Private Pilot Check Ride Questions Asked Cross Country Planning

I've seen checkrides get halted because it was supposed to be a 2.0 and it was 1.8. How did they miss that? The reg says in the FARIM 2.0. The examiner will be asking you some questions about cross country planning on your private pilot checkride. No fluff today. Going to get right to it. You're going to have a cross country planned out ahead of time and you and the examiner are going to get in the helicopter and go out and start on this pretend flight. So during the oral portion of the checkride, he's going to start asking you questions. He's going to look over your cross country planning. Some of them kind of pick them apart, some of them don't. Just depends on how well you're doing in the particular examiner, but they're going to look over your cross country planning. Now with that being said, they're also going to ask you some general questions about cross country flying. So we're going to take 10 questions out of the private pilot study guide and I'm going to ask you specific questions that I've heard the examiners ask on the private pilot checkrides. This was from my 20 some years of sitting in the check rides listening to the examiners ask these questions. Let's go right to the private pilot study guide. But you know what I keep saying, people mess up on the easy stuff, right? It happens. This series of videos, we're testing your knowledge. Get out your piece of paper and write your answer down and answer how you're going to be answering the examiner the day of your checkride. Okay, so we'll go through them. I'm going to ask you them. I want you to write it down because that's how we learn. We learn through repetition. Can you take it from your brain and get it on a piece of paper that makes sense the way it's going to sound when you answer the examiner. So again, these 10 questions I have heard examiners ask most of them they've asked every single private pilot checkride. What are the three types of weather briefings you can choose from when calling flight service prior to a cross country flight? All right, there's three of them. You have to know this and the examiner is going to expect you to go 1, 2, 3 and tell you exactly what they are. Next, what is an abbreviated briefing? So the examiner is going to ask you what the three of them are and then may very well ask you what each one of them means. Or just pick one of the three and say what exactly does that mean do you know? Write it down on your piece of paper if you know what it is. Next. When would you use an Outlook briefing? And I know through asking students questions when they're getting ready. Last student we prepared here at hogs. I remember I'm struggling on this one on knowing what it was and what the hours were. So when would you use an Outlook briefing? Okay, next. They love this one. I've heard this one asked almost every single checkride. How often are chart supplements updated? Okay, the chart supplement is what we used to call the airport facility directory. Used to be a little green book. Most people now just use the chart supplement inside Foreflight. You could do it either way. How long or how often are the chart supplements updated? Write it down, they're going to ask you. I like these two and for whatever reason I know I struggled remembering these so I wrote these down in the very beginning of my notebook because I always struggled remembering which is which. Two questions. What is pilotage? Write it down. What it is. What is dead reckoning? Write it down. And again over the years, as many times as I've studied that for different checkrides, I always have to refresh my memory on this one. I don't know why. Never had a good memory aid for this one. Anybody have a good memory aid for this? If you do, put it in the comments down below because I'd love to hear it. An easy way to keep in keep these two separated. Next question. What methods are there to file a flight plan? Okay, flight plan. At this point if you're three weeks away from a check ride, you should very well know what a flight plan is and you should have done one. Here's another little tip. Over the years we had a student once that told the examiner he's had never actually filed a flight plan. Talked about it in ground school with his instructor but they never did it. He never filed one, never filled one out. Examiner wouldn't give the private pilot checkride. So in this scenario instructor didn't really do his job or her job. Making sure they're going through and covering everything that you need to know. So flight plan is important. What methods are there to file a flight plan? We have three of them inside the private pilot study guide. Next question. Good stuff. What is true airspeed? You need to know what it is. Very well this might be a question sitting across the examiner. What is true airspeed? So make sure you have a definition for that and be ready to answer that question. Alright, we're getting to the end of our 10 questions. How often are helicopter route charts updated? Have you seen a helicopter route chart? I know there's a lot of students out there that have never even seen one, never been exposed to it. He actually has students bring a helicopter route chart to the checkride for Private and has them plan something through it so they're familiar with a helicopter route chart. How often are helicopter route charts updated? What is variation? Okay, when you're doing your planning, there's some lines on the sectional and you got to understand where they're going and why you're figuring this and that. And this deals with variation. So of course, if it's part of the cross country planning, you have to know what this is. So what are you going to tell the examiner? If the examiner says what is variation? Now, of course there's a lot more to cross country. This is just a quick video to just get your mind in order because maybe you've been sitting doing cross country planning with your instructor, maybe you've done a bunch of it, but maybe you haven't covered the aspect of what the examiner is going to ask you. So let's go through them. Hope you nailed them all. If you didn't, you need to keep studying. You're not quite ready yet. What are the three types of weather briefings you can choose from when calling flight service station prior to cross country flight? Standard abbreviated outlook. You need to be able to tell the examiner those three Standard abbreviated outlook. What is an abbreviated briefing? They could ask you what's what. Any of the three are and examiner could ask you all three. But an abbreviated is a shortened version of a standard briefing, meaning you've already got standard briefing. Now you're calling back a little bit later to get an abbreviated. So that way the briefer is going to know they don't have to repeat all that stuff they went through the first time you called. You're calling back and they're giving you an update. When would you use an outlook briefing? You use an outlook briefing when your flight is planned with a departure of six hours or more into the future. Okay, so it's not for two hours, it's six hours or more Important to understand the six hours. How often are chart supplements updated? Formerly the airport facility directory or AFD we called it every 56 days. The one examiner that I've used forever, he always asks that. Every single checkride he asked that question and then the two that I always had trouble remembering. But the examiner can very well ask you one or the other or both. What is pilotage? Pilotage is navigation by reference to landmarks or checkpoints. The next one. What is dead reckoning? Dead reckoning is navigation solely by means of computations based on time, airspeed, distance and direction. I'm a 99% sure on that one. What methods are there to file a flight plan? If you haven't done one and you're three weeks away, get with your instructor and go fill one out and go out and open it and fly it and close it there. We have a problem with people not closing flight plans and there's a problem. You can be billed for the search and rescue that they send out. What methods are there to file a flight plan? The phone with flight service prior to departure, on the radio with flight service after departure. And you can also use foreflight now, which is cool. I used to call right before I climb in the helicopter just because we're low level in helicopters and where we're at in the Midwest, it's very hard to hit flight service sometimes. So I just get everything ready to go, helicopters ready to go, I'm ready to climb in the aircraft. I'd call flight service and open it and a lot of times they'd be like, but you're not in the helicopter. I'm like, no, I'm standing beside it. Everything is done. As soon as I'm off the phone, I'm going to climb in and I'm going to start and I'm going to leave. So I want to open it now and they'll go, oh, okay, we get it. So three ways on the phone, over the radio or use foreflight. What is true airspeed? Good possibility they might ask you this, just sitting there asking you questions. What is true airspeed? True airspeed is calibrated, airspeed corrected for pressure, temperature. These of all I've heard all these asked on a private pilot. So you need to know all of them. How often are helicopter route charts updated? Every three years or as needed to accommodate major changes. Let us know down below. Have you been except you been exposed to a helicopter route chart? I'd love to know, put it down below if you've ever taken a look at one, what you think of them. So how often are they updated? Every three years or as needed to accommodate changes. Variation. There's variation, deviation, all these different terms that go along with the cross country planning. I asked you what is variation? Compass error is caused by the difference in physical locations of the magnetic north pole and the geographic north pole. I was watching Stranger Things with my daughter last night and the kids were Talking about where the compass points and why. So I wanted to make a quick, easy video. It's a Friday. Heather's working from home today. It's kind of chilling here. So I turned the heat up a little bit, but I wanted to get this video and I thought, you know what, Cross country planning is not really the most sexy thing we ever do during training, but obviously it's a necessary part of it. And the examiners gonna ask you some questions about the cross country planning again. They're gonna look over everything. They're probably gonna give you a diversion. Whether they give you a diversion sitting there during the oil and say, well, hey, I want to change your cross country looks great. But what if halfway through we need to divert over to point B? They want to know that you can quickly go, okay, let's see, that's going to change our time. What's that going to do to your fuel? What's that going to do to your end time at your final destination? Or they might do that to you during flight. Mine happened on my private during the flight because I failed my first check, right? Examiner knew it, took off on my private, got lost because I got lost. He was going to make darn sure that I knew what was that was going to do to my cross country planning. I went back to my starting point, took off on the flight again, thinking he's going to send me in. I take off and he goes, okay, screwed up, didn't you? And I'm like, yes. He goes, what happened? I said, I took off on like 115 instead of 105 or whatever the case was. And he goes, okay, now what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to continue on, on this course because now I have the right course. And he could have made me go in, but he goes, okay, what's that going to do with your arrival time now where we're going to have to stop for fuel, you know, ask me all those questions. And then I think he diverted me like twice after that because here I was messing up and he wanted to make sure I understood how to do the diversion. Do other calculations in my mind. The other important part of the cross country planning I want to tell you is be ready for those diversions and don't just go through the planning just to get it done and present to the examiner. You have to understand how to, you know, do a lot of this in your head. Do the numbers, do the math. There are quick little cheat sheets depending on what aircraft you're flying on, how Many gallons you burn versus how many you burn for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour. There's some tricks you can do with the chart with your fingers on the number of miles. That's all covered inside of our private pilot training inside of helicopter on ground school. So I hope that helps. The study guide, what I'm used, which I'm using is available down below. There's a link down below where you can get either the physical copy or you can get the first chapter as a PDF download. Many of you watching have already seen it. You already have the download, but if you're fresh to these videos, this is a whole series. So when you sign up to get the first chapter as a free PDF that you can download immediately, actually we send it to your email. We'll also send you email links over a period of two weeks for the other nine videos covering chapters of things that we're doing to help you just self test getting ready for a checkride. Again, these videos aren't for somebody brand new. This series is for people that a few weeks away and they're trying to put everything together, do some self testing so that they can go in the day of the checkride and be prepared. So let's yesterday in the video we forgot to cover chapters of top 10 checkride tips. So to catch up, this is good. Chapter three Go through their requirements and pilot logbook in detail. Okay, this is something that I've just seen it firsthand because I've seen all the screw ups. I could bore you for the next 20 minutes or more on horror stories I've seen with logbooks. Go through the requirements and pilot logbook in detail. Example, three weeks ahead of time you should either on your own or with your instructor, preferably with your instructor, open up the FAR AIM manual, go through your logbook and however you want to do it, a little yellow mark or a check. Go through the FAR AIM and check your logbook. And not only check the logbook but check all the cross country flights. Were they the proper length? I've seen checkrides get halted because it was supposed to be a 2.0 and it was 1.8. How did they miss that? The reg says in the far aim 2.0. So I tell people it's like you got to treat them like they're kindergarteners, right? And you treat yourself like kindergartener. You got to open the FAR aim, open the pilot logbook and go. Okay, let's go through it. Got to have 40 hours check. Got that? Got to have so Many night check. Got that. But physically check and even go to the through the point of like the cross countries, pull out the map and go check them one more time and make sure that the distances were correct. Because that's a lot of problem that we see. Somebody is lacking something the day of the checkride and they can't take it. You get stuck, started, you're there, the oral is going good. Examiners are different. The one I've used for 20 years, he, he takes a good look at that logbook. I mean he'll sit there and he'll pick it apart where another examiner I use just kind of looks over and goes ah, looks good, looks good. Okay. And yeah, I got the endorsements. Looks good. Where the other one, I mean he goes through it and he's like, okay, where'd you go in your cross country, your long one, how long was it? Where did you go? I'm telling you, go through the requirements pilot logbook in detail. All right, that's chapter three. This is kind of a longer chapter. And again, Tasmania puts this together. There's six or eight pages there. Oh, here's a big one. Chapter four. This is why I failed my one of the reason I failed mine. Chapter four, maintenance logbooks. Mmel mel kinds of equipment list. I screwed up because I hadn't seen the aircraft log books. But I'm guarantee you mmel mel kinds of equipment list. Those mess people up on checkrides, there's differences between them and you need to understand those differences. So if you're three weeks away and you're not clear on the maintenance log books or the mmel the mel and the equipment list, dig in because that's fair game stuff. They're going to ask you on the private pilot. Private pilot checkride. So there's chapter three and four of top 10 checkride tips. Heather's sending these out right now. There's a link down below the video. While the supplies last here, we're shipping them in the US Only right now in the US So that link is also down below as well. All right, hope you've been enjoying these videos. Let us know what you think down below. We're going to do the rest of the chapters in the private pilot study guide. What do we got coming up? We got airspace, which is another one. Airspace and weather are two of the big ones that people screw up on checkrides, performance limitations, operations of systems, aeromedical factors and general aerodynamics. Those are all going to be in upcoming videos. So if you sign up down below and get the free PDF. You'll be sure and get a link for those videos as they come out, so you'll get all of them set to your inbox. Let us know what you think down below and we'll see you next video. Peace out.