#166 No Check Ride Today, if you get done on first appointment, it's a gift

All right, welcome to day 166. It's going to be quick and easy. Someone. Someone is on their way over to just give you a quick hi and let you know she's back. So come on over. Just give a quick hi. She's back. She's not hobbling near as bad as she left Monday. Was it Monday when we did that? Swelling's down. Good to go. So. So all of you that sent Heather messages, thank you. She appreciated that while she was home resting her foot for a couple days, but. So we didn't hurt her too bad. I mean, bad enough. But luckily, thank God we didn't break her ankle. Oh, my God. All right, well, she's up. She's up there getting books ready. Heather does that. And she had a couple ready the other day when she got her foot hurt. So she's probably gonna get those mailed today along with whatever book orders came in while she was home resting up for a couple days. So I'm Kenny Culler. What's that? She's getting around. Good. She's. Oh, my God. I mean, I feel better about it now. I mean, I'll still. I'll always feel guilty about it, but. Exactly. Yeah, they were. Somebody from instrument helicopter said, oh, man, she's going to hang. She's going to hang on to that for a while. I'm like, ah, she's too sweet to bring that back on me. And Jackie said, oh, women. Tuck that stuff away and wait to use it. She's get going, still laughing, and she's going back in her office. So anyway, so today I want to talk about no checkride today. Darn it. I keep moving the stupid camera. Our Add on guy's name is Mark. I keep calling him Add On Guy. I'm just gonna say Mark from now on so that I quit calling him Add On Guy. Didn't do that to be rude. I just. You know, we like making nicknames for people, right? And his checkride was scheduled for today and yesterday the examiner called me. Actually. It's really kind of more on us. And that's what I want to talk about today, is if you get your checkride done on the first date, you're lucky. It's a gift. Be happy. But more importantly, be prepared if your checkride doesn't go the first day. 20 years I've been doing it, I've been involved in hundreds of checkrides, and I'm telling you, they almost never go off first hitch. Rarely. I mean, and they do sometimes. And sometimes, you know, the weather will be great and the aircraft is great and everything goes and you show up and you go through the test and you get done and he signs your rating and you all go home happy. And when those days come, that is awesome. It is the best absolute feeling. But I want you to also be prepared. And I checked the book here real quick. Chapter two is about using the practical test standards to prepare and of course, go, no go decision is part of your checkride. But it's also the day of the checkride, in my opinion. What's the examiner going to think if you come scud running over to the airport or wherever you're meeting him to take a checkride? I don't think most examiners are going to be impressed. Now, disclaimer. I'm just giving in general here and what I know of the examiners I've worked with over the years. There can always be an extreme in examiner one way or the other. But I think in general, most examiners want you to come. They want you to get done, they want you to do well and they want you to get the rating and go home. But they want you to show up prepared, they want you to be ready to go. And I don't believe that most examiners are going to want you taking chances, getting to the checkride. Okay? The average examiner, not even the average, most all examiners are going to want you to, number one, arrive safe. And in my opinion, if you're scud running it over there or you're pushing the issue, I don't think that's a good reflection on the checkride. My opinion, there might be an examiner that's like, oh, well, hey, you know, if you guys can make it, you know, let's get her done today. You know, it could happen. But. And I don't think examiners are going to be trying to trick you. I mean, I suppose they could, but let me go back to just the guys I've worked with for 20 years, they want to get these checkrides in and get them done. I mean, they're getting paid, right? Of course they are, but they want you to show up and be prepared and have a good checkride. They're not there to fail you. And in turn, I don't think you should chance it on the way over. And in this example with Mark, you know, he's anxious to get it done. And hopefully Mark's going to do an interview with us when we're done. And maybe Mark will share how many years he's been working on rating but he's another one of these guys that we've been talking about. No shame. Been working on this rating for a long time. He actually owned his own aircraft, his own helicopter. He's got his own airplane, but he's even owned his own helicopter. So he's got like 140 hours of helicopter time. And he's just turned getting the rating into a number of years to get it finished up. So of course, darn it, Mark is anxious to get done. Examiner, I'm sure, wants to get it done. He's got stuff coming up I want to get him done because I've got another member that's wanting to come up next week. And so we were scheduled for today. Tomorrow's out for the examiner. Our next choice is Monday, then our backup weather day is Wednesday. And Mark was like, well, can't we just kind of wait and see what the weather's going to do? And I'm like, well, Mark, you know, the Examiner's. He needs to plan, I need to plan. I kind of want to give my other ground school member an idea what's happening next week. So, you know, I've always tried to kind of cater to the examiners, if you know what I mean. I mean, be willing to work with their schedule and ask for a certain date, but do your best in time to work with somebody. I wouldn't be over demanding about getting a date. You know, I would work on, you know, getting, getting the checkride done, showing up on time and not doing anything dumb, getting over there. It's all a part of, it's all a part of the process, the no go decision. And I'll show the cup today. This is honor of Tas Christman. Taz flies the Switzer down in Vegas and they've got Robinson's down there too. So, so many people recently have been asking me about that, about how to get a hold of Taz. Well, Taz is on Facebook and he's on Instagram and you can also get ahold of him at Airwork Las Vegas. So if you're interested, Taz and I did this book together and that's why decided to check which chapter was talking about the pts. There's a lot of things to do to get ready to go for checkride. You want to start about three weeks in advance is what we titled that chapter. Three weeks in advance, meaning getting the signal, getting your logbook, all the signatures, signatures caught up, ordering any publications that you're going to need, you know, making sure that you have the aircraft log Books, man, start all this stuff about three weeks in advance. As far as just getting everything around and getting ready, then the last minute is going to be much easier and it's going to be easier to make your decisions. I've been there, done that over the years where we got down to the end of a checkride or getting somebody ready and it's the night before and we're scrounging around and we're trying to find something or we're chasing logbooks or we're looking for a publication. It just really sucks. And that just adds that extra pressure to showing up the day of the checkride. So real simple, I'm going to get rolling because it's been a big week and a lot of time editing really long videos this week. Sorry they went on so long. Well, I'm not sorry. We've had some great content but you know, we all got things to do and we're all busy, right? So I'm going to try to keep them a little bit shorter. Not every day can be a 20 minute video because then I spend the whole entire day and then I don't have any time to get anything else done. So thanks for tuning in each day for this is day 166. Again, welcome Heather back. Luckily she only missed a couple days. Go back and check that video if you didn't see it. I just simply talked about, you know, things that go on in and around the hangar. There's a lot of we all the time we talk about Safety in and around the helicopter. That one I should have titled Safety in and out of the hangar. Right, because there's so many things that can happen in the hangar when you're getting ready to go. Moving them in, moving them out, pre flighting, moving ladders, moving aircraft, moving other aircraft, doors up and down. There are a lot of ways a person can get hurt. So taking your time in and around the hangar is really, really super important. So that video was, I think two days ago. You can go back and catch that probably day 164 I think. And day 163 was where you can land a helicopter or not where you can land a helicopter, but dealing with brownouts and whiteouts and avoiding those and pretty good video there. And I spent a lot of time on that one too. So like subscribe, leave your comments down below for the upcoming videos. Like, I'm catching up on most of the comments. So you got anything that you're wanting to know about that I haven't answered recently? I mean we can always revisit anything, right? Because with training, we have to learn it over and over again. Because I make a video once doesn't mean I don't need to make it. Time number two. Time number three. Time number four, because we have to keep retraining. We have to keep telling ourselves the same things that we learned back when we started. We have to continue to train and continue to tell ourselves to do the right thing. It's just the way it is. So, oh, yeah, that top 10 checkride tips links down below. We just send it to you. Shipping and handling, you can get it. Tas Christman, 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year. We did this together. Really good little book with a lot of really good tips. And the whole idea of this book is not to train you to be a private pilot. It's a train you to get ready for any checkride. Because when you're getting ready to go for a checkride, there is so many things to think about. And we as instructors, Taz and I, just kind of sat back and thought about looking at all the things that really screw up getting ready. Right. I mean, we've both done a ton of students over the years, and students are human beings and human beings make mistakes. So we kind of just thought, you know, let's put together what we see on a continual basis, the problems people have. And that's why Taz went out and talked to some examiners in the local area down in Las Vegas to get their opinion on what they're seeing. So that's a bonus in the book as well. All right. Like, subscribe, put a comment down below. Please give us a thumbs up and we will see you in day 167. Peace out.