Kenny Keller failed his private pilot helicopter checkride because he hadn't reviewed the aircraft logbooks or done ground school prep. The examiner asked about recent inspections and he didn't know them. He shares what to do instead: arrive early, tab your logbooks for 100-hour and 50-hour inspections, and verify all signatures and dates.
Questions this video answers
100-hour and 50-hour inspection entries.
Chapters
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, 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 examiner's 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 awesome, 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, 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 checkride. 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 check ride and last minute, where's the lug books? 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 checkride. 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.
