Check out Fred Sweet's website

https://realcfi.com/

​

Haven't posted much this year.  Why?  Not much has changed.  Until now.  I like to see people succeed in their endeavors and it pains me to not be able to issue a pilot certificate when they have worked so hard.  A lot of issues really relate to basic airmanship and knowledge.  So let me present some of the trends I'm seeing.

Private & Commercial:  Flight planning.  I don't care what you use for flight planing, old fashion paper, ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot or what have you, it's your choice.  Here's the issue, several people don't know how headings, ground speed and fuel burns are calculated.  Pilots who show up using paper charts and flight planning forms generally do better than the others but some just copy from a computer based application.  For example, I had a pilot show up for his private pilot checkride.  He presented a beautiful flight plan to his destination.  He told me it would take a couple of hours of flight time and about 18 gallons of gas, which all made sense.  I asked what the distance was and  how long it would take to get between check point B and C.  He said about 12 mins.  Great!  I asked what would your groundspeed be if it took us 14 minutes to fly between those points.  There was a short pause and he said "we would be slower" which was obviously correct but what was our actual groundspeed?  He fumbled with calculator and then the ACA electronic e6b, clearly at a loss.  I left him alone for about 20 minutes.  When I return he said he was sorry but he couldn't come up with an answer.  If we were to back up 5 years, I could ask this question in an airplane without GPS and have a correct answer in 5 minutes.  Now I ask it on the ground because of the struggle involved while we are flying.  

The rest of the ground for this applicant went pretty well, so I let this question slide.  We made it to the airplane and started off on the cross country.  About 15 minutes into the flight I ask what our ground speed was and how long it would take to get to our destination.  This was a pretty well equipped older 172 with a G650.  Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of uneasiness, the applicant admitted he didn't know.  Clearly defeated, the pilot elected to return home.

Private & Commercial Flight:  Take off & Landings.  Hands down the biggest problems on these rides.  Most of the problem are two fold.  Lack of crosswind correction and/or flaring incorrectly leading to hard, flat landings, or bouncing.

One applicant came returned to his home airport after completing most of the in flight maneuvers for the private pilot check ride.  The first landing was to be a short field landing on the 500 foot markers.  Winds were 90 degrees to the runway at about 8-10 knots.  The pilot hit the 500 foot markers flat and bounced on one but twice and came to a sliding stop off well off centerline.  Shortly after stopping the tower asked if the pilot was solo or if an instructor was with him (that's generally not a good sign). The pilot admitted he was on a check ride.  Tower offered the other runway which was directly into the wind.  The pilot elected to stay on the current runway for the remainder of the check ride.  After 5 go-arounds the check ride was ended. Unfortunately, none of the take off and landings met ASC requirements of the ACS and the pilot show lack of good decision making by not taking a runway more aligned with the wind.  Ughh!

Instrument check rides:  These three occur frequently, Navigating on an airway, Circling approaches, and Holding.

 Navigating on an airway.  Say ATC says fly heading 360 intercept V123.  How would you set that up on your navigation equipment and intercept the airway?  There are several ways to do it yet it gets screwed up a lot.  I recommend knowing two ways.  One using the GPS and a second using old school VORs.  (remember VORs are the backup to a GPS outage or failure).

Circling Approaches:  Basically this pilots are circling in the wrong direction and/or what to close to the runway.  Remember at non towered airports you are required to comply with 91.126. (enough said about that.  Google for the FAA legal interpretation and a good AOPA article).  Most pilots circle way too close to the runway because they fear going outside the protected circling radius.  In reality, I think most pilot just don't know how to determine distance by looking out the window and what a correct sight picture is when circling at 500 ft AGL.  

Holding:  This isn't really a holding issue but more of a programming issue.  For example.  How would you set up a hold on your equipment if ATC said "N1234 Hold northwest of TEDDY on V24"?   The second programming issue has been a situation where you completed a missed approach and are holding as published when ATC say "expect ILS runway XX".  Several applicant have loaded that next approach but also deleted the holding pattern that they are currently in.   Talk about an "Oh Crap" moment!  How you recover from that could be the pass/fail decision on a check ride.  


​Fly Good and don't pet a burning cat!