Transcript for:
Mock Private Pilot Oral Exam Overview

Greetings aviators. I'm Russ still and welcome to this mock Private Pilot oral exam. Now this is going to be special I'm not going to breeze through a bunch of questions you might get on your own check ride. We've got something much better! We've brought in a real Private Pilot applicant and an actual examiner and they'll be sitting across this table hashing it out now. For all intents and purposes this will be an authentic representation of what your own upcoming check ride might look like. So to get this thing started, allow me to introduce our applicant, David Yang. He's flying out a pdk and flies a Piper Warrior, and sitting over here in the examiner's seat, as always, is our longtime friend, Todd Shellnut. Todd, nice to see you again. Nice to see you, Russ. I can't wait to get started. Let's assume all the paperwork's done and you've got his check, so you guys are ready to get started. Cool, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, David, we're going to have a great time tonight and um I'm going to be using this piece of paper over here. It's referred to as a "Plan of Action". It's got basically everything I'm going to ask you. It's kind of written down on there and some other things as well. Some trigger questions as well, and the way this is going to work is it's all scenario based so I'll ask you some scenarios based questions. I will ask you some direct questions as well if I need to fill in any gaps or whatnot. If at during the time you see me over here writing down some things, please don't worry about that that's just my way of remembering because we're going to be together for about an hour to hour and 30 minutes like Russ stated and so if I want to be able to make sure I give you an adequate debriefing. So don't worry about what I'm writing it could be good and maybe sometimes it may not good but either way it'll still be productive for the both of us in the end. You ready to get started? I am. Okay ,cool. Well I have a special treat for you tonight. To start off our scenario. The FAA has decided to join us for tonight in our check ride, okay? Okay. So they're in here they're sitting at the table with us and I want you to prove to me that you're qualified to be sitting in this checkride. How would you do that? Right. So well the first thing I have to do is present my experience as a student for my current flying right so that'll include my logbook I also have to present my ID, my medical certificate that I'm able to fly as well. and I think I'm missing one thing I can't exactly remember. okay, do you have your logbook? I know you don't have it on the table but do you have it the checkride with you? Yes. Okay. Is there something in there you may have to show me? I have to show you all the endorsements I have and as well as the hours um that I've completed. So that means I've logged 10 hours of solo time as PIC. Maybe three hours in instrument training, three hours at night time, and I think I'm missing one thing within three hours as well. Okay. There's a lot of things that you have to prove, right? Yes, that's correct. Okay, very well. So assuming that today went well and you get your Private Pilot certificate in this mock check ride today, about or how long would it be before you would actually have to show someone any recency of flight experience to like say an FAA official? Include any items that you think are important in that. Yeah, so that'll be the bi-annual flight review I have to perform. So that's every 24 calendar months, so it goes into the end of the month, until the end of the month two years from now um to be able to complete that recency. Okay. Are there any other recency of experience requirements for a private pilot? You have to make sure your medical certificate is up to date. What about as far as flight time goes? Flight time I know there is but I'm freezing it up at the moment. Okay, no worries. We'll circle the wagon back around to that in just a second. What does it mean to you to be current as a pilot versus proficient as a pilot? Yeah, so current means that you are legally allowed to fly um based on the cert uh the current regulations. Proficient means how used to are you to flying. How comfortable you are to perform the flying the flight itself. Okay, so what does it mean for you to, how are you planning on staying proficient as a pilot? For me to stay at proficient as a pilot it means that I try to fly as consistently as possible so maybe a couple times a week or at least once a week. practice certain maneuvers and scenarios that I can to practice to make sure that I can handle those situations. okay, so if you got your check ride on a particular day and you went one year and 11 months and 30 days without flying, would it be legal for you to go up and still fly that same day on the 30th day? legally? yes, but I wouldn't be proficient in it because I haven't flown in a while. okay, very well. what about hauling passengers? is there something requirement for that? yes. so it depends on day or night, but they're kind of similar so for daytime, you have to be recent and within in the past 90 days and you have to perform three take offs and landings. for night time it's the same as well but you had to do it to a full stop. okay, very good. so after your check ride, you're so excited you have one of your loved ones that says, "hey, I sure would like to go for a a flight," and you want to take them for a local area flight. your first passenger as a private pilot out in the real world. would you be required to log that flight in your logbook? uh I do not believe so. okay, well very good. all right. now let's go out and continue this scenario here. it's been about about a year since the last time that you flew at night, and now you have a sudden urge to do a local night flight by yourself are there any legal issues with this? and is there anything that you need to be concerned about? yes, because it's been more than 90 days I'm not recent in night flying so I have to, at least for carrying passengers out, to make sure that I need to stay current so I have to practice at least we take off some landings at night. okay. so this would be just you soloing. okay for me soloing, yes I should be okay with that. okay, very good. well that sounds like you're very good about the pilot qualifications. let's go on to some airworthiness requirements. okay. so during your pre-flight today, on your flight portion, or during any pre-flight, it doesn't really matter whatever time you want to say, there's an FAA Aviation Safety Inspector, ASI, comes up it introduces themselves to you and says that they want to conduct a ramp inspection. you ever heard of that? I think I've heard it once. okay. after checking your pilot certificate, your medical, the safety inspector asked how you determined this airplane was airworthy. I have to check to see if- in the maintenance books to see if- to see what was fixed, when it was fixed, determine if it's safe to fly. I also have to check to see if it complies with the recent airworthiness directives or- it's either a one-time issued or periodic to make sure they're all come into compliance it to be sure it's safe to fly. okay. what are you looking for in the log book particularly? if it's maintained. so what was maintained, who signed off, if the item was fixed, who returned it to service so I think there's one more thing that I have to look for in there. is there like particular names for any of these inspections or particular things that have to be inspected? just whatever it was supposed to be fixed or maintained based on what was broken or what what whichever it was need to be had from airworthiness directives but definitely signatures from the maintenance folks as well as the owner operator signing off saying it's it's good to return to service, still good to fly. let me dig a little bit more on that. how often is the airframe supposed to be inspected? the airframe, I believe it's every- it's the annual check, right. so that's every 12 months. okay, is there anything else with that annual that they're looking at besides just the airframe? I'm not exactly sure. okay, very well. if you were to make a very hard landing or you crash off airport, does this airplane have any equipment that's required to be on board? yeah, so they have- we have- I think for airplane has like the ELT so that transmits an emergency signal to I believe nearby towers in or in the frequency of 121.5 which lets the people know that where you are and where where you may have crashed. okay, is your ELT is it a 121.5? do you know if yours transmits on that? I think all of them transmit on 121.5. okay, how often does that have to be inspected? it has to be inspected every year. okay. anything else that has to be inspected? we said that the airframe has to be inspected. we said the ELT. is there other inspections? yes. there's also the transponder that needs to be inspected as well and that needs to be- that needs to be inspected every 24 months. okay. what if the airplane is for hire? if the airplane is for hire than it needs to comply with the 100 hour check as well so that means in addition to the annual inspection then every 100 hour the plane is flown that has to be inspected as well. okay, very good. when you're navigating along do you navigate a GPS direct or do you use airways? I use GPS direct. do you ever use airways. I have not used airways yet. okay, tell me about the required documents that must be on board the plane. right so that would have to be the aircraft's airworthy- airworthiness certificate, the registration, the operating handbook, as well as the give me one second to think about it as well as the weight and balance of calculations. when you say Weight and Balance calculations, does that mean like me and you on board the airplane before we go flying or what is the weight- what is Weight and Balance? what does that mean? it just means the documentation that shows you which equipment within the aircraft is how much and what was it I'm currently weighed without fuel so this is dry weight. okay, is that the is that the weight that's listed on there? is it called dry weight or does it have another weight that's listed on there? another name for that weight? I can't exactly recall the different- the exact word for it. okay, very good. tell me where these documents, as far as the airworthiness, what makes that document valid? the airworthiness document, what makes it valid. yeah does it have an expiration date? the airworthiness document does not have expiration date. so what makes it be legit or valid? that I'm not exactly sure but I do know that it has to be properly- in order it for it to be- in order for it to be currently valid or to be able to be current then it has to be properly- the aircraft needs to be properly maintained and it has to comply with the airworthiness directives. okay what about the registration? does it have an expiration date? yes, the registration expires every seven years. very good. there was another- did you list one or two R's for? for the that acronym that you use I think you were trying to tell me AROW. is that correct? it's just one R. is there any other time there's another R in there? can I fly this airplane to the Bahamas? that I'm not exactly sure. okay we'll come back to it. all right let's look at the next one. you've been talking a pretty good bit about ADs. you've mentioned that a couple of times. tell me what is an AD? right, so it's a kind of a compliance that all the aircrafts must complete. well it's a kind of what the FAA wants the aircrafts and owners to comply to for the aircrafts in order to remain airworthy. that could be something that they want you to add to for safety reasons or something to fix, to look out for. okay, are you familiar with- does your airplane have any ADs? that I'm not exactly sure. okay. well how could you as a pilot, before you go fly an airplane, how can you know what ADs exist for that airplane and and if they've been complied with? how would you know that as a pilot in command? you can look up in the FAA's website to see if which ones are issued for your aircraft and then you have to check for the in the logbooks to see if it's been complied with. okay, very good. so when you're on the FAA's website you just put in like the N number, or what do you look for? that I'm not exactly sure. I haven't looked through the the entirety of the website yet. okay, no worries so that is a skill you'll need to learn as a pilot as to how to look up that data and make sure that's been done. okay. are there any- are you familiar with something called a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin? that I've heard of before. you know what it is? not exactly. okay. so the FAA inspector, after he talks to you he says okay I'm satisfied. he shakes your hand he moves on to the next airplane. you continue to do your preflight. you turn the master switch on. you turn all the external lights on to do your walk around the outside and you in your walk around you see that your anti-collision light system on the airplane is inoperative. there's no breakers pulled or anything like that it's just the system's not working. now what? now I have to- I think what I have to do is check to see if my aircraft complies with the minimum equipment list to see if it's still under the regulations, if I'm still able to fly the plane. okay, does your airplane have a minimum equipment list? I haven't gotten to read to the part where it it displays the minimum equipment list for me yet, but I'm sure it does. it might be in the operating handbook. okay, so are you familiar with a regulation number 91.213? I remember studying for it in the- for the Knowledge Test. okay, so what I'd like to know is, you're out there at the airplane, you've identified a system that's not operable. what do you have to do is to pilot in command? I think I will have to look up either on I think the FAA website will display the minimum equipments that the airplane needs to have in order to fly or check my minimum equipment list in order to make sure that it's eligible to fly. okay. what if it was just a light bulb that was out? are you authorized to replace the light bulb as a pilot in co- as the pilot of that airplane? it's a light bulb that's out, I don't believe so because that requires more more equipment to bring the light bulb- to take the light bulb out a but I believe the pilot is a little- me as a pilot I am able to perform basic maintenance work. okay. let's go back to the light bulbs being out and let's kind of touch on that a little bit more because I need to I need to dig on that a little bit more. okay. can you legally fly that airplane with the anti-collision lights being inoperative? I do not believe so. okay. is there any way that you can get that airplane legal to still fly it to your destination? I have to check- I think I have to check with the FAA to see what what's what is the I guess the minimum list that's able for me to find that's with the equipments that are operable. okay. well let them know and then they'll give you a permission to do so. does the FAA have any type of tool where they give you special permission to fly an airplane that's not airworthy? that I'm not sure. okay. what would be a concern of yours of flying this aircraft without the anti-collision light system? my concern is that it'll probably be more or less a safety concern. people may or may not see that my engine is probably running, or in the air they it's harder for the aircraft to see, especially at night if if I'm an aircraft that's flying towards them or away. so it could be I could be a hazard okay so if you had to fly the airplane without the anti-collision light system operable what precautions would you probably take in a situation like that personally I probably wouldn't fly at all. so the question was if you had to (right) what precautions would you take? I'd probably make sure I turn on all of the external light sources that I have so I can illuminate myself. make sure everyone can see me. okay. alright, let's go on to the weather information and let's talk about what we would have for weather. now we are going to show some things here on the screen momentarily but for right now we're just going to talk about some certain things to get us started. as a pilot, what services do you use to get the weather? for me I use 1-800 WX Brief which is I believe a flight service station and they provide information about the weather and gives you weather briefs and forecasts as well. do you do the live briefer or do you do the online briefing? I'm not exactly sure which is different but I think I think I do the online briefing. so you go to a computer? yes. you don't call on a phone? no. okay, so that's what I mean when I say a live briefer, actually calling on the phone. okay. when you- if you were getting ready to depart within the hour, it gives you an option of three different briefings that you can get on aviationweather.gov. which briefing would you choose and why? if I'm leaving right now I'll probably choose a standard briefing. okay. it would give me the current weather as well as whether along my route. okay. and the standard briefing is good for about how long up to a departure point? departure time? that I'm not exactly sure but I know it's- I think it's within 12 hours. okay let's see here. so on the aviationweather.gov, I happen to have on my laptop here, which we'll put on the screen, we have aviationweather.gov pulled up and we'll just kind of start on the the low side. we'll look at some very basic reports. I'll ask you some questions about some basic reports. okay. so there's some some textual reports and then there's some graphic reports. so we're going to look at some textual reports first. I'll start off by looking at the METAR. and of course here what you can see on the screen is at first this has a graphical depiction of of where we're going to go. if you were looking at just the graphic depiction, I can see here where my mouse is that there's the Atlanta around the PDK area and Savannah is right over here. what are these items called here on the screen that appear around these airports? what is this all these numbers and stuff called? the technical term for I'm not exactly sure. okay. can you read this? I haven't exactly read this one before, but I can see the legend down there. okay. let me I'm going to zoom in here. alright, so this is referred to as a station model and it basically shows the weather for that particular area. so let's do something a little bit different. let's go down instead of looking at a station model. let's actually go down and and pull up the the METAR and let's see what we get. so of course I want to go to where we're originating out of KPDK. what I can tell you about PDK, it doesn't have a METAR right now. if I put it in it's not going to show it so I'm just going to pick another airport that's very close. you don't have to worry about knowing anything about this airport it's just for conversational purposes with me and you. okay? okay. and we're going to look at this data here and I'm going to ask you we'll start with the very top one up here. what is this top report? what is the name of it? the name? I'm not exactly sure. okay. what's the one below it called? then one is the one below is the the forecast but the the top one I'm not exactly sure. okay. this is called a METAR. you ever heard of that? yes, I've heard of that. okay so this is called a METAR so it's for RYY is it's identifier why don't you start right here at the 07 and read all the way until you get to AO2 for me please. okay so at the airport RYY on the seventh day of September at 2150 time Zulu there is wind from direction 310 at 9 knots gusting up to 14 knots. has visi- area has a visibility of 10 statue miles. clear skies the next one, I'm not exactly sure. as well as the next one as well, and then after that remarks. I'm not exactly sure about the AO2 as well. okay, so you kind of think about this- have you ever been at an airport where they where they read the weather like over ATIS or something yes? can you kind of play that in your mind and think about how the ground control or the AWOS or ASOS would read that off? and then think about that again. just kind of read those numbers as if the ASOS or AWOS or ground control or ATIS is reading it to you, and then let's take a stab on that 31/18 and the A2986 again so just kind of in your mind just kind of read it as it would off the weather. okay. I think the 31/18 means the temperature and the dew point. I would agree with you. A2986 I still got to think about that one just a little bit more what if we've got- oh, that's the altimeter. okay. there you go. there you go. so that'll be- the altimeter setting. we have to set the altimeter to 2986. outstanding. good jo.b so let's start right here with the first- with the METAR and and let's talk about would you go flying if you read that METAR I think based on the conditions itself I think I would go flying. okay very good. so we'll get to what we're going to further as personal minimums in a minute, but first i'm going to ask you to read the next one. so what's the name of this next one? the from grouping forecast. look over here to the right this is the abbreviation for it over here. oh the terminal area forecast. terminal area forecast. why don't you start right here after RYY and read me the, let's just read all the lines. okay. sounds good. so from RYY on the 7th day of September at time 1741 Zulu during- between times of day 7th of September at 18 1800 Zulu time and the 8th date of September at 1800 Zulu time, so about a days span, expect wind from 270 at 10 knots with more than six miles of visibility statute miles of visibility with scattered clouds at layer fourth four thousand. okay. let's read the next line too. so from so in the same day the seventh day of September, on the 2300 Zulu time the wind will change to 290 that's at 7 knots with 6 statute miles with a few clouds at 6,000 feet. okay. so what time right now do you have on your watch? what time is it locally right now? do you have a watch on? yes. what time does your watch say? it's at 6:14. 6:14. okay all these times are in- are they in eastern time or central time? or what time? I don't know exactly the- I forgot the exact technical- where it's located but I know it's located in Greenwich and so which is about four hours of time difference at the moment so right now where you're sitting in this office in Georgia it's local time plus or minus a number? which one is it? is it plus a number or do I subtract that number? you said I think you said 4. right. so if we're looking at this this time right here, we'll have to subtract the 4 hours to get the time right right now, where we're at. okay. alright let's look at the next thing. these items here that you see on the screen is this real or is this just a hypothetical guess? this is a hypothetical guess. okay. so it's just what we're refer to as a forecast, right? any issues with that? it may not be accurate in the future. it might change around. okay what do you see as a pilot when you have to mitigate the risk associated with weather being so dynamic, as it is, what kind of- what kind of situations do you see that that plays when you're looking at just a forecast? you can forget to check the- or update yourself with what the current weather is and closer to the departure time so if the weather changes and changes to a different than the forecast then you might have to change flight plans or make different decisions. has that happened to you so far during your training? yeah, a couple of times where I schedule you know a flight in advance thinking it'll be good but then the weather turned bad so it had to cancel the flights. absolutely. all right can you tell me for that Metar at the top can you tell me how often that weather report comes out? every 24 hours. and how long is it good for? the very top - so that would be the the METAR. so you want to always want to know what time they come out and how long they're good for when they come out. I forgot the exact time that they are good for but. okay, so we do have another one below it you identified that as the TAF earlier or Terminal Area Forecast. How often do they come out and how long are they good for when they come out? I believe they're good for whatever- whichever the time they are displayed on the TAF itself. how long is this one good for? this one is good for 24 hours. okay. from the 18 or 1800 today to 1800 tomorrow. what time did this one come out? what time was it released? released in 1741 zulu. That's an odd number, isn't it? yes. 1941. good so do you know how often they come out like how many hours before the next one comes out? that I'm not exactly sure. okay, no worries. so now this is looks like pretty good weather here but I don't like the fact that it's pretty good weather. so I want to see some not good weather. let's see if I can find some not good weather and have you look at this. let's start off by looking at just this top one here. and we'll read this one all the way to the AO2 as we did the first one. okay, sounds good. okay, so at airport KMCN 7th day of September time 2153 Zulu wind coming from 60 at 17 knots gusting to 27 knots. visibility is 10 statute miles thunderstorm where it's scattered clouds at 5000 broken clouds at 6000 and broken- more broken clouds at 7500. the temperature and dew point is 27 and 19 degrees with the altimeter at A2984 and remarks- not exactly sure about the AO2. okay, have you ever practiced reading anything after the remarks section? AO2 and after? not much. okay. very good. let's read the first two lines of the TAF. so first two lines. same airport KMCN 7th day of September at 2200 2203 Zulu from the hour 22 to the next day at 1800 Zulu winds will be coming from 250 at seven knots with more than six miles of statue miles of visibility. it looks- VCSH I'm not exactly sure but it has scattered clouds at 4000 temporary the weather will change to variable winds at 2- at 25 knots gusting. they're gusting to 35 knots as the visibility will be four statue miles with Thunders- with thunderstorms and rain around and and there will be broken clouds at 4000 not sure exactly sure about the CV and this temporary is good from 2200 to 2400 hours. okay. so a minute ago we talked about this Greenwich Mean Time that you mentioned and we said it was plus four. so what time is it right now in Zulu time or in Greenwich Mean Time excuse me? If you have to look at your watch. add four to that. right so that would be there will be 1020. so give it to me in 24 hour scale. so that'll be- that'll be 2020. okay, so using the TAF, which line, one, two, three, four, or five, would dictate the current weather for our departure time of now? current departure time of now- it'll be the first line and the second line. okay, now I'm going to ask you a follow-up question because we looked at another TAF a minute ago and on that TAF I asked you how long that TAF was valid for. you looked at the time stamp and you said 24 hours. how long is this one valid for? looks like it's valid it's only valid for- less it looks like it's only valid for- I don't know why I'm struggling to do math at the moment. it's okay. is it 24 hours? it's not 24 hours. okay, less or more? it's less. okay. I think it's a valid for 18 hours. no it's 20 hours. valid for 20 hours. very good I'm not going to hold you to the math on this. so we're looking at whenever we leave an airport we always look at the weather in a very specific realm. we look at our current conditions of our departure point enroute and then our forecast about where we're going and remember we said that these reports were all a forecast, right? the bottom- the TAF is forecast but the METAR is current. okay, is it current like for right now? it's displayed now but it's good for until then the next METAR comes out. so when did it come out? when did that METAR come out? at 2153 Azalea so I believe that's so you think that those are actually the still current what's going on at the airport no because the TAF has updated weather. so probably- when would probably, if we've been, you know, with everything being static, when would that METAR really only be accurate? at what time? at the time it was taken. yeah, so what time was it taken? 2153 zulu. okay, so that's probably the only time. is there any weather report that is actually accurate? that's taken in real time? I don't exactly remember the name but I think there is. what do you- who would give it? do you know who gives it, this weather report? is it a weather briefer who gives it or is it a pilot who gives? this one weather report that's the only weather report that's real time observation. I know there's PIREPS which Pilots, they do give- provide some weather reports. okay, good. that's I think that would be one of them. very good. so you're flying along and you see that the visibility is dropping down below what was actually forecasted. I'm Air Traffic Control you're on flight following give me a pie rep I've never given one before. so how do you think you would do it? I think I would do it very similar to the the formatting that it has to the METAR and let them know the critical information so things would be like wind, visibility, at which altitude, what plane I'm flying in. you know if- if there's any other observations that I made. okay, so let's transition a little bit to we're in flight now. so we're still going to talk about whether, but we're going to talk about the enroute phase of things. okay. while you're enroute to your destination, you see some unfavorable clouds ahead of you which causes some concern on your side. how could you get an updated weather forecast while actually flying? I can get- I think I can tune into the weather the either AWOS or actual ATIS information from nearby airports at least that is not more than 100 miles away. okay, well let's say that the the weather you're looking at looks to be about 50 or 60 miles ahead of you. how would you do that? I'm not exactly sure. well, let's go off the thing you said. what did you tell me that you may do was a choice- was an option for you? The AWOS and ATIS from the other nearby airports. okay. how would you determine in flying what airports are beneath that weather that's 60 miles ahead of you? I would use- if I have a paper map then I will kind of map out and see okay measure out the distance and then kind of draw a radius to see okay what are the airports near the area to kind of give give an idea of which weather frequency I can listen to or if I'm using ForeFlight I can use that look that up as well. do you train out of a controlled or uncontrolled field? controlled field. okay, you ever landed at an uncontrolled field? yes. okay. what's the frequency called there that may have the weather you said. have you ever seen an airport that has the same ASOS frequency as another airport I think I might have, checking out the different airports on the map and not exactly flown to them before. oka,y so what do you think- what do you think a a mitigation thing would be for you as far as trying to get it in a frequency which may double up for someplace else that's 60 miles away while you're at altitude? I'm not sure. okay, well remember the radios are a line of sight, right? the higher you are the better the reception. okay. you may pick up more than one AWOS frequency if you're up at altitude. gotcha. okay do you have- I see you have an iPad. do you plan on flying with an iPad? yes. I do. okay. do you have ADS-B or any form of GPS weather data on your iPad? I do, yes. okay. what do you- what are you using? is it ADS-B. it's ADS-B. okay. it picks up ADS-B. so you do- you get weather. that's a viable tool, right? in flight? yes. so you- so let's go over this again, because I think maybe you're thinking that that you can't use certain tools. so this is a real life thing. now I want you think real life. you're in the airplane. you're the only person in the airplane. let's let's really get down to the nitty-gritty. there's no one else in there to help you. no flight instructors. no passengers. nothing. just you and your iPad, and your Garmin GNS 430, and your six-pack, and your mag compass, and a frequency for air traffic control. how can I determine what the weather is going to be out there using all your resources? I can I can look at the iPad to measure how far away the the the weather is. okay. so that's first thing. I can look at the other pilots reports nearby to see if they are also reporting the weather if it's favorable for flying. not exactly sure where to go from here. well, do you use flight following? oh, yes. I do use flight following. who are you talking to when you use flight following? in Georgia, usually Atlanta Center or Atlanta Approach. can Atlanta Approach help you with this? I've never done it before but I know they can help provide traffic advisory. okay, so you're flying along. now you have a genuine concern, right? you feel that's a bunch of black stuff. oh my goodness, I just saw a lightning bolt go down through there! we'll talk about that in a minute too. so what would you tell ATC if you saw that? I can report it to them and see and ask them if it's favorable- weather is favorable there. absolutely, you can do that. that's what they're there for. they can help you with that stuff. okay, now there is some- there is some type of issues with regards with what type of radar they have, but in this particular instance for what we're doing right now, we're simply just talking about the possibility that they had weather radar and not just radar to see the airplane, okay? I see. yep. I don't want any of the viewers to start hacking me to death in the comments. okay, so you have several different ways you can get updated weather in the airplane. correct. okay, and you can also give a PIREP? yes, correct. correct, good deal. alright, let's move on to the next thing. get away from this. I'll make you stop sweating so hard. we're going to look at on the big screen here, your cross-country flight plan. okay. and your cross-country flight plan that you did from Peachtree-Dekalb, Georgia to Savannah, Georgia was done via- was done via ForeFlight or was it done paper-wise? it was gonna be a ForeFlight. okay, so while we're waiting to get that up on the big screen, let's look at some other things. let's look at your route on the big screen here. so when we get your route looked at here, we'll bring up your flight plan here in just a minute, I see there's a bunch of coordinates over there so I know you've done something and you've got just a ton of things coming out of PDK. can you tell me what are these points that you've chosen along your route? yeah, so these are waypoints. I kind of set for myself. they're roughly about 20 nautical miles apart just for me too dead reckon my flight. so I can check certain landmarks around, along those route just to make sure that I'm flying on the right path to Savannah. okay, if you are currently- what altitude did you choose? before I ask this question. I'm sorry. 5500. I can see it right up there at 5500 feet in the right hand corner of our screen for our viewers. not really that tight in close but you can see it up there. so when you took the weather, do you remember what the visibility was along your route when you took the weather today? I don't exactly recall at the moment. okay, well I tell you what. we have this nice- we had that fancy system that we're looking at earlier the METAR. do you remember how many miles of visibility that it said on the METAR? I can look it up right now, but I don't remember. yeah, go ahead and look it up. absolutely, that way we won't have things so we'll keep this up here. kind of show your waypoints and we're gonna try to tie in some of this data, like why we're doing something here, something here, and we're going to try to correlate this data to get to a final opinion about things. okay. yeah, so it looks like along most of the route it'll be 10 statue miles. Okay so you're- this is just a this is one of the direct questions I'll ask you. you said your points were about 20 miles apart. yes. so with the current visibility you're only going to be able to see about how far? half a distance of 10. half the distance of that. so that's something that we probably want to keep in mind as a pilot. especially if we get lower in visibility, we're only able to see that far ahead of us and you're at a mile above the ground. so, you know, you're looking at that particular distance. correct. so let's start off by- I'm just going to basically- from what I see up here, just start asking questions for what I see. this is going to overlap a couple of the future segments that we're going to have in my plan of action, so I'll have to make some check marks ahead. okay. but first off we'll just go ahead and ask some things that we can definitely see on this that that I would like to know. a bunch of airports on here that have these magenta vignette rings around it. what are those? those are class E airspace but it goes down to 700 feet AGL. okay so outside of that vignette and just in the Open Spaces where there's no other airspace denoted what is the altitude floor of the echo in that area? they'll be 1200 AGL okay very good. now I see that there's some airports up in here that are circle, with the circle of vignette and this is actually a little stump the chump question. so if you don't know this when we can move on to the next one but I just want to see how what your scope is. and there's some, like we see here, that have a little square box attached to it. there's another one over here. a little square box. little square box. what's the purpose of that? for Class E airspace I'm not exactly sure but I know for Class C it's most likely for instrument approaches or procedures. you'd probably be exactly right in this case too. absolutely. I see that some airports are colored magenta. I see some airports are colored blue. why? the magenta ones are uncontrolled airports but the blue ones have control towers and they're controlled airspace. okay, very well. I see that there is this big- these big black rings around Macon here and you're more than welcome to pull it up on your ForeFlight if you need a closer look at it there. can you tell me what these big black rings are around the Macon area? so I think they're called TRSA. they're the Terminal Radar Service Area I believe and they pretty much provide a radar coverage that's around the area so in that area they know where you exactly are. you don't really need to transmit your location. okay, so that would have been my next question was is participation mandatory? I tell you what. let's do this. let's transition over to the next slide that shows this close-up view of PDK. okay. and then we'll have some blown up views of exactly where we want to do what we're going to do is just kind of look at some air spaces around that area and we'll see what we're looking at there actually you know this is a this is a great thing here this is actually gave way to a great question here that I'm going to ask. so this was taken from ForeFlight. this is a screenshot from ForeFlight by the way. I'm going to ask you some questions that's basically off of this screenshot which is a common faux pas on these rides. I see that some of these airports are rectangular shaped. what does that mean when they're rectangular shaped. I know some are round. see these are rectangle. I'm not exactly sure. okay, well let's do this. if you'll look up there at Peachtree-DeKalb. here we have the the information for PDK airport right here. right. can you read that? yeah, Peachtree-DeKalb control tower frequency is 20.9. the ATIS for weather is 128.4. the elevation is 998 MSL. I'm not exactly sure about the next frequency and then there's right pattern traffic for runway 3 right and 21 right. okay so if you need to, you're more than welcome to zoom this in on your chart as well. what is the star mean after 20.9? oh it means it's not operated- the tower is not operating 24 hours. and what about the C after that. that's the- it means that frequency can also be used as the common traffic advisory frequency. okay after the field elevation of 998 there's an asterisk L. what does that mean? I'm not exactly sure for that. okay, and then what about the 60? or 6-0? excuse me we don't run numbers together in aviation. I don't exactly remember what the 6-0, that means on the sectional chart. if there was something on this chart and you did not know what it meant what could you use as a reference in the check writer either as a pilot while you're flying? I can use the legend that's on the sectional chart. do you have a legend? I don't have it with me it's in my bag but it's- I think I can see it on Foreflight too. I think you can see it on ForeFlight. why don't you take just a second and see if you can pull up the legend for the VFR sectional on ForeFlight. and while you're doing that, I'm going to walk through one of these stump the chump things while you're doing that I'm going to walk through what I'm talking about here. it's very common, when you're looking at ForeFlight, for a pilot to want to zoom in on ForeFlight. one of the the toggle type options that we have on ForeFlight is we can transition this chart. this actually is not a VFR sectional that we're looking at. this is a chart which basically shows a a blown up version of the VFR area around Atlanta. it's referred to as a TAC chart, and the difference between what you're seeing on the airports here versus what you would see on a sectional is that all these airports on a TAC chart are actually rectangular. so the question an examiner may ask in this regard is what is the length of this airport here at Lawrenceville? and someone actually may say well it's greater than 8069 feet, which is what the legend states. but it's actually not. it's actually just a little over six thousand feet there according to the data, but it's a little bit confusing because you see it as a rectangle and you don't know that you zoomed in to a TAC so if you're using ForeFlight make sure that you have that feature cut off or are very very aware that zooming in is actually going to create this different of picture than it actually would be if you did not have that feature turned on. alright, did you find it? it I am not able to find it. okay, so another recommendation would be that just make sure you have all your- if you're going to use ForeFlight and no paper, I don't know if you're going to use paper or not, but just make sure you got all your legends downloaded into your- or readily accessible in the ForeFlight. that's very very important to do that. okay, let's look at some figures on here. so we can make sure that you know how to read a chart, and of course the figures I'm going to see- ask you here even though this is a TAC chart would be equivalent to what's on a sectional. I see there's a 22 here over Atlanta Hartsfield. what is that 22 mean right there? there's another one here. there's a 1-5 over there a 15, a 16, a 27 up there. so I think- I believe that marks the highest obstacle elevation you know what the proper name of it is? no. if you don't no big deal. okay, good. maximum elevation figure. MEF is what that's called what does this mean? 125 over SFC? it's marking that particular section of the airspace the dimensions of it- the vertical dimensions of it so it'll be up to 12,500 from the surface level. okay, and you say that the airport you normally fly out of is where, Lawrenceville? it's PDK oh, PDK. okay, so let's just start with a standard review of the airspace. tell me everything you know about class Bravo airspace. they are you they are the busiest airspace out of- the in terms of them going in and out of the airports. they- you require clearance to enter the airspace. the- typically they're about 30 miles out which is the big magenta circle there you need to have your transponder as well as your ADS-B out turned on. you need clearance from the- you need clearance to enter the airspace as well as to land and depart the airport. and to enter the airspace you also need clearance as well, no matter what type of traffic- airplane you are. okay, so you get ready to- you want to go inside the Bravo and you call the appropriate approach facility up and you say "hey, this is November so-and-so. I have the information. I'd like to fly into the Bravo", and the controller says "Roger 1234. turn left heading 270 descend and maintain 2000. squawk 5153". can you enter the airspace? No, you cannot enter the airspace. why not? because the controller didn't say you're cleared to enter the Bravo. absolutely, very good. alright. so the airplane you're flying is the- it's a Piper Archer Warrior? Warrior Two. Warrior Two. so you'd have to pull the power back really really far back and slow the airplane down to what airspeed or less underneath the Bravo? you have to be under 200 knots. so stay under 200 in the Piper. don't go over 200. what if I get into the Bravo what's the airspeed? in a Piper Warrior. oh if- it doesn't matter what type of plane I'm flying. yeah. yeah. just what is it? okay, it'll be 250. very good. okay, alright so let's go on to the next airspace. let's talk about the next type of airspace. I'm gonna bring it up here on- just so you'll have a a view of it, I'm going to bring the next airspace up here on the big screen that I have on my laptop here and we'll talk about class Charlie airspace and now luckily for us we're going into a class Charlie airspace, which is Savannah. so here's Savannah down here. this is the next one in sequence. so let's look at the airspace around, or here. look at this airspace here. We've identified this as a Charlie. tell me everything you know about Charlie. so Charlie's kind of in between a Class D and a class Bravo. it doesn't- so it's very similar in a way to class Bravo because you still need to contact- you still need clearance in order to depart or enter the airspace itself. you need to have your transponder as well as ADBS- uh ADS-B active to enter. but I think the main difference is that you don't need- it doesn't provide you with separation service like like class Bravo does but it provides you with traffic advisories as you enter the airspace. okay. what do you need to enter the Charlie? you need clearance from the tower to enter the airspace. okay, and what is the VFR Cloud clearances and weather minimums in class Charlie? it's three miles visibility, a thousand feet above clouds, you need to be 500 feet below clouds and 2000 feet away horizontally from clouds. now if I was VFR, okay, VFR only, and I want to depart Savannah, what would be the minimum visibility in clouds that I would need to legally depart the Savannah airspace or Savannah Airport. that detail I'm not exactly sure. okay, alright. let's flip it and let's just say that I'm wanting to come into Savannah let's say that they canceled my flight following in flight and I've been just basically monitoring the system. they don't have time for me and I'm getting just about over the Statesboro Bulloch County Airport here that you see in the top of the screen. at what point from there should I start calling to get in to- permission to enter the class Charlie? you should start calling at least more than 20 nautical miles away, because they have a procedural area above their marked airspace over there so at least contact them 20 miles outside of there, the airport. okay, using the information that you see here on this chart if I were going to start calling them, what frequency would I dial? would I dial in? you will dial them on 118.4 which is their delivery. okay good and we can see it right there in the center of the screen. it's got that white communications box there what we would contact them on. so if I was just looking here and I didn't have my plotter, to kind of see like when, you know, where 20 nautical miles is, is there anything on here that would kind of give us a sign to say, hey, you should probably call them about this point? recommended place? recommended place to start calling? that I'm not exactly sure, but it looks like it might be just above where the box is. okay, well let's look at this. I see over here at Claxton-Evans, which is over here at this part, I see there is a big magenta flag sticking out of that airport what does that mean? that's just the visual marker. what would you use it for? I see there's another one sticking out of Statesboro. I would use it to- when I contact Savannah I would let them know that that's a kind of a waypoint I can see to let them know how many miles I am away from that particular airport and they can get an idea how far away I am. okay, give me a- give me a quick radio com. I'm- your calling me on 18.4. tell me how that would sound. you're the. pilot I'm the controller. talk to me. let me hear you. I don't exactly remember how the procedure goes for it for the- to talk to approach for a class Charlie here's a little quick tip, for no matter what you're doing on the radio: who you are, where you are, and what you want. it's those three things. okay. who, where, and what. so use that guidance and tell me how would you make that call over Statesboro. okay it will be "Savannah Approach, Warrior 84400. about 7 to the south east of Statesboro County. would like a full stop at Savannah airport. sounds good I think the only thing they would probably ask you is do you have the current ATIS there. that'll be it. wouldn't get the a just before you go in there and you'd have all the things that you need. okay, good. let's look at some other things here on the chart. I see that this airport here for Statesboro also has a little star above it. what's the star mean? it means it has a beacon at the airport. okay, it also has these tick marks out the sides and out the bottom. what does that mean? it means they have a fuel there. okay, okay. here on Statesboro, if we look right below it there, there's a 495 written on top of a parentheses 321. what does that mean? so 49-95 is the MSL height of the top height of that obstruction and then in parentheses into 321 tells you how high the the obstruction is. absolutely. yeah, I remember a long time ago my instructor told me, she said you look at your altimeter in the airplane and you would you would see 495 when you hit the top of the tower, and then you're going to fall 321 feet to the ground. kind of dismal way to look at it but it always helped me to understand it. that was always kind of funny thing for me to look at that. makes sense. yeah, now here's this other thing here it's like a little bird's eye. a little review thing. you can see it right there next to the 495. oh I call it a little bird's eye there. you see that? yes. what do you think that is? I'm not exactly sure. a radio tower? kind of close. it has this little box that's associated with it. let's zoom in just a little bit tighter on that and uh this little Communications box right here. frequency box goes with it. does that help? is it kind of similar to a VOR? it is similar to a VOR. it is a navigational beacon. this is kind of an old school thing nowadays. but this is what we used to call an NDB. actually it still is called an NDB. okay. but do you have an NDB or ADF receiver in your airplane? I'm not sure I'm not sure yet. I have to look through the you'd probably know. you only listen to AM stations on there that we used to- when we're flying around to listen to the radio while we're flying around. thing of the past, almost a little bit. let's look at some other things here. I see that there is a- this particular airport right here that says- got a R in the middle of it. what's that? it's a- I think it means it's restricted or a private airport. can you land there? technically yes. I'm not sure, okay. what if you had an emergency? yes. okay. I see down here there's this 16 down here. what is that? that is the highway. okay, very good. and I see across that there's just some blue lines on here. what are these blue lines here? these little skinny blue lines? they are streams of water. okay, and I see there's a black line that goes across it here. what's that? I think that's a dam. okay, and what do you think this little box is right here? it says it's a plant, so like a power plant of some sort. some type of power plant. some type of something. yeah absolutely. let's do a couple more of these identifiers here. just to kind of see where we are. there's- up here at the top, and I'll put it in the middle of the screen for all the viewers can see. there's a little bit of dot here and there's a 216 next to that dot that 216 goes with that black dot. what's that? that I'm not exactly sure. okay, it's called a point elevation figure. it tells you exactly what the altitude is right there at that spot. okay. all right uh let's look at this. what is- what is this black line here with these dashes going across it up through here? those are the railways. okay, and what is this one here? is this the roads. local roads. so I would agree with this one, what about this one? this is the power line. okay a power line. very good. so there's a lot of things on here that we can start talking about. there's a tremendously large amount of things. let's move right down here. we're going to ask some things very close to our destination airport. as we've very much scroll down here we're going to look at this particular- look at Savannah here. it's kind of odd because we actually have this, let's see here. I apologize. my eyes are going wacky here. I'll tell you what. let's look at this in the interim. what is this box right here for? so that's the- it displays the VORTAC and its frequency for Savannah. say that one more time. it's the VORTAC for the for Savannah Airport and also displays the frequency should you want to use it as a navigational aid. okay, so read from the top here. what that is and read that box for me. so this is the Savannah VORTAC. so the frequency for it is 115.9 ch106. I'm not exactly sure. SAV is the abbreviation and then the right side symbols are the morse code for it. okay, very good. so we were talking earlier about navigating with VORs. there's a lot of questions in regards to VOR so that I could ask you about that but you were telling me you only- you've only done GPS so you probably want to put that into your learning bag is to learn how to do the VORs in case you do that as well. will do. so this one we'll go back to this here. did you ever get- you didn't ever get your legend pulled up, did you? no, I did not. let's look at this class Charlie one more time. ask a couple more questions and then we'll be done with this there's a 41 over 13. what does that mean? that tells you the top and bottom of dimensions of this particular Charlie airspace. okay. that'll be 4,100 an 1,300. okay. now the last thing we're going to do here, and it's just for time brevity, I want you to imagine that you are right there where the H is in Hilton Head. okay? right there in that H, and I want you to believe you're in a- you ever played the rocket ship game? I have not played the rocket ship game. alright we're going to play the rocket ship game today for the check ride. you're right there where that H is. you're on the ground and you're in a rocket, and I want you to blast off and I want you to go all the way to the top of the airspace and go all the way up and tell me every time you get to a different altitude and transitioning to a different airspace. so just go straight up and tell me all the altitudes and all the air spaces you're going to be flying with, all the way up to sixty thousand feet. okay, so start- to start off at the very ground. I will- from zero to 1200 AGL I will be in class G airspace from 1200 to 1300 I'll be in class E and then 1300 to 4100 I'll be in class C airspace and above above that I'll be in class G airspace until 18000 feet and then above that would be good class A airspace. okay, all the way up to what? all the way up to 60,000 MSL. what's above that? I believe that's also class G airspace. okay, it'd be Class E. Class E. yeah thanks. alright, no worries. alright so let's come off of here and let's look at your flight plan real quick while I ask some questions about that and just a couple of questions off that because I do want to ask you a couple of systems questions before we call it quits today. okay. so there is a- this is just a lot of data like I'm looking at this it just looks like I'm looking at the Matrix and I I don't see Keanu Reeves anywhere so I'm not sure how to read this. what is the- what do you- what is the purpose of you actually doing this? why do you as a pilot need to do this? it's for you to keep track of where you're going and make sure you keep your on time at the right place throughout those certain checkpoints make sure you're- so you don't- so you arrive on time you're not like you're burning the right amount of fuel so you're not putting yourself in an unsafe position. okay. so I see that here you have definitely- you got your points around here, which is your points that you've made up that you want to look at. which by the way in ForeFlight you can rename those. you just- you just press on them on the screen you can rename them like road to the left or small lake or something like that it goes on your chart here, but I'm looking across here and you mentioned something to me right there and you said that one of the things you do this is because of time. so I see over here you have the leg times 9, 5, 8, 12, and 10. so on and so on. so if you're using this, as you said, and you get to your top of climb which is supposed to be 9 minutes, what if it was actually 15 minutes? what would you do as the pilot? because you've done all this work. clearly this is not something that was a very quick something to do. you had to think and look and pick these points, right? do the calculations but what if that leg time was 15 minutes instead of 9 minutes? to the top of climb it was to 15 minutes I might have to redo the calculations to forecast out how long- late- how long throughout the flight the rest of flight is going to be. maybe redo fuel calculations as well to see if I have enough fuel for the flight. so can you describe to me like in ForeFlight what you would do at that time so you know you get the top of climb. you're like 15. you look down you say 9. you're like oh my goodness, that's way off. so what would you do in ForeFlight at that time to basically recalculate or update that to 15? to me- what what I think I would do is go through the the flight- the flight section of the ForeFlight and then re perform the recalculation button for the nav log. yeah. so does- who determines that 9 minutes? is that you that puts that in there or is that ForeFlight that puts that in there automatically? that I'm not exactly sure. it might be based on the performance data that I put into the ForeFlight. okay. it may be also based off the the data that it grabs from the weather reports and stuff too as well. so if it's automatically populated, it's almost kind of difficult for it to change it over there. it's something that you have to think about in regards to that because it only gives you the leg time and the estimated time enroute. we don't have any actual times on this as we would on a paper chart. so people who use a digital system, they have to keep this in mind otherwise they may see it here, and then in the system, they get up there and the forecast is not correct, and then- you- there is a possibility that you would be up there and may actually run out of gas because you're not accounting for the time in real time. okay. just all you have is something printed out. okay, that's very good I like this. let's bring up a closer view. let's ask a couple of questions from the airport diagrams. let's go to the airport diagram for Peachtree-DeKalb. and we have them both side by side here for Peachtree-DeKalb and Savannah. on these charts I noticed there's some HS around here what's that all about? those are hot spots so usually areas with the most amount of traffic. okay, very good. looking specifically over in this chart over here, I'm looking at this chart. I'm looking at this chart. I see there's a couple of differences between each. on the Savannah chart I see there's a lot of- where this is just- has grayed area. there's a lot of gray with hash marks over there. hash lines on it. what is the difference between that and this? that I'm not exactly sure but I would guess you need permission to enter those particular areas in the- with the hash marks. okay, do you know what that's called? with the hash marks? I do not. okay, let's look at some other things here on this chart as well. we'll look- I tell you what let's transition back over here to the PDK. as we can see here, there is a small square box here at the very front and a 3 Right. it says EMAS. what is that? that I'm not exactly sure. okay, no worries. let's go back over to the other side. I see there's a bunch of small circles there that says HS. did I already ask you that? I didn't ask you that, did I? yes. okay. the hot spots right. sorry. I'm so far ahead of myself. I just don't know what's going on. if we look over here to the side, there is these lines here that says Runway 1-19, 10-28. and then it has these- stuff underneath it. PCN 70 R/C/W/T. S-75. what's all that? that I'm not exactly familiar with. okay, very well. there is a- this arrow here. like a arrow up. arrow like that. that figure right there. what's that figure right there? you can see there's one on the other side of the runway as well. I'm not too too sure about as well. okay, very well. let's look at this word right here. there's a word right there. what's that word right there? land and hold short operations or LAHSO. would you seeing this on the chart, would you determine that Savannah has LAHSO operations? yes. if you were coming into the airport to land, how would you know that land and hold short operations are in effect Savannah? it'll be on their, either charts or within a NOTAMs I believe. okay, very good. let's transition just a little bit further. I want to try to get just a little bit of piece of everything in I could definitely dive into a lot of details but we want to try to keep moving, because I want to kind of keep moving forward. so let's go just a little bit further into this. let's talk very quickly about systems and then we'll get to something else. so we don't need this anymore. so let's talk a little bit about systems. on this, your airplane, you have multiple systems. there's the engine. there's electrical. there's a fuel system. tell me a little bit about the fuel system on your airplane. the fuel system we have- so as- well for the Piper Warrior II, we have two tanks. one on each wing. holds 25 gallons each, so 50 gallons in total, but only 48 gallons are usable. it has a fuel pump that fuel- that feeds the fuel to the engine. so the engine has its own- when the engine's running, it can feed its own fuel into the engine but whenever it's- there's always the the electrical fuel pump as a backup. okay, if you were flying along and you had- your engine started sputtering a little bit , what are some things you would do in that particular situation, based off the training that you've received? sputtering as in it's like- it's not running smoothly. it might be that the the engine's running too- it's running a little rough, right. so the mixture might be too rich. so I would check to see if the mixture is adjusted correctly I might have to lean the mixture or if the carburetor heat is on, to check for those. okay, so you adjusted the mixture it didn't work. it didn't help. you adjusted the carb heat it didn't help still running very rough. almost like the engine's getting starved from fuel. what else would you do? maybe check to see if the fuel pump is on. or if the fuel selector is selected to your proper tank and see if the fuel pressure is there. so just to make sure keep making sure that the fuel was flowing into the engine. okay so you cut the fuel pump on. the engine starts running good again. what could you deduce? probably the fuel pump that the engine has by itself, it probably failed. so it needs the electrical fuel pump to keep feeding fuel into the engine. okay and last question. what's the first thing you should do in any emergency? you should always pitch to glide for best speed. well that's only for a particular emergency. what about any emergency? declare mayday. well, what if you didn't have a radio in your airplane? if you're flying an airplane with no radio? emergency this is actually such a simple answer. it's just people overthink this thing. okay, the first thing you actually do in any emergency is panic and go ahead and get that out of the way. but the second thing is, do we have anything that would help us to kind of guide us through what we need to do for an emergency. okay, so like a checklist. okay, so the first thing to do in any emergency is do what? to go through the checklist. okay, very good. alight, well that's- I've put you through enough pain and anguish tonight. I think we've done a good job here and we've got some great data there. we're going to be able to help you and share with your instructor. and we're going to go ahead and ask Damian to come out here. Damian is his instructor and we're going to review this. I'm going to review this outcome of this little mock check ride with Damian and they're going to work on some things, and we're going to send him to the checkride it should be a success. so we're gonna take a short break we'll be back with Damian alright, folks. we're back here with the CFI of this brilliant candidate tonight Damian Morrissy and Damian, I'll go ahead and debrief you hopefully- were you satisfied with the results or- I know a lot of instructors are sometimes ultra critical when it comes to their students. and again I want to make sure we understand, and I apologize before you start talking. the candidate has a little over five weeks before his checkride. so we're talking about something if anybody's being critical on the way some of these stuff were answered, I mean we have plenty of time to work on this we're just basically here to kind of show you exactly how this procedure works. sorry, Damian. go ahead yeah, I was very satisfied. I love this process because it gives you a nice opportunity to see areas of improvement. you know, some things that we need to work on. and to be honest it's helpful to me because, you know, it shows areas maybe we didn't cover enough. but as far as David and his answers that he gave and the way he worked through some of the problems that that you presented, I think was great. I think he was using the skills that we've learned and we just need to hone up on some of the- some specific details that you- that you had asked about. so yeah, no. it was great. I loved it. cool. well I'm going to give you just some things that I wrote down. okay. feel free to ask me anything about if you need any more information in regards to this because I know you as an instructor probably want to go back and do do some more work with them in the prep in this five weeks that he has left. some of the things I may talk about are just like nitpicky things, and some things may be a a pretty major things. so let's look at some things here. I'll start off with a nitpicky thing. no matter how many people like to say it, there's no such thing as a bi-annual flight review it's just called a flight review. the most common miss- or a wrong way to say it is a biannual. that's- used to be that many years ago, but we don't call it that now and it's just kind of stuck with it. they want you to use the faasafety.gov and use the WINGS program. and if you do that it's about a 12 month deal. it's not really, not bi-annual. so annual or just a flight review is the best way to say that. we got into air- pilot qualifications. he did very well in. airworthiness requirements, we got into that. some of the things that we're looking at is- he needs to have just a little bit better flow with going into the ARROW. there is an acronym I think is common in the industry for knowing the maintenance inspections it's AV1ATES where the I is actually a 1. so going through those, when the examiner says what are the required inspections and what are you looking for in the checkride, as you know, he's going to have the logbooks on the table. and I know you're probably going to have that tabbed out and go over that with him. so just like open it up and say that's what it is. that's what it is. that's what it is. I specifically said the word airframe, so it'd be airframe, engine, prop. okay, so those particular things now this one was- it could be or could not be, but I'm pretty sure it's not what he said. I'm pretty sure your ELT is a 406 megahertz. not a 121. it's actually both I'm being told. okay good. so that's something to think about as well. just to kind of say the whole thing in regards to what that is. another thing was airworthiness directives and when you go through that- the FAA's website is brought up by the serial number on that this is a very common thing that bites pilots all the time because they simply just don't know how to go and and use the FAA's website. once you see it one time, and you go back and do it the second time, it takes you about half the time that it took you the first time to do it, but then once you start doing it it's really such an easy process and then you just go and if the mechanic is a good mechanic, they'll actually have two lists inside the the maintenance logs. they'll have an AD compliance report and an AD list. so all the ADs and then how they complied with it. okay, there was one thing here which was a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin or SAIB. that's actually something that's in the ACS. that's a required knowledge thing. the Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin are things that other so incredibly broad. like I think the one that I just recently saw, which came out a few- a month ago I think was basically saying that for airplanes that only have lap belts or or y-shaped belts, they recommend that they install additional airbags. so there'd be some things like you read a SAIB and you're like wow it really doesn't apply to me at all. so those are very broad things that- recommendations where the FAA has seen things and they're like, let me make a recommendation here. there's an FAA order on that. it's FAA order 8110.100 if you want more information on that one. when it comes to inoperative equipment on the plane, he'll need to have a working knowledge of 91.213. in 91.213 if you just go to the delta area and start there. delta I, 2, 3, and 4 is the main thing there, and then of course there's the last thing. there's- so there's the four items that you have the sequence there's a sequence of events that he would have to go through and determine airworthiness. alpha through charlie is really not applicable because that's only dealing with MELs and of course he doesn't have an MEL for the airplane so it would be important for him to understand what an mm- what an MEL is as well as an MMEL which is also a very very common task that examiners ask about on this checkride as well. like do you have an MEL or what is an MMEL? especially for commercial pilot ratings and then him being a little bit more familiar with part 43 appendix a. with some of the things that he can do in regards to your preventative maintenance. you know can he change a tire? can he change a light bulb? yeah. I was trying to get him to talk about the special flight permit or ferry permit. that's usually just a- filling out a form on the FAA's website and then calling a FSDO and arranging some time there with a mechanic so you can determine how you would get that there. so that was another one. when we got into the weather information, so when someone tells me they use a specific thing to do- that's exactly what I'll hone in on so if somebody says ForeFlight that's like a large vast thing. well, it's actually, no matter which one you use, it's a large amount of systems that we can turn into but I think sometimes when we're looking at ForeFlight, they only look at certain products. so if I start digging into all the products, that could go drastic. aviationweather.gov is something very similar. they're in the verge of changing over. they have a current beta site right now. which are having a bunch of new products on. but one of the products on there that if a person does use aviationweather.gov that they really need to know, which a lot of pilots are very weak on, is we go from the METAR to the TAF to the graphical area forecast. now of course he's going from a controlled airport to a controlled airport that has TAFs at each side, so he gets a good idea about what the forecast is for those, but there's the weather that's in between, which the graphical area forecast would be a great tool to be able to do that there's actually learning videos on the aviationweather.gov website about that. we didn't get a chance to cover that, but that's definitely something that he'll need to know. knowing how to read it from start to finish is definitely vital. being able to see it and recognize what it is is vital. knowing when they come out and how long they're good for. so the he did good on the TAF so TAF comes out this actually has three different time periods it can come out whenever it's needed, it can come out- or but the standard is 24 and 30 hours for that. and they're good for six hours when they come out. they have very weird release times. so they- they're actually to the minute. and one of them was shown on the reports like 1741 and then 6 hours from there so it's got a very very odd release times on those things. it used to be top of the hour back in the day. for some reason they changed it I'm not sure why. knowing how to read the station model is another one too. very much fair game for that, and the the zulu time. so he said local time and subtract four so it was a local time plus four on that so anything past the A02, ran into a little bit of issue on the on the TAF would not knowing like certain things like vicinity area thundershowers or vicinity showers VCSH. that was another one all pilots should definitely know how to give a PIREP. so that's something that should be reviewed. when I asked him what kind of weather he would- how would he get his weather update during his- on his destination. so I really had to go fishing on that one. in the end he did know, but I really had to go fishing a lot to get that weather. that would in a real check ride, if I had an FAA official sitting in with me, they would be elbowing me in my ribs a little bit on that one. that was really a- but of course this is all mock so who cares? very close to what it is. got to the chart. very common problem with that ForeFlight is they have the TAC Zoom feature cut on and so when that's- when that zoomed in it just changes the way that it looks from a sectional over to a TAC. very common thing I recommend personally turning that feature off, and then if you need to you can just turn it back on if you're going to be flying into a Bravo area, where that is applicable to you. again that's just my opinion. you're the instructor. you do what you want to do. you do you. he did really good on the airspace. he had a lot of things going. he knew about the coming into the Charlie, the magenta flags, and 20 miles out he was really okay with that but definitely needs a review. and then the rocket ship game is- I think is a very common- have you ever heard of that? I have. okay, that's a pretty good way to do it. you know, just put them anywhere on the chart and say, let's go vertically and and see where we're going with that. he did have some- not sure if you heard it, but when he did have some issues on the lower part with that and the reason for us I think he missed that there's a class Echo vignette encompassing that Charlie as well. so he- a little bit of the numbers on the low end there where- were not to spec on the airport diagrams, there's- at PDK, there's a little strip there at the very end of the runway or a beginning of 3 right or at the end of 2 left it's a EMAS okay, you know what that is? okay, so he definitely needs to know what that is. by the way, for those at home, that's if the airplane runs off the end of the runway 21 left at PDK. it's like a collapsible crushable concrete and it makes the aircraft kind of bog down in there and kind of brings it to a stop so it doesn't overrun and go out into the roads and stuff. the data that we had on Savannah, which was below the runways is all the single tire, dual tire weights of airplanes landing on those runways and what they can- the weight of the runway that can take or the rate that the runway can take. so that was one. he did really good understanding about when- about knowing if the LAHSO was going to be active but he said NOTAM he needs to say ATIS but he knew it was reported someplace, but he just said the wrong thing. and then of course the figures on the runway which dictate a LAHSO which is that that figure there. I could draw it if I see that I'm drawing it out with my finger, but just knowing that so going over review of those charts, whichever areas he's going to go to on his check ride and just making sure from top to bottom, tons of questions on there that an examiner can ask that can get really in the weeds on. we ended off here talking a little bit about systems. a little bit rushed through there but I still- he did- I got the information that I wanted to get as far as what we're doing here. but knowing the systems and how they work. so the rote memorization, the rote stuff that he had, he needs to get into the understanding and the application correlation stage so what- here's how you draw it out on the board. here's how we go through it, but here's what it looks like if it's not working. here's what it looks like if part of that is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. and of course the first thing we do in any emergency is panic, right? and then the second thing is pull out our checklist or perform a flow. meaning that it's the bold portions part of the checklist that we memorize. we don't definitely don't want to have an engine failure on the upwind, and then pull out a checklist. let me see here. engine failure on the upwind. you know we definitely don't want to do that. so flows are that part of the checklist that we have memorized and in this particular case, if you started having engine problems, I think the best thing to do is just, you know, when it comes to engine problems at all in general, there's only three things that make an engine run. it's part of the fire triangle if you remember from high school and going through chemistry class or science class. it's either the fire, it's either the air, or it's the spark, and so I try to always make sure pilots understand- like let's say oh, my engine's not running rough let's touch the mixture, let's touch the fuel, let's touch the pump. nope. that didn't work. well is it the gas? let's do something with the gas. nope. that didn't work. well is it the air? nope. it's not the air? well I don't know what it is. let's plan for an emergency. so keeping our wits above us when we're in cruise is is good. if you have an engine failure close to the ground, then you can panic can do all that other good stuff. but anyway that's all I really had I'm pretty sure that you know as you watched in from the recording room- studio that you probably saw some other things as well that you have questions about. do you have anything else for me? I don't have anything else for you tonight. well this has been a wonderful experience tonight. folks, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Todd Shellnut with CFI Pro Courses. also, with my good friends at Gold Seal and thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you again in the future. thank you.