Helicopter Check Ride Part 2 The Practical Test Standards

Alright, had a good first question there. Somebody asked about airplane or helicopter. Is helicopter same as the rating? I know when you're first starting out, when you're new to this, people a little confused on how it works. Basically when you go for like the private pilot rating, you can go for private pilot helicopter or private pilot airplane, single engine land and you can do it either way. There's an old myth that people think that you have to get your airplane first and then do your helicopter afterwards. That's not the case. You can go straight to helicopter. That's what I did. I started out years ago. I did my private pilot helicopter, commercial pilot helicopter, CFI helicopter and then later did my airplane add on and I just did a private test for the airplanes. So my commercial license says commercial pilot helicopter, private pilot privileges. So the rating is the same as far as like a private pilot is a private pilot and then you have ratings for airplane, helicopter, lighter than air, etc. So that's one. He also makes the comments about that he had the same tool, the same toy. That Vertibird is cool. That definitely inspired me as a kid.

When I got that thing underneath the.

Christmas tree on Christmas morning. I can remember that just being the coolest thing on the planet. And he said inspirational stuff. I said thank you, that's cool. I did buy the King School private training in 2004 and still never opened it. But even at 48, my heart still goes nuts when I see helicopters up close. Let's see, police, marine, truck driver, logistics, security, stockbroker, life insurance options, commodity trader. I'm just missing helicopter pilot and farming. That's cool. I mean I ex cop, ex fireman, had a towing service, got into heavy duty trucks, did tractor trailers. So I've had a, you know, a list of other careers too. I didn't start out in helicopters, I started helicopters a little bit later in life. So hey, it's never too late. At 48 I think you more than it's never too late. We have one of our helicopter line ground school members got his private pilot license and a jet ranger at 72 years old. So there's no reason that at 48.

That it's too late for you.

I don't think even for a second. So thanks for those comments. That's cool. Keep your comments coming in as we roll through these videos. I'll do my best to answer them, maybe type you a short answer and then I'll answer them live. So you know we're really not. Well, you know we're really live at the moment, that first was again a little bit about me. The next, the next video is on the practical Test Standards. Now we're going to be switching to what they call the Airman Certification Standards. But as of the making of this video, we're still using the practice, the practical test standards. And from what I understand, when that new ACS comes out called Airman Certification Standards, parts of the pts will still be a part of the test, but they're going to move them around and put them in different locations into an order that the FAA thinks or deems more sense and then they're going to put more real world type scenarios into the new acs. So this information is still good. And as of right now, this is what we're testing on. We're testing on the pts. So I'm going to roll that video because if you're getting ready to go for a checkride tomorrow, next week, next month. We just did a check right with examiner a month or two ago and he said it's still a ways out. So I'm hearing anything from a few months to still another year or longer. So we don't know for sure when the ACS will come out. But again, everything that's in the PTS is still going to be things that you have to know. We're still working through the pts. We're hitting aerodynamics and cockpit management and helicopter safety, all those things that are pertinent. Can I do the flying with you guys? You can. We are currently flying an Enstrom helicopter during part of the year. We have an R44 right now that is off doing crop spraying down in Florida and then this summer goes off to South Dakota or someplace. So we do have an instrum here. Helicopter, airline, ground school is our full time or is my full time job. I fly part time. I've done six ratings in the last year. Two CFIs, two commercials, two privates. And that's kind of a side business for me. That's in my spare time because I like to stay current and fresh in the helicopter. And then I currently have two instructors. My chief pilot, Gary Cleveland, who's going to work for me full time, retiring 24 years from the police department. And then I have another one of my CFIs I trained, been flying for me for about five years. He's a police detective so I have both of those two flying. So yes, it is possible to fly here. We're not the cheapest and we're not the most handy to get to, but we are good at what we do. And there's no fluff in what we do. We basically, we get right to the training and we basically kind of cut out anything that.

How do I want to put it?

There is a certain amount of fluff that a lot of flight schools will put you through. We make sure that you have the meat of what you have to know to get through the test, be a safe and prudent pilot and give you all the basic knowledge and skills that you're going to need. So we're going to go ahead and roll that. Keep your questions coming. I'll keep checking in. We'll come back between each video. Please give us a like on this video. Please give us a share if you would. We'd appreciate that very much. Subscribe to our channel. We've got some huge momentum that's taking place with the channel here in just the last few months. We're approaching 2 million views, which for some people that's not a big deal. They do 2 million in a day. But for our little channel and what I do in my small niche, we're pretty excited about the 2 million views. So I'm going to go ahead and roll the next video and we'll be back. See you in a little bit and answer some more questions.

Do you need help preparing for your helicopter checkride? Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information there is to know? Most likely you are. That's most likely the reason why you're watching this presentation right now. One major key is the practical test standards. That's what it's going to take to get you through your checkride. Knowing the practical test standards, also known as pts. Surprised over the years how many people never pull out the PTS and really use it. I can HARP and harp, but a majority of the time I cannot get helicopter students to use it. And I don't know why it's so important. It's all laid out right there for you. There it is, the practical test standards. This is your checkride laid right out in front of you. And after training a bunch of guys over the years, Jed, Danny, doctor, Nick, Gary, Justin, another Justin, I can tell you guys do not want to use the practical test standards. I don't know why. They just don't want to do it. The practical test standards. So let's talk about your checkride day and your appointment with examiner and what I think is the most important page of all applicants. Practical test checklist for helicopters. When I first started training a long time ago when the company sent me out to fly a little bit with the designated pilot examiner that we were using on the way out to the aircraft. I said, so as a new instructor, give me some tips on, you know, how to prepare people and how to be a good instructor. And he said, I have a lot of problem with people showing up and not having what they need. And that was it. He said, make sure you go through the PTS and everything that's in there. You have. And I can tell you 12, 13 years later, in doing a ton of checkrides with the same examiner, I've seen it happen over and over again. I can give you a horror story after horror story. You gotta go through the checklist in the PTS and make make sure that you have everything and don't pull the old well, do I have to have this? Do I have to have that? Well, why do I have to have this? If it's in that checklist, make sure it's there and with you and start preparing a couple weeks ahead of time. Don't wait to the night before to be trying to round this stuff up. I can tell you it's major pain. So let's talk about some of the things in the checklist, like acceptable aircraft and what do you have to have in there? Of course, the aircraft documents, airworthiness certificate, registration certificate, operating limitations and your weight and balance information. Every single check ride you take in your helicopter career, whether it's a check ride to get your license or a 135 check ride later, when you're flying professionally, the examiners always ask this question. Because you have to have these things in the aircraft. They've got to be valid and in there. Every examiner is going to ask you anytime you're on the ramp, if the FAA walks up, they're going to expect to have these things. And it's easy for some of these things to get misplaced sometimes, like say somebody goes, grabs the picture poh to do a little bit of training and they forget to put it back in the aircraft. Whatever the case may be, you have to make sure you have this stuff with you and ready to go. Another big one. Aircraft maintenance records. Logbook record of airworthiness inspections and AD compliance. I can tell you again, some places you might not have this problem. Other places have a lot of problem with keeping the maintenance logbooks with the aircraft. It's very common. If you're getting your maintenance done somewhere else, you take the maintenance records down for the mechanic to fill out. He says, I'll, I'll finish this up and get it to you tomorrow or next week or whatever the case may be. And then checkride day comes and you're screwing around. You're running around trying to find the aircraft log books and you don't have them. Well, you're not taking the checkride again. It's these simple little things that can trip up a checkride and cost you huge headaches. Pilot's operating handbook, FAA approved. Also known as the helicopter flight manual. This has to be in the aircraft and accessible to the pilot. Another favorite checkride thing in Enstrom's guys would take the POH and put it in the baggage. Well, that's not legal. It has to be in the aircraft and has to be accessible by the pilot during flight. FCC station license only if you're flying out of the country. Personal equipment, current aeronautical charts, computer and plotter, flight plan form, flight logs, current aim, airport facility directory in appropriate publications. And as far as I know at this time you still have to have all this stuff. There's a lot of people asking, well, can I use my iPad or my iPhone or can I use this electronic gadgetry? Unless something's changed I haven't heard about yet, you still have to have the AFD. It's a $6 little book. You gotta have it. Gotta have the FAR, a manual, everything on this list. Have the hardback form. And again, make sure a couple weeks ahead of time you're starting to get this stuff ready to go. Make sure you have it because it's. I've seen it time and time again. The night before, 9 o' clock at night and you're trying to figure out where to get a chart. There's nothing worse. Getting ready for a checkride last minute, rushing around trying to put everything together because believe me, I've done it, I've been there and it is not fun. It's stressful on the student, it's stressful on the instructor. It's just plain not cool. Personal records, identification photo signature ID, pilot certificate, current and appropriate medical certificate, your completed FAA Form 8710, your airman certificate and or rating application with instructor signature. Got a quick story on this one. One of my very first check rides, sending my first couple students. Both guys were real good, they were in good shape. The one guy was an airplane pilot, just got done doing his airplane proficiency checkride and was all good to go. And a businessman that really had his act together. And then five minutes before the examiner's set to show he's all I have is just a copy of my medical. And I said that's not gonna work. The examiners are not gonna be happy. And he said, well, it's just gonna have to do. Well, guess what? No, the examiner was not very happy. Luckily, the other student was ready to go. So the examiner takes him and gets started with him while the other guy takes off and goes back to his office and scurries around trying to find his medical. In the end, everything came out okay. But talk about a bunch of stress right off in the morning, two guys ready to go and the one guy doesn't have his medical. So again, you've got to check these things as yourself, as the student and as the instructor. You got to make people physically take the stuff out of their wallet. Do you have this with you on a daily basis? Pull it out. Let me see it. Here's another good one. Airman written test report. I know a guy who flew from Cleveland to Toledo with his instructor, goes to take his test and he has a. He was going for an instrument check ride and he had a written test report for the written test for an airplane instrument rating, not the helicopter. So a whole day wasted, hours of aircraft time, hundreds of dollars because the guy took the wrong written test. Again, all these little tiny things take a lot of time, weeks in advance. Going through the pts, going through the checklist and making sure you have everything. Pilot logbook with appropriate instructor endorsements. As a new instructor, I was helping a guy do an add on helicopter rating. My first student, he was an airplane CFI and he told me always over endorse and I've always done that and I've never had a problem. It's better to have too many endorsements than not enough. As the instructor, it's his responsibility to make sure it's signed. But you as a student, you need to do the same thing. Look in that, make sure you understand what he's endorsed, where that endorsement is at, and make sure it's the right one. Because the examiner is going to check these things right at the very beginning of your test. And just to avoid problems, make sure you have all the right endorsements. Notice of disapproval if applicable. I had that once. I failed my first private pilot check ride. So I went back, I had to have the little pink form that says I failed the first time approved school graduation certificate if your school has one. Not all of them. Do an examiner's fee. Depending on who you're taking it with, there may or may not be a fee. Make sure you know how much the fee is and does your examiner, if he's a designated examiner does he take checks? Does he take cash? How does he want to be paid? All right, let's talk about a little more about the pts and some of the areas in there like emergency operations. Power failure to hover. Doesn't matter what aircraft you're flying. There's a tolerance to how far the nose can be to the right or to the left from the degrees where you started, depending on when you're going for private or commercial. There's so many degrees that the helicopter can be from where you start when you enter the auto. When you're on the ground. Knowing these things helps you in your training. The pts you should be using from day one all the way up to the day of the checkride, you should be going through this thing over and over and over. It's giving you the tolerances for all this stuff. You can be kind of prepared for what's coming up. Power failure at altitude. It's explaining in there that sometime during the checkride the examiner is going to give you a power failure. You're going to need to know where the wind's at. You're going to need to be looking for a spot. You need to get your auto rotation established, start turning towards your spot. It's all in there. System and equipment malfunctions. Sailing with power. One of my favorites. I love talking about when you're going into confined area and it's high, hot, humid. There's a lot of things to consider to keep yourself out of settling with power. And again, doesn't matter what aircraft you're flying. Selling with power across the board is something that wrecks a lot of helicopters. And you can be sure the examiner is going to be making sure that you know your stuff. Low rotor RPM recovery. Is there anything else more important than rpm? Pretty much it's priority one, especially flying the smaller aircraft with the lower inertia rotor systems. Knowing and understanding the cause and effects of dynamic rollover, how it can happen, how you can avoid it, what to do if you start getting into it. It's all in there. And here's another one I just started talking about recently. Ground residents. And I'm going to go ahead and show you here a picture from August 5, 2005 and the aircraft incident. Accident, accident I was involved in. We got into ground residence and I can tell you, years later, after five years of answering questions and going before a room full of attorneys, I can tell you that I'm glad I understood ground resonance and I knew exactly what it said in the Rotorcraft flying Handbook about Ground resonance causes effects, how you get into it, how you can prevent it. Really going through the PTS now and going through your flight manual, helicopter flying handbook, you want to know this stuff? This is probably a good time to go ahead and just really expand on what I'm trying to tell you about knowing your stuff. When I failed my first private pilot checkride, I struggled through the oral. I didn't get the fly because I didn't pass the oral portion. I took it with an FAA examiner. Guy was tough, and I knew he was tough going in it. And in the end, he said, after he stopped the test, he said, it's pretty obvious you're struggling. We even took one break where we went outside and talked for a little bit and went back and hit it again. And he said, you're really struggling here, and I want you to know your stuff. He said, I don't want to be investigating your accident. When I ask you what ceiling of power is, I want to hear rate ascent 300ft per minute or greater using 20 to 100% of power. Airspeed less than ETL. You got to know this stuff, he said, because if you're struggling sitting here in the room with me, then how good are you going to be when you're out there in the aircraft under a stressful situation? And I can tell you now, after living through this mess, my law enforcement training came back to me. The will to survive. I was trying everything and anything to stop that aircraft from destroying itself to the point of I bent one of the foot pedals trying to stop the spin. And I find a certain amount of comfort in the fact that I understood ground resonance. I knew causes and effects, and I knew corrective action. And in this particular instance, elastomeric damper that failed, and that blade was so far out of phase, there was nothing we were going to be able to do. This is another point where I like to talk about the bad judgment chain. I'm a firm believer in the bad judgment chain. When you investigate an accident or read about an accident, and there's all these different things that led up to the accident where the pilot, probably along the way, should have aborted that flight, it's not usually just one thing. It's usually a series of things that happen that lead up to that accident. When I first started training many years ago, I watched a special on the JFK junior Crash, and there was so many reasons why he probably should have never went that day. Or at some point, he probably just should have said, you know what? We're Going to wait and go tomorrow. On the day of our accident, everything was fine, the weather was beautiful. We did a pre flight, two pre flights we did left on time, the weather was beautiful. Everything was picture perfect before this happened. So even though I understand the bad judgment chain and believe in it, things can also go bad on the very best day. And knowing your stuff is the a number one thing that's going to keep you alive and keep you out of trouble. Yeah, we're talking about checkride preparation and, and you want to get the license and you want to go out and be a safe and prudent pilot. But a number one, you want to stay alive and you want to be able to get out of trouble. When you do get into trouble, things just happen. And being very familiar with your aircraft, with helicopter aerodynamics, helicopter emergencies, general helicopter safety knowledge is power. The more you know, the safer you're going to be. And maintaining a clear head or trying to stay calm, I can tell you too, I think is really truly one of the biggest things I know in our, in my five years with EMS flying we had training, we did every quarter computerized training and every time we went through the survival part of it, they made it very clear the biggest way to survive an emergency is by staying calm. And I'm a firm, firm believer in that. So moving on, low G conditions. Here's a bit right out of the Robinson poh. This is right from our presentation on the Robinson right roll and low G condition. Gradually apply F cyclic to restore positive G forces in main road thrust. Do not apply lateral cyclic until positive G forces have been established. Everybody needs to know this no matter where you're flying and what you're flying. Night operations, physical aspects of night flying. There really is a lot of stuff to night flying and it really is, as you say, the difference between night and day. It's amazing the difference there is in flying at night. And it is definitely one of those scores skills that you need to exercise to stay proficient at night. That's why we have the different rules and regs that we do as far as night flying, lighting and equipment for night flying. Lighting is huge. Lots of little silly things to know like if you're flying late in the day and you're going in tonight, don't forget about the dial for the dimmer switch. Sounds kind of silly. I've personally done it. I'm flying, flying along, starting to get dark. I turn on the panel lights, no panel lights. I'm getting all paranoid. Pretty shortly I figured out dimmer switch for some reason, I think in helicopters, they like to just vibrate themselves off post flight procedures after landing and securing. I know early on, one of the mechanics where I first worked, the guy said, you learn more from post flight than you do pre flight. And, you know, you could almost go along with that because after you get done, you're putting the aircraft away. You're looking, is the aircraft got any fluids leaking? Has anything changed during that flight? So post flight can be just as important as a pre flight. Okay, now I want to back up a little bit and expand a little more on the pts and a couple things that I've said. I want to back up to the first few pages of the pts, because I think there's some stuff in the beginning that's really important. I know from experience that guys, when they do use the pts, they skip over some of the stuff that I think is important in the beginning. So I want to cover a few of the things in the beginning of the pts, and I want to interject a couple stories. A lot of you that's followed us on the Internet know Danny Martin, and Danny argued with me when I kept saying, everything's in the pts. He kept saying, no, that's not. Not everything's in the pts. What I'm getting at is the PTS is a guide that you go through prepping for the test. Yes. You still have to resource other materials. Not every answers in there, but every subject area and all the things you're going to do and all the tasks are in there. So when you're going through the pts, you're going right through the list. If you know something, great. If you come across something and you think, hmm, I'm not so sure about that. I need to look that up. Then you're gonna go resource your other materials, whether it's your POH or the Helicopter Flying Handbook or whatever other source of information you might have to go to to make sure you understand that information. So I understood Danny's point, but he always wanted to argue and say, well, not everything's in the pts. No, not everything. As far as every single word you need to know, know. But the PTS is your test, and if you go through that, there won't be any surprises on your checkride day. So then I want to go to this guy Jeff, who I rented a room from when I was a new instructor, and we hung out all the time. So he got the benefit of me being around all the time to help him through his ratings. We did his private commercial and CFI and On his private the examiner said, in all the years that I've been teaching or doing checkrides, that's one of the top checkrides I've ever given. And Jeff, because we were together all the time, hanging out in the evenings, talking about helicopters, talking about all the different stuff, he listened to what I told him and he understood the importance of the pts, worked through it step by step and had one of the best check rides that examiner had given in 15 years. So the point is, use the PTS, work through it step by step and if you know the subject material, great, move on. If you're not so sure about it, then you go to your other resources and use whatever tools you need to make sure you understand that information. So let's move on and talk about use of the practical Test Standards book. This is the first like 10 or 12 pages pages of the book and I think this helps with just preparing mentally for the checkride. Private pilots shall be evaluated in all tasks included in the areas of operation of the pts. The examiner shall also emphasize wake turbulence avoidance, low level wind shear in flight, collision avoidance, Runway incursion, avoidance, checklist usage, and if you look down through there, it makes complete sense. These are all really important things that get people into trouble and that's what the examiner is doing. He's not setting out just to purposely fail your checkride. He wants to make sure you're going to be a safe and prudent pilot. And we know through experience over time what gets people into trouble and what gets aircraft direct. So the examiner is evaluating to make sure that you're going to be a safe pilot. Can you make a mistake on a check ride? It.