay I have seen in some of these g100s though that when the sometimes the air speed indicator may have a red X through it. is that the same as a pitot failure? or what is that? I don't think that's the same as a pitot failure because practicing partial panel if we're pulling the AHRS circuit breaker, I still have my pitot heat but- or pitot heat my ASI there- my standby ASI compared to the red X over my air speed indicator on my G1000. okay very good. are you familiar with what the manufacturer- what the manufacturer of your aircraft says? what you should do if you become- if you should get into icing conditions? I do not. I'm not aware. okay since we're on the pitot tube and we're- let's go ahead and start talking about the pitot and static system so if you would, explain that system to me and how each one of those devices work. and you can either explain to me from the standby or you can explain to me from the G1000, whichever one you decide to, I'll just spot check the other one. okay, all right, so the static tube- the static hole static port is looking for stagnant or is measuring kind of the stagnant air in the atmosphere and then the pitot tube is receiving ram air, the air that's being pushed into it due to movement and that- it- that's kind of how it's comparing your air speed. that's why the pitot tube is important for the air speed and then your altimeter and your VSI are just going off of your your the static ports. okay I read in the POH it's- did you just tell me something about a air data computer? is that what you said? did you talk about an air data computer? I don't think I did. what is that? the ADC is how the g100s receive the data that's- do those things ever go bad? they do. what type of indication would you get on your G1000 if the air data computer was to go bad? a red X. okay on what devices? the- close my eyes and picture it really quick- the ASI, the attitude indicator and the VSI as well as the altimeter. okay all right good. what kind of effects does icing have on your airplane if you were to accumulate, like a, let's just say rime icing? you would increase drag as well as weight technically. yeah increase drag which would decrease lift. okay. that bad? pretty bad. what could happen if you let it build up? you could just fall right out of the sky, right? you lose aerodynamics. be more specific. don't say fall out of the sky. be more specific. what would happen aerodynamically? you could stall. okay good. we don't want to scare any of the viewers it's kind of hard for an airplane to fall right out of the sky. that's true. now a helicopter. yes, now that thing, I want to tell you, but I digress. I digress. okay so we've talked about all those that we want to talk about. let's move on to the next one. does your airplane have a vacuum pump? it does not. all right. how is the attitude indicator and the directional gyro, how is that powered? electrically, electronically. I'm not sure what the correct word is. okay, tell me how that works. it has consistently spinning gyro- the the gyroscopes are consistently spinning through electricity I guess. okay let's wrap this back around we're talking about the instruments here. let's stop talking about the systems, per se. let's step up to just another level of that. what aircraft instruments and systems before an IFR flight are you going to be checking to make sure that they are working prior to accomplishing an IFR flight? so what instruments will I be checking before I'm go on an IFR flight? I mean, I want to make sure that my altimeter is good, my air speed indicator, I mean, I want- there's not an instrument that I wouldn't want to be working. let's go around the patch. let's go around the the block there on the- on your G1000. you're looking at- pick one. pick any one of them. okay, air speed indicator. how do you know that's working? on the ground? yeah. so it would read 0. okay, would keep going. walk me through the whole thing. go to altimeter. tell me about the altimeter. so my altimeter. once I read- I hear the ATIS or the AWOS or ASOS, the weather it's going to give me a altimeter setting. I'll put the altimeter setting in- into the little window and then it'll give me the altitude, the field altitude, field elevation plus or minus 75 feet. I would want- the turn-slip indicators needs to be moving when you're - when you're taxing, you know, little s-turns while you're taxing, should be moving back and forth. you want to see- you want to see the horizon is straight and level. yeah and your compass and your, excuse me, HSI are matching as well. does the airplane have a msg compass? yes it does. what would you check on that? I would make sure that it's not cracked umor tilted or leaning or anything and it still has a little liquid inside and it's reading the right- when I'm facing north, it'll say north on it. okay so besides the pitot-static system, that sounds like an important system, vacuum system or whatever the gyro system, that sounds like an important system, what other system- I'm so sorry. I earlier said it doesn't have vacuum and it definitely does have vacuum because I- one of my- on the runup it asked me to check the vacuum system so. okay, that- okay good recovery. thank you. good recovery. okay so we'll come back to that in a second. okay let's get on to where I am now. that way I don't lose track of thought here. so besides checking the the instruments for the airplane. we also have to make sure this airplane's airworthy for IFR flight. now what goes into airworthy for an IFR, and let's just go ahead and bump it up a little bit for you, an IFR Night flight? okay so usual VFR needs plus the special- so the usual IFR needs being the A TOMATO FLAMES and the AV1ATES acronym. I was looking for that word, acronym. plus the new acronym for IFR flight of GRABCARD and unfortunately I need to write it down but generator, alternator, a radio, a altimeter, a- the ball for the turn-slip coordinator, the, sorry, the the C, D is a directional uh so basically just your your heading indicator or your HSI, attitude indicator, obviously you would definitely need that, I cannot think of the C for some reason. a clock. okay very good. you said altimeter. yes sir. but it seems to me like the altimeter also appears in A TOMATO FLAMES. it does. why is it in both of them? it needs to be- oh man I can't think of why. picturing when I was studying the small little parentheses next to the one in GRABCARD. okay. and I- the window maybe, of the the the barometric window that allows you to adjust it. okay okay you know what that's- what the word- that parentheses word is have you figured it out yet? can you, can you picture it? how about we table that when you figure out the word while you're sitting here thinking about the 10,000 other things I'm asking you. you can remember that word for me. okay how do you determine that the GPS is air worthy? all of the- when you turn it on it gives you the MFD on the right tells you the dates of all the databases, and all the databases must say expires at a future date from today. okay is this GPS WAAS capable. the one that I use, yes, it is. what is that? some special specification that this GPS has that allows you to go down to certain minimums that a WAAS- a non-WAAS enabled aircraft would not allow you to. okay, is that like always working? is it something that can fail? or it is something that can fail. okay how would that affect you if it failed? you would have to change your minimums when you're you know picking your minimums from your approach chart. it'll give you you know LPV minimums or just regular LNAV/VNAV minimum or just LNAV minimums. okay let's say that while you're flying along, we're going to come back to the vacuum system in just a little bit, but we're not going- we're going to take an alternate route on the vacuum system. the vacuum system's failed. when anything fails in the airplane, what's one of the first things that you have to do as a pilot? especially if you're in IFR? let ATC know. okay so we're going to talk about what you would do if that would happen, but before we do it, I want to know besides telling them that something has failed, what other things would you be required to report to ATC without a specific request? this a very long acronym. okay take your time MARVELOUS VFR C500. missed approach, so when you're going missed, that's something that you need to tell ATC when you're changing your altitude when you're on a VFR-on-top clearance, reaching a holding fix okay sorry this is an ETA. the ETA changing plus or minus 3 minutes. leaving an approach- or leaving a holding fix. I think I said reaching an approaching- approaching fix a second ago. unforecasted weather is something that you would need to tell ATC. vacating an altitude, safety of flight, radio or navigational issues, outer marker, when you're reaching the outer marker, final, when you're reaching the final approach fix, the compulsory reporting points, and then not being able to climb or descend 500 feet per minute. okay that is a very extensive long list that you just read to me and I- I've always wondered about how pilots would prepare for a checkride and they learn all this stuff right? how do you plan on, as a pilot, making sure this stuff doesn't fall by the wayside and making sure that you understand what to do while you're actually flying in IFR? so like you said this whole acronym is kind of a way to prepare for checkride or when somebody asks you but you're not sitting there flying thinking is this something I need to tell ATC? is this something I need to tell ATC? it's kind of like while you're being trained. you end up doing it so often, right? like for example, every single time that I fly I go missed I say, hey I'm- I just went missed. and that's not because I think, oh do I need to tell ATC about this? It's kind of just like ingrained into you while- while you're flying and a lot of them are kind of self-explanatory. you- you'd rather tell them too much than tell them too little. lot of acronyms we have in aviation, right? yes. absolutely but it's even easier with the Gold Seal IFR Know-It-All. can be found on the Gold Seal website. check it out. all right back to us that was a plug for my buddy. let's look at this. the pitot tube, let's go back to that. I want to make sure I cover that one last time. pitot tube becomes blocked in the front. does it have another hole in the back? it does. the drain. what if that whole entire thing becomes frozen? what kind of indications would you get? so your air speed indicator would- confusingly it would move. it would still move. it would just- it would still change which I think is not more dangerous, but mentally, it kind of like makes you feel a certain way because it moves with your altitude right? so if you're gaining altitude it starts going higher and if you lower altitude- or if you, sorry, descend, yeah, it goes down. so what if you didn't climb or descend? what if you were maintaining 5,000 or whatever altitude? substitute an altitude. it would freeze at at what it's what it's at. it wouldn't move. yeah so bottom line is, if you just stayed steady in flight, you wouldn't know anything, right? no, you would not know anything. oh that's scary. that is scary. okay just threw that in there for you. okay very good. one last thing here. we talked about the magnetic compass. you are on a heading of west. your vacuum system is failed. okay. ATC requests that you turn 90° to the left to a heading of south. so you're on west. you're turning left to a heading of south. tell me how you do that in an airplane partial panel and you're doing it strictly by the mag compass. so you would obviously go from W to the S on the magnetic compass, but you need to do that as a standard rate when you're IFR. so you would- a full turn is two minutes. a half turn is a minute so it'd take you about 30 seconds try to kind of time 30 seconds or take 30 seconds to make that left turn. hmmm. interesting who told you to do time? who told me? yeah, did you figure that on your own? did your flight instructor tell you that? yes Russell Still told me that on the Gold Seal. wow, what a smart guy. he's a pretty cool guy. it seems like turning to headings on those magic compasses can be quite difficult sometimes, right? it is. it is. can you tell me why is it difficult to use that compass to turn? it has errors themselves are built-in. inherent errors I guess you could call them. okay so let's talk about one of them. okay tell me about this one. it has an acronym that goes- associated with it. if you don't know the acronym, I have a couple. one of them is UNOS or OSUN. whichever one you want to use, tell me about that. what is that and how does that affect you? so you need to undershoot north and overshoot south. that's how the UNOS- it will affect you because when you're turning- so if I- if I'm turning south, right? I need to overshoot south. so if I was going to, like you said in your example, I was flying west I needed to turn left, south, so I would turn left to- instead of 180 , I would turn left to 160 because by the time that I level back out it'll kind of lag back to 180. very good. timed turns are a lifesaver. yes. I can tell you that 100%. trying to turn to these particular headings and looking at that is- can be very dis- I've had partial panel in the airplane for real and I can tell you it's not a good thing to be in. okay I would like to come back here and look at your IFR flight plan sheet on the big screen here for us and we're going to talk a little bit about this and why you chose your route, how you planned your route why you chose the altitude. different type things like this. of course this is the the very rough draft here of it. let's look at page 2 and see what we can see on page two. now on page two is the the flight plan and we have that particular one. I think you had a third page as well. let's look at the third page for the flight plan and if you would, I'm very curious about some of these numbers up here that you have, because there seems to be a tremendously large amount of numbers over there. I'm not sure how well we'll be able to see this for the folks at home. I don't know if we can expand on just this top column right here. so tell me what does all these numbers mean? and you can just go over one or two lines, but walk me through it and tell me what that means, and then we're going to talk about why you planned your route the way you did. okay, so just going to the third line because it has a lot of information according to the first line that has kind of missing stuff so DCT meaning direct. so I'd be flying direct to the Macon VOR on a heading of 166, which would be a course of 161. I chose 5,000 as my altitude as I'm flying east and so I need to stay at the odd thousands, and then the OROCA was 46 or 47. I can't remember off the top of my head. I want to say it was 47 so I wanted to stay above the OROCA. the direction and speed of- that's talking about the wind 263 at 011. the temperature of plus 16. speed in- is my speed in true air speed of 1 10 with a ground speed of 112. distance is going to be 70 miles- a 70 mile leg. remaining is going to be 178 and then the time that it would take on that leg would be 37 seconds, sorry, 37 minutes. okay okay very good. so there is just a lot of information that we have on here. I want to talk a little bit about- I know everybody nowadays wants to do the digital planning. like the digital planning is the hottest thing, it's the the new hotness, but something that kind of confuses me, and I want to get your point of view on it, and we'll talk about it is as for pre-flight planning, with the- with the old style flight planning chart, and we will go back here in just a second. right now we'll just look at this, but we'll go back two screens to the flight plan and we'll look at that, which one of these do you plan on actually having in the airplane with you? do you plan on having that first one we looked at that you hand wrote or are you going to have something like this in the airplane with you? I would like the one that I hand wrote. and can you tell me why? the simplest reason is like you were saying that viewers at home are going to have a trouble reading this, right? because there's so much data put into- like you have to zoom in to look in, right? and then when you're flying IFR you don't want to be like, what does that say there? you know so it's much bigger. the other one and I am- when I learn, I don't learn by reading. I learn by doing. sure. that's why- so when I actually wrote it down it helped me. you got a good point and that's exactly what I'm talking about. let's go back to the first picture there and what are some things on this that you were actually doing in flight? so for example 5,000 feet, that means when I'm going to be reaching 5,000 feet and that's why I wrote 5,000 feet, is kind of like my my reminder and then the 2 under that is descend, right? it kind of just tells you to descend in flight. is that kind of- I see there's on the right hand side, I see there's boxes that hasn't been filled in and I'm kind of curious about those boxes that haven't been filled in. yep, so those are actual. so everything that is filled in is estimated and everything that has not been filled in is actual. mmhmm so while you're flying you would throw that in there, throw that information in there. you ever done that? I have. okay good. why should a pilot fill in actual? because not- this- having or- not- the reason you wouldn't need this navigation log, I could start there, is because you have a lot all that stuff on your computer, you know, on your flight computer in front of you or or in your GPS, and so- but if your GPS were to go out, it's pretty easy to be lost. if you're flying in a, what's it called, familiar area, you can kind of look, oh you know, there's the Mall of Georgia. I know where I'm at more or less. when you're in IFR or you're you're in IMC you don't know where you are but timing where you are or timing when you left and and seeing that I left at 21:30 and then it's been 8 minutes. where am I? oh I should be roughly around 5,000 feet, you know, I'm going to continue down for 35 minutes and I will- I should be reaching the Macon VOR and I continue down for an hour and 37 and I should start my descent and this- it just kind of keeps you situationally aware of where you are in an emergency situation where your GPS goes out. okay you gave me a big long lengthy acronym a minute ago. yes sir it had something in that acronym concerning time. yes. what was it? ETA? ETA what? what is the numbers that could follow that? plus or minus 3 minutes. okay so using just the G1000 on board or using the formulated flight plan in- that ForeFlight spits out, how do I know if my ETA is plus or minus 3 minutes? so what do you- so could you ask it, I guess one more time? just repeat the question? yeah absolutely and then this is if- I'll reword it if I need to but I'm trying to get to something very specific. we have numbers. we have boxes that says actual. yes we don't have that on G1000. correct it just shows total time elapsed. yes. we're supposed to have a clock. yep. okay it was also- and then you had another acronym that you gave me tonight of all the acronyms you gave me tonight. how do we know, as a pilot, that we are plus or minus 3 minutes in our route? not on the- not using this? hmm, that's a good question. well let's just say that you were using this. right? okay. this is- I think this is the same thing as your last the one that you did in ForeFlight right? it's the same points? yes. so how would I know that I arrived at 5,000 on time? because you would look at the time that you- or you would look at, you know, your altimeter and say oh look I'm at 5,000. what time is it? it is 2140. oh it took me 2 minutes longer than I was expecting to to get up here. so does the- this one has a place for you to write it in, right? it does. if I had it digitally on ForeFlight, what are my options to record the time that I arrived at those destinations? I don't know if there is a spot to put that. there probably is but I don't know it. okay something to think about as an IFR pilot because you have to comply with those that's a regulatory thing. have a kneeboard for that, but I don't know if there's anything on ForeFlight and I- and I would like to learn if there is. things that make you go hmm. things that make you go hmm. yeah. okay I see that you have your fuel in here, that you're burning about 7.2 gallons per hour. yes and you have your other fuel flow that you have. about how much fuel do you plan on having on board when you land at Craig? unfortunately I don't have that on that. I thought I did but I don't. maybe I did not save that one. Is it on your ForeFlight one? I don't think so but I could just add all that up really quick. yeah go ahead and add it up real quick. let me see what it is. okay and then we'll do a couple more questions here and move on to a different category after we just burn this cross country flight planning portion into the ground. awesome we'd have about 31 gallons of fuel still in the plane. okay, what does the reg say that about fuel requirement? you need to have an hour of fuel left. okay is that what it says? says 1 hour? or is that your personal minimum? that's my personal minimum. it's 45 minutes. I should know this. so is it fly to your destination, land, have 45 minutes? no. okay what is it? it's fly to your destination, then go to your alternate and have 45 minutes on top of that. okay so the fuel required that you undoubtedly you must had a specific amount of fuel on board the airplane when you when you did- and you have fuel projected burn. does this fuel burn that you have calculated, does it take into a thing- take into account things like taxi and runup and flying an unforecasted SID that they gave you and climbing altitude and flying a STAR that wasn't filed and flying an approach a full approach? it does not have that. how would you as a pilot account for for those unseen things? so I- not that this would- like so for example when I was doing my- just calculating all that, that 1.9, I made it 2. that 4.2 I made it 5. that 11.7 I made it 12 and then that 0.5 I made it- just to calculate more fuel burn than than is actually happening but yeah so I mean I would have to time anytime that there was a deviation to my original flight plan. I would need to start timing to make sure that I'm burning 7.2 which I would say 8 hours of fuel. okay so this time thing is pretty important, huh? it is absolutely. okay so it's sometimes nice to have a bunch of digital stuff in front of you. yes. but it's imperative that you have a kneeboard and it's imperative that you make notes of things. absolutely. because sometimes just looking at a number saying 20 minutes until we get to our destination is just not enough. yes. very good. tell me how do you file an IFR flight plan, please. how do I personally do it? how do you personally do it? on ForeFlight. what other ways are there to do it? you could file it through 1-800 WX Brief or online at 1800wxbrief. there's other websites that you can do it on as well but I could not tell you all of the other websites that that you could do it on. no worries. how do you open an IFR flight plan? so you could call Tower depending upon if you're at a towered field that does that. clearance delivery. on the field that I fly out of you need to call a phone number. Atlanta approach does that for you. okay where'd you get that phone number from? ForeFlight. okay, ForeFlight's got it all, doesn't it? yes. what if I- what if a pilot didn't have ForeFlight? this is a bonus question. where would I get that number if I didn't have ForeFlight? the A/FD would have that information on it. A/FD? man you've been in aviation for a long time, haven't you? yeah. we don't call that green book anymore the A/FD. Chart Supplement is what it became long many years ago. yes. but guess who still calls it A/FD probably Russell Still. ForeFlight. I'm kidding. I'm just kidding but that's good. no. yes. ForeFlight actually does call it A/FD now that I think about it. they do call it that. okay so that is some that is some bonafide ways to be able to open a flight plan. what about closing it? so you can close it in the- in the sky with the person that you're currently speaking to, or you can call again the same people that you called to open it. yeah you know it's kind of funny how the- this VFR is open and close so we activate an IFR flight plan. yes. That's a nicer language. it is, yeah nicer language. let's see here. you just told me how you did it, which was my next question, which is how do you receive an ATC clearance when you're at an airport without clearance delivery? and you just told me how to do that so that works. good, I'd like to give you a clearance. okay. and I'd like for you to read it back to me. can I please- actually I tell you what. I'm going to give you- let's see here. I'm going to give you an N number. how about that? okay. okay. you ready? I'm going to give you a clearance and you're going to read it back to me, okay? sounds good. here we go. N1234, you're cleared to the Craig airport as filed. upon departure, climb and maintain 3,000. expect 7,000 at 1o minutes after departure. departure frequency is 124.5. squawk 1763 and I'm at your airport so I'm going to throw this on there. void if not off by 1630 time now 1610 all right so I am cleared to the Craig airport as filed. climb and maintain 3,000. expect 7,000 10 minutes after departure. frequency 124.5 squawking 1763 and 1610 is time now. void time 1630. good deal okay so that's good. with the cross country planning let's move on to the next thing cuz I do want to cover a couple more things. we're ready to get out there and we're going to go fly the plane and the thing in aviation, it says unless the- unless the weight- the paper- the weight of the paper exceeds the weight of the airplane we're not ready to go flying. so we got a lot of things we take with us. that digital thing there helps to reduce the paper weight on our big screen here behind us, let's pull up the airport diagram for our departure airport and let's look and see a couple of things on there .so we'll look at these charts in sequence, ask you just a couple of questions of each chart as we're going along this is Peachtree-Dekalb Airport out of Georgia and the first thing is, we'll just talk about some very basic things. there are some circles on there with the letters HS beside that. tell me what those are. those are hotspots. and what is that? uncommon to popular belief, It is not where the sun shines a little harder on the part of the airport. it's actually where more accidents happen, so whether it's metal on metal, you know, aircraft hitting each other or you mistaking a taxiway for a runway. kind of just things that you need to be looking out for. now I know that you're using ForeFlight. do you have a Jeppeson subscription? I do not. you're using NACO. yes. or government charts? okay, is this chart current? this chart is current as of right now. when would it not be current? tomorrow. okay, tell the viewers how you know that. on the left hand side. you got to turn your head like this? yes. juxtapose a little bit to the right. very good. couple of things here I'm going to ask you about. the chart here, one of them is at the bottom of runway 3R. yes. so at the arrival end, there's this little box there and it has a arrow pointing to it and it says EMAS. what's that? I do not know what EMAS is. okay let's go on to the next thing. no sense in hovering around that. over on the right hand side there, we can see that says runway or RWY 03L-21R and then it has S-20 underneath it and it has another runway and some other stuff. what is the- on the runway 3L- 21R, what does S-20 mean. I do not know. okay well let's go on to the next thing. that won't be no issue at all there. let's actually see here. oh yeah here's another one. down here at the bottom. it says January 2020 annual rate of change 0 degree west and it has this little V thing with a variance on there. what is that? magnetic deviation. for what? for the airport or what? for this chart in itself. at the top lefthand corner her,e it says ATIS 128.4. Peachtree Tower and a star. what's the star mean? that it has hours of operation. okay the tower has hours of operation. very good. all right, so we'll- we're going to just- so we can kind of move through a little bit quicker because there are some certain things I want to talk about let's look at some of the low enroute charts. okay. as we're going to depart Peachtree-Dekalb. now I do like to ask about a- instrument departures but uhall it has is just bare takeoff minimums out of PDK. it doesn't actually have any departures. so we can't do with that. so here's our route right here, and we'll just kind of zoom in up on the PDK area and we'll just kind of look at this. we'll have a couple of screens of this. I'll ask you about one or two questions from each one. in the middle of this screen there's a big blue shaded patch. what's that? a Bravo. a class Bravo? yes. around that class Bravo there's this green dashed- heavy dash line, forms a square around that Bravo. what's that? I do not know what that green square. is okay we'll cover this in your debrief. okay. but we're just going to keep going because I do want to get on- cover a couple more things before we do. all right, let's look at the far righthand corner over there. there's a couple of numbers that's written in gray. 4 to the 2nd power or however you want to say it 4 to the 7th power 4 to the 6. what are those numbers? that is the OROCA. what is that? so when you're- there's airways but when you're not off an airway- when you're off route, there's a certain elevation that you need to stay at to make sure that you're not going to crash into anything or stay at 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the nearest object. so how much clearance is that 4200 giving me? 1,000 above the tallest object. now a minute ago you said 1,000 to 2,000. when would it be 2,000? in mountainous terrain. okay I like that answer. I see that there's some routes around here, like some victor airways. yes sir some of them are blue and some of them are black. what's that about? so some of them are using ground based navigational aids and others are using a GPS. can you use the black ones? I can. yes. can you use the blue ones? yes. okay let's go to the next chart here that we have next section of the chart. couple of things on here. there's another little lighter shader blue over there. smaller one what's that one? that's a class Charlie right there. that's a clash Charlie. are there any other airspaces that are depicted on this chart? there's MOAs on this chart. I'm not sure if that's kind of what you're talking just regular airspace, not special use. okay so there is none just bravo, charlie, and yeah the echo and the golf- what are all the green airports? those are all airports with instrument approaches. okay let's zoom in on the next page or just go to the next page and I think there's a close-up picture of some routes here. let's see if I can find one on here. I guess I'm not going to be able to find a brown airport on here, am I? probably not. okay let's go back to the previous page and we'll just pick up from where we have there- so let's look at some of these- some of these things here. I'm just going to get up here so I can point. what's this thing here? is a VOR. a VOR all right and let's look at- there's this may be hard to see but you see that green line right there? yes. that particular line right there? what's that line there? that's the magnetic differ- deviation in the difference in your magnetic and true north. okay and what's that word called one more time? magnetic deviation. maybe variation. maybe variation would probably be the more correct term. yes. okay very good. let's go to the next one. let's look at some- do we have a- let's go to the next one. I want to see if I can get a little bit more closeup view of the airways. so we're looking at here- let's look at this airway here. so we've got some numbers here above the airway. so what is- what is that number and that number and that number and that number? so the top- the 3,000 that is your MEA your minimum in rout, enroute, in rout altitude. okay. 441 is the number of- just the name of it or the number associated to that airway. 95 is the length of the airway and then 18, I can't tell you what the 18 is. okay. what is this triangle? it's like an intersection. an intersection? yeah. okay is this a- as far as the intersection goes is- or this- this point, is this compulsory or non-compulsory? that one is non-compulsory. non-compulsory. all right. very good there's a little 46 inside that funky looking figure there. what's that? 46 miles if you're going that way. there' this 46 mile length if you're you're from the last one if you're going that way. okay outstanding. up in the upper right hand corner there, it says P-50. what's that? a prohibited area can you fly on that? you cannot. it's prohibited. okay, right there in its name, huh? yes sir. okay very good. over here on this airway here, there's a little gray holding pattern. what's the purpose of that being listed there? it's just a published hold. so that's kind of where ATC could send you if they said hey hold at LIPPS on the- on the publish hold. I'm assuming that's how you say that. and you would just it kind of shows you that it's left turns and it's you know. okay. I'm sorry right turns. yeah last thing here. read me from 222 all the way down to the bottom read me that VOR box. okay 120, oh man. 122.2 is the FSS for that VOR. Craig is the name and then there's two H's. 114.5 is the frequency CRG 92 is the code for the VOR and then that more- the line dot line, that's the morse code that you would listen- that you would ID when you tune into the VOR and then you have the- the coordinates and then Gainesville is this- the flight service. okay one more time if you could explain to me- after the Craig there's two H's in parentheses what are those two h's? I do not know what those two H's are. no worries. we'll come back to those in the debrief. okay um you are flying along and- so we're going to go now to a a different section, which you're going to have to figure out what I'm talking about here just by way of the scenario. okay. all right. so you're flying along and you realize you ain't heard anybody in a long time. so you squeeze down the trigger of the PTT and you go y'all still there? and nothing. you check your static, your squelch. you go to activate the squelch. it's dead silence. volume, nothing. what has probably happened? communication failure. okay, so you know the question I'm going to ask you. walk me through- you're almost to Craig. you're only about 50 miles out from Craig. okay. it's hard IFR all the way there but you don't have any radios for some reason. walk me through what you would do in this particular instance. take a deep breath would be the first thing I would do. so obviously I've tried to troubleshoot my radio for a- I know that this is not going to suffice for this checkride, but I have a handheld that I carry with me just in case because I I want to make sure that if the radios in my aircraft were ever to go down, I at least have a handheld that could be used as a backup. so that's what I would use, but I'm just going to assume that in this checkride the my batteries have died. so I would first try not to freak out. continue flying the aircraft. as they say aviate, navigate, communicate. so if I can't communicate at least I can still aviate and navigate. so I would keep the altitude that I'm at and I would go for the highest altitude of these three altitudes which was the altitude that I was assigned, the MEA, the minimum enroute altitude, or the expected altitude. those would be- I would go for the highest of those altitudes. okay. and then my route, I would stay on my assigned route. if not, I would go for the vectored route that I was in or that I was being- that I was- the route that I was being vectored for. the expected route as well, and then if not, then the filed route. okay what is a leave clearance limit? a leave clearance limit. couldn't give you a good answer for that. where were you cleared to in that clearance I gave you a minute ago? Craig. the Craig airport. that's as far as I could go. okay all right. so what would happen, let's bring back in the time thing. okay. what would happen if you got to your destination early? no comms. that would be- that could cause an issue because they're not expecting me to be there at the time so they have not cleared that area for me at that time. could cause an issue. okay what happens if you get there on time? that would be good. what would you do? in what sense- so where have I arrived on time? at your leave clearance limit. so I've arrived at Craig- well sort of. of course you- hopefully you didn't land at Craig. okay but you're only- you're on time so what would you do if you were on time? so there's three different possibilities here. you're either late, you're on time, or you're early. so there's a couple of overlaps there, but whichever one you would like to try to explain first. so I'm in IFR. I am in IMC? obviously. so I would try and make it- obviously as on time as possible. I would go to a- the beginning of an approach fix and I would go to an initial approach fix and try to fly the approach and land. which approach would you choose? how would you choose the approach? I should say. that's a solid question I would go with the forecasted weather. the last thing that I was- that I was told or if there was a you know if I- when I check the NOTAMs none of the runways were closed or none of the air approaches were- there was an issue with any of the approaches. I would go either with a forecasted weather or I'd kind of look for- well, no I'm in IMC. so yeah the forecasted weather- does your GPS have ADS-B? it does. okay so if somebody's landing, if everybody's using, for example, runway 1 then I could you know land on- I'd go for the approach on runway 1. okay. and so when would you leave this hold that you were holding at now? you're at 5,000 feet and you're just holding over this spot. when would you leave it? so if I was given an EFC? at an EFC or at the EFC estimate further clearance time and if not I would try to arrive at my airport as close to the ETA as possible. okay so early you'd hold. what if you're on time or late? if I was on time I would proceed with the approach, and then if I was late I would do the same thing I guess because I would- I'm going to end up running out of fuel eventually if I just sit there. yeah okay so definitely there's much more that we could delve into. we're time limited tonight and we're basically at the end of our time. I will give you just a little pointer at the very end of that. we'll leave it on this- on this point here before we call it out. always file to a point- have- instead of filing direct or something like that, always file to a part of an approach that already has a hold on it. make that your final point before you actually get in. if anything does happen or if you lose comms, you're- you already are there. your GPS is already showing it. it's a predetermined spot and you don't have to think about do I just go over Craig at 5,000 ft and hold at 5,000 fet over Craig, and that would be the most correct answer. okay. but you go- you can also go to a point on a fixed one- a point on which a approach begins but then you have to figure out like hey which one and how come and why and how long and you get too many things to have to think about right? so if you have this predetermined point prior to, you don't have to think about where you're going to go when you get there, because you've already thought all about it before you get there. okay. that makes sense. yeah, awesome. thank you so much for joining us tonight. the folks at home, this has been a very a great experience here working with Alex. we're going to go ahead and call it quits tonight this has been a wonderful experience. like I said we're going to turn it back over to Russ and Russ is going to play us out. well Todd, Alex looked like he did pretty good. he seemed comfortable. how do he know his stuff? how'd he do? you know he actually did quite well. he's he's still preparing. there are a couple of things that he could definitely tighten up on and that he's going to do better. I did provide with him- to him a thorough debriefing after the point today so I think he's going to be very ready for a check ride when the time comes. although we didn't get a chance to go all the way through to the end of the ride which is kind of unfortunate I was somewhat impressed with the- I said somewhat impressed. I was impressed with what his knowledge was in regards to that. I apologize for that but, here's some things that I think a lot of people, when they're preparing for the instrument checkride, probably some- is very important for them to know. one of them is why do we actually- why do we train so hard on the instrument rating? well it's because we always have to plan for a loss of comm so if you're a completely in the cloud and you are not always planning for a loss of comm, you're not planning for the correct way to actually prepare for your instrument so always be thinking what do I if I am not talking to ATC? how do I get there? what do I do? altitudes. everything that we do in instrument basically relies- lies around what we have- should do- what we should do for the loss of comm. yeah. be predictable. yeah. absolutely 100%. it's all- it's a ballet. it's very choreographed. there's no- there's not a lot of things that are- that are punches to be pulled. we we train on systems failures. we train on every type of thing. so it should be just business as usual if anything should happen during that thing. and then the second thing is think it through. whatever you're trying to do, just think it through. I ask a lot of scenarios that causes the pilot to actually try to think it through and a lot of them don't have that. they have a lot of Q&A prep that goes into it. what we would refer to as rote memorization for the questions. what 3 items are in the system? it's 1, 2, 3. how does that work? not sure. okay, well that doesn't really help me that you know what the things are called but you don't know how they work ,and if they should go bad, what does it look like when they're bad? so thinking it through, thinking about loss of comms. that'll really set someone up right for a- for an instrument checkride. okay sounds good. I like seeing his confidence in the fact that he was never at a loss for words. right. so it's nice to see somebody who's comfortable in the seat. okay. well everybody thanks for joining us tonight. Alex did a great job if you have an instrument rating in your future, please come visit us at groundschool.com. we've got a great instrument program so again thanks for joining us and so long