Kenny Keller presents a mock private pilot oral/checkride preparation (rotorcraft) demonstrating typical examiner-student Q&A. The video covers private pilot privileges and limitations (no compensation, cost-sharing allowed), currency requirements (three takeoffs/landings in preceding 90 days for passengers; day vs night distinctions), flight review timing (every 24 months), medical certificate durations for third-class medicals (under 40: 60 months; over 40: 24 months), logbook entries required for certificates/ratings and currency, airworthiness and registration documents (kept on board; registration renewed annually), operating limitations/placards, instrument marking ranges (green/yellow/red) and procedures after exceeding limits, the requirement that the POH be on board and accessible, and basics of weight-and-balance importance for performance and safety. The tone is instructional with mock-scenario humor and emphasis on preparation and mindset for checkrides.
Questions this video answers
Three takeoffs and landings in the preceding 90 days in the same category and class (make/model for rotorcraft); day landings don’t qualify for night currency, but night landings qualify for both.
Every 24 months.
Under 40 years old: valid for 60 months; 40 and older: valid for 24 months.
In the aircraft and accessible to the pilot (not stored in baggage).
Every year.
Chapters
Welcome back to module four, Section two, little checkride preparation. We're going to go back and hit some of the beginning things that we've talked about on the pts, because I want to stress how important, starting your checkride off on a right note, how important that is. There's so many things to mess up. There's so much you have to know. Really hit the stuff in the beginning. You want to start off on a good note, you start off sloppy, it's probably going to be sloppy. So we're doing a little checkride prep. You'll see our guest student here in just a minute. So, got the private pilot rotorcraft up and ready to go. The PTS up, we're going to dissect through it just a little bit. Private pilot rotorcraft. All right, this is where the test is going to start. We've already talked about examiner responsibility, student responsibility, possible outcomes of the test. We've been over your paperwork, we've looked everything over. Tell me about private pilot privileges and limitations. Okay, well, as a private pilot, I can take up friends, family members, I can go fly for fun. I can't do anything for compensation or hire. I can share expenses with other people, but nobody can pay more than their share expenses. So if say three of you are going to go, everybody can pay a third. And it has to be fair, it can only be aircraft rental, parking expenses, so on, so forth. Okay, so tell me about charity events. Can you do charity events? Yes, I can do charity events, but there are certain things that guidelines you're going to have to follow and certain amount of things that I'm going to have to do to do charitable events. Legally. What I would do is I would look it up in the handy dandy far aim manual here and I would go to. Part 61, certification pilots, flight instructors and ground instructors. Why don't you tell me about what kind of recent flight experience do you need to act as a private pilot? Well, to act as a private pilot, to take up passengers, I have to have three takeoffs and landings in the preceding 90 days in the make and model of aircraft. And if I do those in the day, they don't qualify me at night, but if I do them at night, then that qualifies me for both night and day. Okay, that's our passengers. What about some other types recent flight experience that you might need? And if you don't mind, if you would shut your phone off for me, please. Oh, okay. Sorry, man. Here, let me. That going on? I forgot to vibrate, but I know that's kind of annoying. Okay, so you asked me about recent flight experience. Well, I have to have a biannual, I mean a flight review. And that flight review, I have to have a minimum of one hour flight, a minimum of one hour ground. And if my instructor doesn't think that that's good enough, he can require it to be longer than that. Why don't you go ahead and tell me how often do you have to have that flight review and then go ahead and tell me about what type of medical certificate that you have to have as a private pilot. Okay, that's cool. I can do that. 24 months on the biannual. Biannual. Or 24 months on the flight review. It's not called biannual anymore. 24 months on the flight review. And then I have to have at least a third class medical certificate, which is good. If you're under 40, it's good for 60 months. If you're over 40, it's only good for. 24 months. Prove it to me. How do you know that's the duration of your medical certificate? Well, I know that due to the firing manual, part 67. Part 67 is medical standards and certification. Okay, so now why don't you tell me pilot logbook. What kind of things do you have to put in your logbook? What do you have to log as far as your flights? Do you have to log every single hour of flight time that you get? A negative. I do not have to log every single flight hour. I do though have to log anything that I'm doing for certificate or rating. So everything that I have to do for the private pilot, cross countries, all the dual, all the solo, all of that stuff has to be logged. I have to log. Night flight for currency to take up passengers. I would also need to log my flight review. I would need to log anything that is desired for any other certificates or ratings. If I go for the commercial or cfi, anything that's a requirement, I would have to log in the logbook. But once I have my rating, if I'm just flying for fun and I'm not really trying to build time or anything, then no, I would not have to. So now tell me about airworthiness certificate and registration certificate. What are they? What do they mean to you? What do you need to know about them? Okay, well, an airworthiness certificate is in the aircraft up front with the registration certificate. And the airworthiness certificate comes from the manufacturer. When the aircraft leaves the factory, it comes with an airworthiness certificate and the owner or Operator is responsible to do any of the maintenance that it needs to make sure that that aircraft remains airworthy. And then as far as the registration goes, the owner has to register the aircraft and that as well has to be maintained and kept in the aircraft, has to be renewed every year and has the basic information, the aircraft, aircraft serial number, owner's name, stuff like that. Okay, why don't you go ahead and tell me about operating limitations and placards? Okay, Operating limitations are limitations on the aircraft that are set by the manufacturer. They're usually going to be marked with red on one of the instruments or gauges. They don't want you to go past those limitations of the aircraft. And placards are different things in the aircraft also from the manufacturer that may say something like. Flight in icing conditions prohibited. Okay, why don't you tell me about instrument markings? Okay, instrument markings, you normally have like a, like you have a green, yellow and red range. Green of course is the normal operating range. Yellow would be a caution range. Means if it gets into the yellow, you really need to be paying attention to what's going on and trying to figure out why that's in the yellow. And then if you get into the red, you are exceeding a limitation on the aircraft. Okay, so lets say you do exceed a limitation on the aircraft. Tell me about that. Do you ground it? If you exceed limitation, what's going to be the outcome after you exceed a limitation? Okay, well if you exceed a limitation, you're going to need to notify your mechanic. You need to notify him what went over, how long it went over, how far did it go over, and then he's going to be able to tell you whether it's something to worry about, whether it's something not to worry about. But you do need to report it to your mechanic sometimes. Just if it's just a slight, just over limitation, just for a few seconds and back down and didn't go over very far, it might not be a big deal. If you go over for very long, you go too far past the limitation, then it could require maintenance action. So if you do exceed a limitation, you would need to contact your mechanic, tell him what you did, what position were you in when you got there, why did, what was the surrounding circumstances of what was going on during that time, and let him know how far over, and so on, so forth. Okay, why don't you tell me about the poh, what it's for, what do you use it for and tell me, does it have to be in the aircraft with you can you put it in the baggage, back on the instrument, can you put it in the baggage compartment? Now that I know for sure because my instructor told me the POH has got to be in the aircraft, that you cannot put it in the baggage. It has to be in the aircraft and has to be accessible to, to the pilot. And there's lots of things that we need to know out of the PoH, but one of the main reasons it needs to be up there in front and accessible to us, if we are flying along and we have a warning light come on or a caution light or something like that come on, we're going to need to be able to access that so that we can decide for sure exactly what course of action that we're going to take. And it has all the emergency procedures, normal procedures, weight and balance information. It has a whole, you know, all that kind of stuff in it. Okay, you just mentioned weight and balance information. Tell me some more about that weight and balance. Since you brought it up, what do you know about it? Why do we care. What do you know about weight and balance? You brought it up. Well, I know that weight and balance is important because it's required that we figure the weight and balance before our flight. So we know that we'll be whether we'll be in within center of gravity or not. And as we burn off fuel for our flight, the center of gravity is going to change. That's why we, why we figure, because we need to know full of fuel, empty fuel, how that's going to act or how that's going to burn off during the flight. And the reason that we care, another reason is we can't go over our limitation on the weight, the gross weight. And the other problem would be a lot of helicopters will fly. You could load them up and they could be over gross weight. You wouldn't be legal, but the aircraft still might go fly and actually perform. But it may only perform up until that point that if you had an emergency, you may not be able to auto rotate correctly. If you were nose heavy and you lost the engine and you were going down, you went to flare, you might not be able to flare and you'd smack the ground. So yeah, that's kind of why we need to know about the weight and balance. I need to go get a drink. Can I go get a drink and be right back? Sure, yeah, sure. Go get a drink. Take your time. Moron. He's a real winner. Alright. Hope you like that. Our guest ran off. I don't think he's coming back. So gives you a little idea of what a check rides all about. I might have over exaggerated just a little bit, but that's kind of the feel when you go to take a check ride. If you haven't been through one yet. For you guys that's never done one, just know ahead of time. It's kind of the game that's played. You're going in and you're going to prove to the guy that you know your stuff and he's not going to. He's not there to be your best friend and your pal and tell old war stories. He's there to check you out and make sure that you know your stuff. It happened to me on my first checkride. A lot of you already know it. I failed my first private pilot checkride and that's pretty much. I didn't do that good as much as that guy did. It just. It's a mindset. You have to be prepared. You have to be ready and know that it's not going to be the easiest thing you've ever done. The idea is not to completely intimidate you. The idea is to give you just a little bit of a feel. I hope you like that. And I'd like to do another one with if I get Danny Martin in here or maybe somebody else that wants to jump in and do some checkride preparation and actually film it and do more of a mock check ride like that and get more intense. But hope you like that. Give me some feedback. Let me know what you think. We'll see in the next one. Thanks.
