Kenny Keller of Fort Wayne Helicopters gives a short, direct monologue urging helicopter students to actively use and study the Practical Test Standards (PTS) from the start of training. He stresses that the PTS contains the required test items for private, commercial, and instructor ratings, advises cross-referencing the Aviation Instructor's Handbook for topics the PTS doesn't fully explain, and recommends studying the PTS page-by-page to prepare for checkrides.
Chapters
Hello there, Kenny with Fort Wayne Helicopters. I want to talk for just a minute about the pts. I've talked about it before in the past and it's been a little while since I harped on it, so I'm going to harp on it again. I've been instructing for about 10 years. And the PTS, you got to have it. Guys will have it in their bag and you ask them if they've been working with the pts, and they'll always say, oh, yeah, yeah, I use it. And once you get them to pull it out of the bag, you notice that it's all nice and the edges are nice and nothing's bent up. It's not dirty. You know, they've never worked through it. You really need to be working with the PTS from the very beginning of your training. Doesn't matter whether you're doing private pilot, commercial pilot, instructor pilot. This one I'm holding here is for instructor pilot. Everything you need to know for your test is going to be in here. As far as the things that you have to know, no, it's not going to give you every single little detail. But when you're going through here and you're working through it on a particular subject, if you don't understand critique and evaluation for the CFI checkride, then you need to go to that part in the aviation instructor's handbook and look up critique and evaluation and make sure you know that particular subject. So no matter what rating you're going for, pts, you need to use it, read it, study it. Your instructor should be using it. You need to have it. When you're home studying, start at the beginning and just go through this book page by page. If you know the information in this book and can get through the questions by testing yourself, then you know you're not going to have much trouble in the checkride. Everything is in here. So PTS gotta use it, live it, love it, dream it. All right, thanks. Talk to you later.
