Helicopter Check Ride Preparation Private Pilot Online Ground School
Kenny Keller (speaker) provides practical advice for helicopter check rides, emphasizing preparation and documentation. Through multiple anecdotes he stresses inspecting the PTS checklist well in advance, ensuring written tests and endorsements match the rating sought, keeping logbooks current and signed, verifying aircraft documents (airworthiness, registration, POH, weight & balance) are present and reviewed, and arriving early and organized to avoid last-minute cancellations or failures.
Chapters
Start the story out. When I first met the examiner that I'd been using for a long, long time, the people I working for sent me out and said, well, go out and fly with the examiner so you guys get to know each other a little bit and kind of see how things go. And on the way out to the helicopter, I just stepped plain asked him, I said, what kind of tips can you give me as a new instructor on what I can do to prepare my students? And he didn't say a whole lot. He did say one thing and he said, I seem to have a lot of trouble with people showing up with what they need for their test. So make sure that you have your students prepared, everything signed, everything they need, so and so forth. And that was about it. We went to the helicopter and away we went. So starting out, that's the only tip I had from the examiner was make sure that your people have what you need. There's one page in the PTS that goes through the list of stuff that you have to have the day you go take your test. And one of the first things I can think of, story that I want to relate is we were working in Cleveland and we were sending our guys to Toledo to take the checkrides. So that's a lot of money in aircraft time and schedule an appointment with the examiner. It's usually difficult to work with everybody's schedule to get a date and time set. Then are you going to have any maintenance issues, Are you going to have any weather issues for that day? So it takes a lot of time usually to get a checkride scheduled and everything go the way it should. So we sent one guy over for an instrument rating one time and flew all the way to Toledo and they come flying back in kind of early and we thought, man, what happened. And what happened was they got to Toledo, got everything laid out, they go to look at the written test and the copy of the written test showed instrument airplane, single engine land. Well, he was going for a helicopter instrument rating. So you can imagine the frustration. It's a lot of time, it's a lot of money spent to go over and, and not have a written test. That's not something you can fix in 15 minutes and get the checkride to go on. So that's the first thing that I'm thinking about that I want to relay about why it's so important to make sure that you have what you need and you have to look over everything. You have to look at every piece of paper, every document, everything has to be signed. Everything has to be current. And even the simple stuff, if you're not careful and not paying attention, will end up causing you a problem. Then there's another one I can think of. Log books. When you're teaching somebody as an instructor, you're always hounding your guys to get their logbooks caught up, total their pages, so on and so forth. And as an instructor, that's your job to make sure that they're doing it. And then you as the student or the private guy, commercial guy, whatever rating you're going for, it's also your job to make sure that you total up your hours and sign all your pages. So the next story I want to tell is my first two checkrides that I'm sending with this examiner long time ago. Both guys were really well prepared. And I thought, well, I'm going to impress this guy and it's going to go good. The first student was an airplane guy. He'd just done a biannual, and he was a businessman, and he was always dressed real good, and he seemed like he completely, really had his act together. So prior to the checkride, when I'm asking him, hey, do you have everything you need? You got your medical, you got this, you got that? Yeah, yeah, I got it. I got it. So I didn't physically make him take these things out and show them to me. Well, about 10 minutes before the check ride that day, examiner is going to walk in the door any minute. And I said, well, go ahead and show me your license, your medical. And he pulls out a copy of his medical. And I said, well, I don't think the examiner is going to be very happy with that. And he's like, well, I'll just have to do. That's all I got. Well, of course, examiner was not very happy. And so he says, well, is your other guy ready? Yeah, he's ready. So I send the other guy in. So the first guy's frantically calling his secretary and trying to rustle around a logbook or his, I'm sorry, his medical. So the next guy gets started and they get going. And pretty soon examiner walks in, tosses the log book at me. He says, do you realize that not all those pages are signed in there? And of course, I feel like a complete moron because I'm the one sending the guy for a checkride. He told me he'd get it done. Well, my fault for not checking it. So there I am. The first guy has a problem. Second guy has a problem. He goes, well, you fix it and bring it Back in there. So I made sure I totaled up the hours, took it back in, he made the signatures, and we got it all fixed. So this guy ends up going through the checkride and has one of the best checkrides ever of all time. So that kind of helped me redeem myself a little bit, but it was pretty embarrassing for me and embarrassing for the students too. So the checklist that's in the pts, that has everything that you need the day of the checkride. You got to make sure you go through that and make sure every single piece that's on there you have, you have with you. It's signed, it's documented, it's dated, everything is correct. Look over every single thing and don't wait until the night before you go to do the checkride. I've done that as well. Here you are the last day and you're doing some last minute prep work, maybe a little fly in, you're signing stuff off, and then you realize I don't have a chart. Well, you had weeks in advance to get ready. You knew you were supposed to have everything, which coming up with a chart. There's another one. I was sending a guy for a CFI checkride when I was working here in Indiana, and another young, sharp kid, studied hard, knew his stuff, flew really well going for a CFI checkride. And I'd been through all these same things that I'm talking about now. And he calls me that night, nine o' clock at night, freaking out because he doesn't have a current chart, figures out his chart had just expired and he needed a new one. So he's freaking out at 9 o' clock at night, calling me. I'm at work at an EMS job. I can't leave, I can't go out, try to help him. So he ends up canceling the check ride. Well, of course the examiner finds out that he canceled the check ride because he didn't have a chart. Well, we both felt, felt pretty silly over that one. So again, I can't stress enough with all the headache and heartache you go through to get this rating and to show up to get the checkride several weeks before. Start going through that and make sure that you have absolutely everything, every single thing on that list to take the checkride. So the next thing I want to talk about, the other thing I think is huge, and again, this is from experience, is of course you need an acceptable aircraft. Not only do you need to have an acceptable aircraft, you have to have certain documents with you. You have to have Your arrow, your airworthiness, your registration, your operating handbook, your weight and balance information, you got to have them every single check ride. He's going to ask you in the oral, what are those things? And not only do you need to have them, you also need to make sure that they're current and they're filled out and everything is where it should be. The story I want to interject on this one was I failed my first private pilot checkride. And the one big mistake that we'd made was I was fairly, fairly well prepared, not as prepared as I should have been. And during the training, the instructor, every time we would talk about aircraft log books, he would look over and say, ah, the mechanics aren't here, the door's locked and we can't get in. So we went through all the training, went through the PTS when we thought we were ready. Now of course I'm a nervous wreck. It's my first checkride, so I'm letting my nerves get to me anyway. And one of the very first things once the examiner gets the checkride going is he wants to look at the aircraft log books. Well, of course, you know, I feel like a complete moron and say, well, they're not here, they're over with the maintenance guy. So we get the instructor and he goes over and gets some and he brings them in and he says, okay, show me the last hundred hour inspection. So I grabbed the book and it was not a new helicopter, so there was a lot of entries and I start flipping page to page. Well, as I'm flipping page to page, the examiners doing this and looking around the room and he's huffing and puffing and writing stuff down. Well, of course, as that's going on, I'm getting even more and more nervous and more and more freaking out. And finally I just looked up and was honest and said, I've never seen this book before that was always locked up and we never actually went over it. Well, you can imagine that that went over like a lead balloon. So he said, well, keep trying to see if you can find it while I find it. Read off the last inspection to him. That's all good. The aircraft was current and everything was fine with the exception of I'd never even seen the logbook. Well, that looks bad for me, looks bad for my instructor, who was a great instructor. But that's just one thing that we didn't cover that we should have. And it's all in the pts. So that's the other big thing, is making sure that you have all the aircraft documents and that you've seen them, you've studied them. What I do on checkrides is we open them up prior to the test and we tab 100 hour, 50 hour, we find all these things. So when the checkride comes, the student needs to look these things up, he knows where to go, and he can show the examiner the date, the work that was performed, who did it, so on, so forth. So that's one of my tips on my spill of taking the check ride. The big thing is getting there on time, having everything you need, everything signed, everything's dated, your logbooks, you have the log books with you. Worked at another place that never failed. We're getting ready to go, take a checkride and last minute, where's the logbooks? Oh, they're off at some other airport 40 miles away where the mechanic did the work well. And it's always those moments where, gee, is there any way we can get there, get those and get to the check ride. You don't want to deal with that stress last minute. All these things you want to be finding prior to make sure you have it all, everything signed and ready to go. So if you can get there, you have everything you need. If the examiner wants you there at 8, be there at 7, be there an hour early so you can take a breather, get your stuff laid out, make sure everything's good to go. So when the guy walks through the door, you're organized, you're ready to go, and you have everything ready. So as always, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks.
