Episode 403: "Is it True an Instructor's First Student Will Commonly Fail Their First Check-Ride?"

Do you have a question yet, Lindsay?

I do. This is coming in from lp. It is a CFI related question. He is currently working on his rating and he wants to know is it true that a high percent of CFIs have their first student fail their checkrides and how would you avoid it?

That is a phenomenal question. We hear that a lot. And I remember hearing that back in the beginning that a lot of times an instructor's first student they send to a checkride does not pass. And I can tell you firsthand, my first student I ever sent did not pass. I'll give you the reason. It was very simple. Airplane cfi. The guy was very well put together. He was. If I said study the helicopter flying handbook, he'd do it. Everything I told him to do, he did. It gets to the checkride and the examiner wanting to figure pressure altitude by hand and he couldn't do it. He wanted to use his, you know, electronic computer or whatever. And the examiner's like, no, I need you to figure out on paper, how do you do pressure altitude by hand? He couldn't do it and he failed him. CFI add on doing or CFI airplane doing a helicopter private add on and he failed him over that. Yes, that is something that does seem to be common. There is so much to put in these checkrides together that I could understand why a new CFI first student might possibly fail. And one you asked, how can I avoid that? I can tell you hands down how you can avoid that. You need to have a copy of the acs, your student needs to have a copy of the acs and you need to go through this with your student and you need to cover everything. If you don't, there's a possibility they're not going to get through. This would be the number one way that you can make sure that your student is not going to fail and is to use the ACS and you literally open it up and you work with it, work with your student. And yeah, it's time consuming, but do you want your student to pass on the first time or not? And if you really and truly do going through this thing and going page to page, because when you're asking if applicant you know anything from this book, if they're not unsure of it, then they need to go find the answer or you need to give them the ground so they have the answer. That's hands down. And the other number two, I will tell you, when I first started as a brand new CFI 24 years ago, I met the examiner before I had my first checkride with him. And it's the same examiner I'm using 24 years later. And here is his advice. I'm a brand new cfi. The company I work for said, hey, go out and fly with the examiner, get to know each other a little bit and just kind of, you know, just get to know each other kind of thing. Which was great, right? That was cool. And we walked on to the helicopter and I asked, the examiner said, hey, I'm a brand new cfi. Have any tips for me? You know, what could you relay to me as being a newbie? And he's like, ever heard the practical test standards? I'm like, yes, of course. He said, make sure you're using the PTS with your students and you go through the pts. And then he said, and we have a real problem with people not showing up for their check or showing for their check rides and not having everything that they need. So I've been telling people all these years, you know, this is now the acs, but same as the pts, it has practical test checklist Applicant. I harp about this in videos all the time. You need to go through this with your student and you need to do it about three weeks in advance. And make sure you have every single piece of information that you need is right here. If it's here, just get it. Don't say, well, what about this? What about that? No, if it's on this list, have it. Don't even argue with the point. Because a lot of failures happen because somebody didn't have something they're trying to squeeze through. And the examiner may go ahead and go, but you've already started out on a bad note, right? It's all about the preparation. It's totally about the preparations. And I'll pimp this for you since you're going to be a new cfi. If you don't have this yet, go below and get a free PDF copy and we'll make sure the links down there if Lindsey didn't have it already in there for today. Top 10 checkride tips. Taz and I put this together, our 50, 60 years of experience together and what we see, why people fail. We cover a ton of that in here. There's more than just 10. There's a bunch of bonus tips as well. The reason people fail is stupid stuff. Here's another good tip for you. And then I'll move on. Plan one day for the freaking paperwork, the endorsements, all the paperwork you got to do 8710 could be, oh, 8710. It'll take that long. Well, guess what? Half the time somebody's like, maybe they're doing an add on and they got three or 400 hours and they got airplane and helicopter and cross countries and the paperwork can turn into a real mess. And starting the paperwork the night before check right is not the thing to do. Have that paperwork done a couple days ahead of time. Try to not do much with your students the night before. I've seen it a thousand times if you're done a day ahead of time and that last day can be just kind of simple and laid back. I don't even like to fly the last day before the check ride. Sometimes we do, but I prefer not to because the students flying gets worse. Thus last two or three days to the test each day it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse. So don't fly too much last minute. Try to get all the flying done early, requirements done early. And here's something else we see because we do checkrides for people around the country. They tell me, oh yeah, my requirements are done. Are you sure? Yep. Did you go through the far aim? Yep. Me and my instructor did it. We got everything. And they get here and we open up their logbook and I find, here's an example twice on commercial pilots, their 2.0 cross country was 1.8. And I'm like, this isn't going to work. And they're like, well, my instructor said it is. I go, yeah, well guess what? Here it says 2.0. Make sure you go through the FAR aim with your student and treat them like they're in kindergarten. Right? And I say it all the time like we're both in kindergarten. Open the book and you go through the list. Do you have 40 in helicopters? Do you have this solo? Do you have this? Do you have this? And you got to go down the list of that far aim and make sure you have every single thing completed. Because again, last minute, oh hell, it's the night before and you find out it was 1.8 when it supposed to be 2.0. You're trying to go out and fly across country the night before the checkride. Not cool. How can you avoid it? Go through the far aim with them, make sure the requirements are true. Get on the map, get on foreflight. If it's supposed to be, you know, 25 nautical miles to the point, it's got to be 20 more than 25, not 24 and a half, that's not going to work, right. Go through it step by step. And please ACS people don't want to use them. I'm telling you, instructors don't want to use them. And it's you're making life difficult on yourself. And our clone is located@askhogs.com you can go below and click on the link to go check it out. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can ask training related questions. Flight and ground 14 years of my contents loaded in this thing. Blogs, podcasts, videos, paid content, free content. There's over 6 million words piped into my clone. It's amazing. Go down below ask hogs.com the clone is free to everyone and the clone is also inside of our HOG site on every video, every page. So you can be in viewing videos. And you can always ask the clone a question while you're at it so you can get an immediate answer first. Right here is free free PDF private pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint that's why we created this and let me cover what's in the first chapter since you ask and you're at the beginning. That's why we created this. The first chapter are questions that we've we took like the top 10 questions that we get all the time. Like is learning how to fly a helicopter difficult? How long will it take to become a private pilot? How much will it cost to become a private pilot? What is the best approach to selecting a flight school? What are the key differences between helicopters and fixed wing aircraft? How many tests will I have to take? How many hours for solo on the license? Kenny's recommended training supplies so this is absolutely 100% free. You can go down below, there's a link down below. Or you can type in your browser privateblueprint.com and you can download immediately after you sign up. You'll sign up, enter your name and email and the next page will show you download your book here. That's where you should start because again it's free. Or subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe the channel. You'll get notification when the new video comes out for either the live or the premiere, whichever way we do it. And then we want to also bring up we are updating starting to update our R22 specific course behind us. Course behind us course using the helicopter behind us. Lindsay's in charge of getting in there and updating some images in the R22 site section of Hogs. We have R22 specific section and R44 specific section that come with any of our memberships. So you don't have to buy that specifically. We use private pilot, for example, monthly membership. It has both the R22 and R44 sections in there. And since we have an R22 available to us and an R44 available to us, we thought, why not get the content updated in those courses with some fresh videos, brief, brushed images. We got two aircraft and a lot of people going, well, I want to. Well, I'm gonna. Well after Christmas. Well, that's when everybody's gonna start wanting those times. So to speed the process along, we need to get some workbook for these helicopters. Both of them are sitting, currently not flying, and they're both ready to go. So reach out to Hogsmember support 574-767-1797. If you'd like to get on the schedule for some training. We specialize in checkrides, finish the people up. But we can also do, you know, SFAR checkouts. Again, you can come in for one day, two days, whatever you need, or you need a block of time. We'd even be willing to work your little deal this time of the year to get some time on these aircraft. So again, reach out To Hawk member support 574-767-1797.

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