Top Ten Check Ride Tips from Live Training Tuesday

Hey, welcome back to live training Tuesday. I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Line Ground School. Running the cameras and software today is Gary Cleveland, chief pilot, helicopter Online ground school. Gary's been here since August and is now a huge part of ground school and he can't leave until. I don't know, he's got to give me like five years before he can retire and go somewhere else. Anyway, today we're going to do live or we're going to. We are live. We're going to do top 10 checkride tip. These are very basic but that's the key. People screw up on checkrides because of very basic stuff. We've had a lot of problems with links in the past. Hopefully you got here today and the link's working. Okay, let us know if you're here, let us know where you're from. I've got it up. I want to try this from my phone. Gary's monitoring from the laptop over there and a lot of people had trouble like well, they didn't know how to work the chat. When you bring it up on your mobile device, look to the bottom of the screen. If you went there through the YouTube link and at the very bottom of the screen it says join live. There we go. Paul G. Paul from Krafd. Do you have that, Gary? We're gonna kind of play with the phone and the laptop here and see if the comments come up the same. Kevin McCombs, boiler up. Kevin McCombs, West Lafayette, Indiana. Awesome. Very cool.

Kevin's coming to see us here in first part of the year, do a little flying. Gonna shove his hat on.

Coming to fly the instrument, right?

Yes.

Awesome. So he's in Indiana going through the ground school, getting his knowledge up to where it should be before he comes. Mark Daniels. Mark in Las Vegas. Awesome. Glad to see Mark. Brian Bay from Las Vegas. Very nice. Alright, I'm going to try to keep up here and this is a little handier than trying to look somewhere else. So we'll kind of get started here. But I want to mention a few things. We started with an image of Taz and we have to say a special thank you to Taz Chrisman for helping us develop the instrument online course. And this past week you may or may not have caught the video that I put out for nominating Taz Chrisman as flight instructor of the year. That's a video on YouTube that we put out just a couple days ago. Maybe I'll email that link out to everybody in support of Taz. We've Known Taz now for a couple years. He's from Indiana, flies in Vegas, flies for the Air Force airplane instructor, helicopter instructor, all around. Nice and humble guy. When you meet him, you'd have no idea with the amount of just things he's done in his career and how he does what he does. Full time Air Force airplane helicopter instructor in the civil side of things. Has a family, has and made instrument training videos. I mean he is instrumental to help us get the instrument training course going, which I'll give you a link for that here in a minute. It's just incredible. I just can't, I don't know how Taz does what he does in the time that he has. When he was here I gave him some pointers and some software and a microphone and some things to use and give him some pointers and he goes, yeah, I'm going to go back home to Vegas and I'll send you a video and see what you think. And even from the beginning, I mean, I was amazed at what he was sending me. And he's done about 25 videos in the instrument online course and he does a bang up job. So we have nominated Taz Christman for Flight Instructor of the Year and we just want to say thank you, Taz, for everything you've done for us. He logs in almost every week if he possibly can. He logs in for live training Tuesday and he will be here in the next week or two. He's coming back to Indiana to visit family. So you will see Taz live with us again in the next week or two. Catch up. What we got here? I mentioned Mark Daniels in Vegas, didn't I? I think so. Richard from Orlando, Florida. Awesome. He's here every week. Hellevate Helicopter Services. Hello from South Africa. They sent me a nice email this week and was thanking us for the live stream Tuesdays and I appreciate Elevate Helicopter services tuning in from South Africa and sending me a personal message. That was awesome. Greg Crump, Greg from Cincinnati, T. Gregory Berry. He's here every week. Todd here. Greetings from D.C. dave Faulkner. Hey, Dave Faulkner from Southern California. Great to join you, Kenny. Dave Faulkner, another one of our members that was here and I don't know if I should bore anybody with a story. It's not boring. Gary was here, I was at home because I'd worked late and I wake up and get this email from this guy named Dave Faulkner and he's like, Kenny, I'm outside your offices and it's dark and nobody's here. So I'd stop to see you. I'm from California and the things you've done are amazing. And I'm going what is all this? So I email him, hey, call Gary, he's upstairs, here's his number. And I rushed in to see him and Dave jumped up here and got his picture with us and stood around and talked to us for a long time and it was amazing. Another law enforcement related helicopter pilot like all of us are around here. So it was awesome having Dave Faulkner here with us. Rick say from Las Vegas. He's every week pretty much Levi M. Levi, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Nice. Steve Bush. How's it going? You all keep up the great work. From Austin, Texas. Very nice. So if you're looking on a smartphone and you're looking for the chat, look at the bottom of the phone and there should be oh an icon that's popped up that says join chat or click here for chat or something like that. Alright, so we got everybody. Jessica Maris. Hello from Colorado. Hello Jessica again. She's in I think almost every week. So we're getting a good crowd. We'll go through a couple things here before we get started again. Than you Taz Chrisman. We hope to see him number one flight instructor in not just his region but for across the country. Instrument course. The links are down below. Join instrument. Whoops. I always do this. I should be letting Gary run this for me. The instrument course that Taz helped us build is a link down below. But an easy way to remember is joininstrumentpilot.com if you're interested in our instrument training go there. Joinhogs.com that's easy. For helicopter online ground school you can also go to helicopterground.com but our quick link we made up joinhogs.com I don't know what is going on with this touchy screen. Joinremotepilot.com Gary and I put out a video. We got our first copy of our new book remote pilot you can go. This will be available very soon. The course is up and ready for remote pilot to help you get to the remote pilot license and that is joinremotepilot.com and then we're like book crazy around here. How to build your online business. I've just refurbished this book and have a new version coming out. Or I teach people how to do what we do, what I do here and how I've taken what I do and put it online and how we earn money and make our livings on live. That's how Gary and I make our living. Have Roofs Over Our Heads is online with video Normal disclaimer. It's up to you to know procedures for your aircraft, your environment. We're going to give you tips today. This is things that I've seen in 20 years. They're very basic and I don't want you to overlook them. So at first I'm like, man, this seems so basic. But I just sat down and thought through 20 years of teaching and the problems that I see. So, number one, start three weeks in advance, okay? You're training for your check ride the whole time you're working for it. Whether it's taking you three months, six months, two years, four years, the time varies. For anybody going for a checkride, when I say start three weeks in advance, I mean getting ready three weeks in advance for the day of the checkride. Okay? You're kind of preparing the whole time you're flying and your instructor is doing his job, he's working with you and you're working through the pts and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. But so many times last minute issues bite people in the rear. Okay? I've seen it happen in 20 years time and time again, and there's nothing worse than the night before the checkride. I don't have a chart, I don't have an E6B. Oh, I don't have this, I don't have that. It is the most horrible feeling in the world for you and it's the horrible feeling for your instructor because you both look stupid showing up at the checkride, trying to sneak through and go, oh, well, hey, I couldn't get this in time or I forgot that it just doesn't look good. Okay? You want to show up at your checkride, you want to be prepared. So I just picked three weeks as a general rule. I used to say one or two weeks, but I love the number three. Three weeks in advance. You should already have everything that you need for the day of the checkride. All the tools and things that we talk about that you need, you should have them already, if not in your possession, they're on order, they're coming, everything you need. Okay? So that was my first thought to come to mind is three weeks in advance, start getting these things around and we're going to go through them. Okay, Looks like we're caught up on comments. So that's my first tip. Number two, prepare with the pts, which will become the acs. The last we talked to. Let's see, Gary just talked to an FAA guy just within the Last month or two. And Gary said, hey, how about the acs? And he said, don't even worry about it yet. It's still a ways away. So we are still using the PTS at the time of making this video. If you're watching this down the road, it may have become the ACS Airman certification standards. But I can tell you in 20 years of teaching, there are instructors that don't use the pts, there are students that don't use the pts. Instructor and student should be going through this together, kind of thinking about it throughout your, your training. But that last several weeks when you're getting ready is when the faa, I believe what I've read is they're kind of really, they really want you hitting that at the end. And you should be going through the PTS the whole time you're going through your training, but especially near the end. There is no mystery to the checkride. It is in the pts. It tells you what they're going to ask you, it tells you what is mandatory that they ask you. It tells you what you need to know for add on pilots. I don't want to go into a big thing on the pts because we could spend, you know, a half an hour on just the pts. You should be using it, should be working through it. I will tell one other story on that one just to give some validity to this. I went to Michigan to fly for stc, for Instrom, flying with the faa. And I meet this guy who I'd Never met before, 40 year examiner. And he says, what do you do for a living? And I go, well, I have this little ground school. I teach people, you know, with online video how to prepare for a checkride. And you know, I base it all basically on the pts. And he was like, shook my hand, he goes, thank you very much. And he goes, you know what, as a 40 year examiner, he goes, you know how times people show up for checkrides and they don't use the pts, never use the pts. He goes, I had a guy show up for a CFI checkride, had never used a PTS in his career and I told him I wasn't going to give him the checkride. And he said, the guy begged him, you know, he said, look, yeah, I'm sorry, I knew I should have been, but I didn't. But I know the material. He let the guy take the checkride and the guy passed. But he said, kenny, the thing I've seen is a 40 year examiner, people don't use the PTS when they should. And he said, thank you for starting a school and basing it on the pts. So if you're not using it yet in your training, then you need to. Or if you've got it in your bag so many times I'm like, well, hey, you got your pts with you? Oh, yeah. And they pull it out. They haven't opened it up, you know, I can tell. I know when you're not using it. Brian McKinney. Hello. From Houston, Texas. Awesome. Hello. Thank you for being here. All right. And again, these are basic, but you know what? Basic. I'm going to say it again. I'll probably say it 10 more times before we're done today. The basic things is what trips people up on checkrides. I'm telling you, it's not what level is the tropopause numbers, you know, exact altitude, blah, blah, blah. It is these little things that trip up checkrides. Okay? You've got months, weeks, years that you're preparing. You're going through the knowledge. Don't blow it by missing something stupid the day of a checkride. See, what did I do? Did I do this one? Yep. Did that go through the requirements and your logbook like you're a first grader? Okay. And I have a great example for this. Did a checkride last fall. Gentleman shows up. I've known him for a while. He's very smart. He's a jet pilot, flies IFR all the time. He's a 135 trainer. And he was doing a commercial add on already. A private helicopter add on. He's doing a commercial helicopter. Add on to all this fixed wing stuff. Smart guy, sharp individual. You know, he studied hard. He knew the material. And I said, well, let's sit down. You know, we were about a week away from the trek ride. I said, let's sit down and go through your log book. And he tells me, oh, I got all the requirements. And I said, well, I know, but I want you to sit down and go through them with me. And he's like, you know, he grumbled and he didn't like it. So I go, well, you know what? Would you just do this? Okay, this is what I do. I want to go through the requirements with you. So he said, okay. He didn't really want to do it, but he did. So we get out the far a manual, okay, and we get the requirements software, commercial pilot, and we open up his logbook and we have that right there too. And I said, okay, we're going through this together. And I said, we're going to Go through this like we're kindergarteners or we're first graders. Okay, I go, so I'm not insulting your intelligence, but I'm going to go through here step by step and I'm going to, you're going to verify that you have these things in your logbook. So he didn't like it, but he did it. So we start going through, start going through. Pretty soon, I think the requirement was two hour cross country day VFR flight. I'm like, okay, where's that at? And he's like, let's see, I got 1.8. And I'm like, okay, well this says 2.0. Well but I flew with an examiner who prepped me for this before I came to you to have you finish me off. And he said that was fine. And I'm like, well I know he's an examiner, but the book right here says 2.0 and you have 1.8. And so he looked at it and kind of argued a little bit and then finally he agreed with me. He goes, you know what, you're right. So we had to go out and do another requirement. The guy's got his act together. He's very smart, he's sharp, flew with an examiner, but this examiner didn't take time to open up the book and make sure that word for word, exactly what he needed for that checkride that he had. So he goes to checkride passes first time around. So you got to open up the book, go to the far aim, whether it's private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, whatever it is you're working on and you need to open that logbook up and you need to go through that logbook step by step. And what we like to do is take like maybe a yellow highlighter, go in your logbook and just put a mark by those requirements. If you're brand new to this, your log book is not very big. If you're an add on guy like this gentleman that I'm telling you about, he's a rated pilot with all kinds of rating, flies all kinds of aircraft. When you're going to the checkride that day and the examiner is going alright, show me that cross country. You did. Oh, that was, was that in towered environment? Oh, what's the name of that control tower? And I see it every time the examiners, just because you're doing an add on doesn't mean you have a free pass to go in there and just skate through the checkride. They're still going to ask you basic vfr, they still need every single basic document. I cannot stress enough how you have to go through your logbook piece by piece, step by step with the far aim and make sure you have those things in your logbook. Make sure that your pages are totaled, make sure that every page is signed. I don't know how many stories you all want to hear, but I've had an examiner come in and throw a log book at me and go, his pages ain't signed and his hours ain't totaled. Did you know that? Did you even look at his logbook? Well, how stupid did I look? You know that was me as a brand new instructor. I never made that mistake again. So all those little things of filling out that log book, adding the pages, finding those requirements, do not overlook it. Because if you show up the day of the checkride and you don't have a requirement done, you can't take the test. Any examiner, pretty much, unless he's shady. If you don't have the requirement, he's not gonna let you take the test. It's just not gonna happen. I'm rolling on him. Roll here. I like talking about checkrides. It's what I do. Do you want to add anything, Gary?

Well, I guess. Hold on. Switch the cameras. Give Kenny a little break there. Recently I took a gentleman over to one of our examiners who we deal with three examiners quite routinely. And they have a lot of similarities and they have some differences, but the one that I took this student to over in Toledo, the student actually had been signed off by a CFI from another state and just moved here and wanted to finish. And so I only rode with him for insurance purposes in the aircraft. And along the line, what Kenny's talking about here, going through your log book, this examiner, just like the other two we've used, they don't want to leap through and find it. So you may think you have it all squared away. They're going to say point to it. They'll pick out a couple of random things that are part of your aeronautical experience in part 61. And they will say, show me this or show me that, because they want you to be able to leaf through and point it out to the them. And then the endorsements are huge. The FAA circular will tell the CFI exactly how these endorsements should be worded. And sometimes the examiner will want that reworded to match that circular. This particular student, I did not go down through his logbook with him and everything since I was just riding with him for insurance purposes, he went to look the examiner went to look at his endorsement to take the checkride, saying that he had the three hours of checkride prep and his CFI had actually just emailed him that endorsement and he printed it out. And so this got complicated, and I'm glad I was not the one recommending them because I hated it if things start to get complicated and make me look bad, I like everything to be squared away. And he actually had to get on the phone with the faa and it took a little while, and the FAA got back with him and said, okay, we can proceed with that endorsement since it's emailed and signed by his instructor. But they wanted it printed, cut out and taped into his logbook. But there's no sense going to a checkride and, you know, taking a chance like that. Just have it all done and have it all done. Right. All the endorsements that you need. Kenny was sending me to my. Was it CFI checkride when you were going down through the. The check everything the day before, and my medical had been in and out of my pocket so much, we couldn't read the date on it.

Yeah.

And so Kenny called the examiner. Examiner says, no, I got to be able to read the date on it. And so I'm thinking, oh, this is the day before. What are we going to do? Luckily, we had went down that road and we didn't go all the way to Toledo with all that fuel and aircraft time and then get sent back. So I was able to get on line with the FAA and they were able to get. Find the record of my medical and then send me a printable email that I could print off another one. So what he's saying is very important. Go down through everything like a kindergartner. It doesn't matter if you're going to your. Your first private checkride, your commercial CFI instrument, whichever checkride you're going to. Just don't forget the basics. I go back to Kenny's camera now. He's had a chance to get a drink of water. Yeah.

And hopefully I wasn't making too much noise in the. The background, guzzling down my water when my mic is on. Sorry. I just get, you know, I'm passionate about this stuff. And I didn't come up. I mean, many of you out there have come up the hard road. I think most people do that, become helicopter pilots. Most people didn't. It wasn't handed to them. Most people. It was very expensive. Most people have struggled through the ratings, They've struggled through the ground school, they've struggled with something in the flight. I've had every single stupid thing that can happen to a person. I've had so many it's experience. It's not because I'm the smartest guy on the planet. It's because I've made all the dumb mistakes and I had to struggle and beg and borrow and steal and do everything I had to to get my ratings. And I've done all the dumb stuff, you know. And then for 20 years I've been teaching and just doing what was right from the beginning. Even though I wanted time in my logbook, I wanted to make sure people got the ground school. I want to catch up here before I move on. Taz is here. Taz, we mentioned you in the beginning, so if you want to hear us talk about you, you can go back in the replay and watch from the beginning. But we mentioned you in the beginning about your mission to be the number one certified flight instructor in the country. And you know that we are promoting you. So we did a big thank you for that. Alexander from Moscow. Nice. From Russia. I think that might be the first time I've had somebody from Russia that I can think of or remember. Harley's here as every week. Taz Chrisman, Boiler up. Kevin Proud, 2001 Purdue grad Taz Christman. I always tab every requirement in the student's logbook. The easier you make it for the DPE to validate and qualify the student, the quicker they get to the actual ride. This is true, Taz, good point. And we've always tabbed everything too. But, and I think Gary might be able to chime on this, recently we had an examiner that brought up tabbing. Do you remember this conversation?

No.

There was something about an examiner said the talk about amongst the examiners at their. When they get together and they do their meetings, they said they're starting to ask questions that people aren't used to because everybody tabs everything. So examiners have gotten wise to that. So instead of asking all the same stuff they always ask, they ask you for something in the logbook that they don't normally ask because they want to see what a person does. Okay. We all know how to. We're all trained to find the hundred hour and the transponder and altimeter. But they might ask for something different. You know, that's not normally asked because students will. Because instructors are doing a good job having people tab everything and know where it's at. But they're also, in some circumstances, people are too used to everything being tabbed and they want to make sure you can find something. And this came up in one of our recent checkrides, and that came straight from the examiner, where he said, well, there's a flip side to tabbing everything, because we're always telling you that, tab this, tab away, tab away. And we do. I mean, we open up the aircraft logbook, we have those inspections tabbed. We have the things that we know he's going to ask for. But just be prepared. Don't rely on tabs. Only make sure as a student, you go through the logbook. Make sure as an instructor, you're going through the logbook with your students. One of the reasons I failed my first checkride, I had a great instructor. But every time we go to look at the log books, they were in the hangar locked up, mechanic wasn't there. So this goes by, goes by, goes by the first day of my private pilot when I failed, when he says, let's take a look at the aircraft log books. I went, they're over at the maintenance area. And he goes, well, let's get your instructor. Let's find them. So instructor goes, gets them, brings him over, sits down. Guy says, show me the last hundred hour. And I start flipping through and putting. He's tapping the table, and he's huffing and puffing, and I can tell he's getting frustrated. So I go, honestly, I've never seen this book before. And he wasn't impressed. And he said, well, keep digging, keep looking. And after I failed, that's one thing he hammered both me and my instructor on. As we just said, you know, hey, you know, we tried to make an excuse. And he said, well, it's no excuse. You should have found the log books prior to checkride day. Showing up for a checkride and never have seen the aircraft log books is not good. Okay. And that was one of the reasons that I failed my checkride. So, you know, trying to give you a little bit of everything from every angle. Awesome. So just want to bring that up. Tas, the more ratings you get, the more important it is to correctly log and annotate the requirements in your logbook. Yes. Task. We mentioned that a little bit ago with an advanced student I had. That's where the problem lies, is your log book gets bigger over time with more ratings and more aircraft. That stuff's hard to go back and find. So. Absolutely. See you in person next week. Awesome. TAS will be here next week. All right, so I'm ahead of myself on slides. The next slide is aircraft log books. So Just so happens that's what was coming up. So I just told you my story. That was what I was going to tell you. During aircraft log books was, you know, that was our big failure on my private. That I failed at. So understand the log books tab and stuff is great, but make sure you understand what else is in there. If it's a newer aircraft, it's easy. If it's an aircraft that's been around for 30 years, like a lot of helicopters are, and they got 10, 12, 15,000 hours on it, those log books get complicated. Very complicated. All right, I'll move on because I'm on a roll today. Cement your knowledge through repetition. Okay? We know that we learn through repetition. I was taught that in the very beginning. It's in my notebook. We learn through going over and over and over again. When I failed my first checkride, not only do we have the log book problem, we had a problem with, let's say, selling with power. And back at that time, you know, the memory aid was 30, 20, 10, because back then it was radio ascent, 300ft per minute or greater using 20 to 100% power, airspeed less than 10. Okay, that's the old basic helicopter handbook from 1978. So scratch that. But at this date and time, 20 years ago, it was exactly 20 years ago. That was the memory age. So when he asked me about selling the power, I'm like, rate of descent, you know, him haw around. I think I spit that one out. And then I said, using full power. And then I can't remember what else I said, but I wasn't very smooth with that selling of power. And in turn, that's why you hear me harp on that in ground school today, over and over and over. That's why Gary will tell you, fly with me for five years. I beat it into his head because after I failed, the examiner said, you know, we had a problem with the log books. But also, when I ask you a question, I need an answer. And especially when it comes to something that's going to kill you, like slugging with power. He said, I want to hear 30, 20, 10 radius, 300ft per minute or greater airspeed or power 20 to 100%. He said, you said using all power or something. And he said you weren't very crisp, you weren't very clean. So that's one of the things that over the years, man, soy and power. I harp that into somebody and I ask him over and over and over again, and that's how we learn. And you cement your Knowledge through going through everything that you need to use, using all of your materials that we recommend inside helicopter, airline, ground school and going through them over and over again. Okay? And when I say cement your knowledge through repetition, it's one thing when you're home studying by yourself, it's one thing when you're with your instructor who you get comfortable with over a period of time, that's another thing. The day you show up to the checkride then the nerves come into play in a different place and a guy you never met before, that knowledge has to be better than when you were with your instructor and that knowledge has to be better than it was when you were home studying. You have to learn and you have to go over it and you go over it and you go over it. If you want to be successful through the checkride, you do it through cementing your knowledge by going over and over and over and over. Okay? You want to know so darn well that you're not going to forget it. We had Jamie that we talk about a lot here that we're proud of and came up and did his private with us and did his commercial. I mentioned him last week. Jamie went through our videos over and over and over again. He goes, Kenny, I went through them all a minimum of probably three times. I'm not saying you have to go through every video three times but the people that have done the best on their checkrides tell us they went through every single video. They don't come in and just grab a chunk here and grab a chunk here and we look because we have progress tracking. So we go in and look when people pass or if they struggle a little bit on checkride. I had one guy said he failed and when I looked he only watched like 10 videos out of 100. And I'm like, I honestly sent him back a message. I go, I don't know why you're emailing telling me you failed. You didn't even watch the all the, didn't even watch all the training. No wonder you failed. You didn't apply yourself. Don't buy ground school, not use it and then not pass your checkride and then be bummed. You know you did not apply yourself. Let's check comments real quick. All DPEs in Vegas allow floor flight logbooks. That's cool. As well as inter electronic logbook. That was from a question. Is a four flight electronic logbook legal? Alright, Anything you want to add on there, Gary, before I move on?

Only that the examiners are moving into the electronic age even the old school examiner we've used for a long time over by Toledo, he allowed this last student, who wasn't mine that I rode with for aircraft insurance purposes, allowed him to have his charts on foreflight and his facilities directory on foreflight, which I thought was interesting that he finally opened up to that.

Right, and that's another good point. Still a person needs to check with their examiner. You know, as of the making of this video, there are still some examiners that are still old school and still doing paper stuff. Our long time examiner, last one I did with him, he still hadn't moved into electronic stuff yet. So depends on the examiner. So, so we can't give you a whole lot of advice because this goes back to where are you flying in the world, who's the examiner you're flying with, what flight school are you working with? You need to be prepped for the examiner you're going to and you need to find out from him or your instructor needs to find out what is he going to allow that day of the checkride. So as you're getting ready, it does save time now we all know it. If you can have the electronic version, great. Saves paper. I still always like having the paper backup. But even charts anymore, they're hard to get. AFDs are hard to get, all these things are hard to get. So we learn through repetition. Go over and over and over and over this stuff. Alright, next one, be an hour or more early, okay? You're taught this from day one. You should never be late anywhere you go, especially when it's something important. But, but when I first started as a new, brand new instructor, the place I was working at said, hey, go out and fly with the examiner for an hour so you guys get to know each other. Okay, great. So I'm a new instructor, only second place I'd worked first time meeting this examiner that I've now used for 20 years. He said, make sure you're here, make sure you're here on time and make sure you have everything you need. And because that's the problem that I have and over the years seeing it, he gets aggravated when you're not there on time and the checkrides just don't go as well. My advice is to be there an hour early or be there an hour and a half early. The earlier the better so that you get there, you have time if you need to add fuel, you have time to take a breath, you have time to get something to drink, you have time to go and start laying things out. I can tell you, in 20 years, one checkride where we're going to use Chris Hauser as the guinea pig. I don't think Chris is logged in today. Chris is one of our instructors. Long time. Been flying with Chris forever. Somebody mentioned when batteries die. Exactly. Chris had an awesome private pilot helicopter checkride. Then a couple years later, we go do his commercial. And that day, you know, he had some other factors, but he was having some trouble at home. You know, that happens. People get in an argument with a family member or whatever. He had a lot of other things on his mind. And whatever the reason was, we left late. And I remember kind of freaking out, getting over there as we're getting closer and closer, and I'm like, I'm never late. I am never late. I've never been late to a check ride with this examiner. Never, never been late. So we get there, you know, and I pre warn him that, that we're on our way and we might be a few minutes late. And he's like, oh, it's all cool. In a text message. Oh, it's fine, you're okay. But I can tell you what, showing up late, the whole checkride was just different. And I know deep down he was aggravated because we weren't there on time, and Chris was already frustrated. And this is the one where Chris got stuck on airplane helicopter regulations and day and night and VFR and class G. And when they gets into that nitty gritty. And Chris worked himself into a hole and the examiner said, what's basic VFR? And all he wanted was three miles and 1,000ft. And Chris has just worked into a tizzy at this point. And he's airplane day because he's also an airplane pilot. And Jeff's looking at me going, oh, my God. You know, I'm in the background behind Chris. And this goes on for a while. And he goes, I'm just asking you, basic vfr. What is basic vfr? So this goes on. He finally goes, well, I'm gonna get a coffee. I'll be back. And he walks out and I go, chris, you know, anyway, we saved the checkride, but the only time I ever showed up late for checkride, it sucked and we barely got through it. And out of three failures in 20 years, I got a pretty good record on getting people through and knowing what it takes. As simple as being an hour early sounds. Take my advice and be there an hour early or more. I mean, it just, you know, showing up and being prepared looks good to the examiner.

I might point out something.

Yeah, Go ahead, Gary. I'll take a little break.

Take a little break. As you're talking about these stories, some people might be catching a hint that you're in there on the checkride. And I might point out that it's only recently that the FAA has said the CFI is not going to be in the room during the oral questioning of the checkride. And prior to that, Kenny has hours of sitting in on oral checkrides and knowing how these go. So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you get your CFI rating in the last year, two years, like me, you have very limited experience sitting in on students when they get their oral questioning of their check ride because things have changed. But Kenny can relate to years of sitting in and listening to different students be questioned because they allowed him to be in the room. I just thought I'd point that out since we're kind of taking it for granted that maybe everybody knows that.

Wait, yeah, I'm glad you added that because, you know, I'm gonna, I can call it bragging or whatever if you want, but I've always done what it's taken for my students over the years. Even when I went along for a checkride and it blew a majority of my day and I wasn't even charging them anything for it. When I was struggling as an instructor and needed the money, I still would go. I never charged anybody to go for a checkride. Well, there might be one or two, you know, maybe later in my career, but I would always go. I would always go and the examiner would always let me sit in and I went that extra mile so I could sit in and I could see how the checkrides go. So I've been doing it a long time and I've sat in hundreds of them, you know, so I know what trips people up. And that's why I built helicopter online ground school. You know, it's a years experience of me doing all the stupid stuff I've done. It's training a lot of people over the years, staying active as an instructor or even when I was flying EMS and doing whatever else and always going the extra mile and being there for my student because I always wanted to go. Because if there's a last minute problem and I sign something off in the logbook, you know, that would suck for the student. Makes me look bad. It frustrates everybody. Frustrates the examiner. So I've always went over the extra mile and always went to a checkride even if I wasn't getting paid And I always sat in until the examiner said, sorry, but you can't sit in anymore. But that's okay. I sat in them for, you know, almost 20 years. So, God, there was something else I was going to say along that lines. Something else that was really, really important I wanted to throw in there on that subject.

Well, there was one that you recorded. I have the transcripts from that if anybody wants.

Oh, my God.

Someday we'll share it.

Maybe someday. It's so bad. Oh, my God. And that guy. Well, I don't know if it fits anywhere in the top 10 tips. We did a ton of ground. He was prepared. He let the nerves. This guy was a nerve guy. This is. The nerves got to him. And it was one of the worst I've ever done. I was completely embarrassed. I couldn't believe he passed. And the examiner even said, hey, when I go out in the aircraft, I'm going to make sure that, you know, you saw, he struggled in the world. I'm like, yeah. I go, he knows the info. He's just got his head up his butt today. And he goes, I'm going to re. Ask these questions while we're flying. I'm going to dig into all the hard stuff and the things that will kill you. I'm going to dig into those while we're flying to make sure that he understands what's going to get him killed and how to avoid these problems. And. And I'm like, hey, of course, Fair game. Of course he goes, because I can't not make sure he can understand these things in the environment while he's flying. And the guy made it and he passed, but then afterwards he was mad because he had this horrible checkride and he was so mad. And I'm like, hey, you made it. Why are you so mad? I just never. He was used to excelling in everything in his life. So the one time that he didn't, you know, things didn't go his way, his attitude didn't just completely went south. God, it just keeps throwing up all these other things in my mind. I know I'll end up making this too long. So these guys are talking about iPads overheating in the summer. Yep. Absolutely. Have a backup. Somebody else said, exactamundo, Levi. Yes. The black screen of death. LOL. Paper. Paper. Dave Faulkner. Love4flight. But printed approach charts still do the job. Well, old school. Yeah. I said, you know, it's kind of nice to have the best of both worlds, but do what's right for you. Check with your examiner for your checkride and know what is acceptable. All right, I could just keep going on. I could just think of so many things. But, you know, people got things to do today. This is one that Gary and I talk about that I don't think we've ever openly talked about this really on camera in any of our videos. And this is what we think now. And it's easy for us to say, I know, but. But know that the checkride is hype, okay? Don't take that wrong. Yes, you have to perform. There's a lot of things you have to know. You have to study, you got to apply yourself. But if you do all that and you do it right, you're going to go to the checkride and you're most likely going to pass. You have to think back about how there is just. It is a lot of hype, okay? In reality, most people, even the ones that are so scared afterwards, go, wow, I did pretty good. You know, Even though the flying always goes to hell, heck, the last couple days before checkride, I'm telling you, that's why I don't like to fly one or two days before a checkride. I prefer not to fly with you. I like to be done two days in advance and you not even come in the day before. Sometimes you have to to clean things up a little bit or give somebody confidence. But I like to be done a day or two before you even go see the examiner because the hype gets everybody in those last couple days, I'm telling you, the last week of prep, their flying and ground knowledge just goes downhill, downhill. And the harder you work and the harder you try, the more it sucks. And the day before the checkride, they can't fly worth a poop. I'm just telling you. 20 years of watching this happen. So Gary and I talked about this this morning. Know that the checkride is high type. I think of back when I went through the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. At that time, it was a tough academy. It was number four in the nation. And it was known to be a really hard, tough academy. But all the cops that I knew had me all jacked up before I went there. And they have you so freaked out that the day you get there, you're just. Your mind's blown. And I remember they checked our blood pressure for everybody that day. And I was like one of 20 of a group of 100 and some that they said, oh, there's the rest of y' all can go do whatever. We gotta check you guys out and get you Guys to calm down because your blood pressure is way too high. So they're like, sit here in the room, calm down, and we're going to come back and check your blood pressure every little bit. Well, okay, eventually I passed, but I. And they let me, you know, that was the first day of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. And it was a lot of hype. Yeah, it was hard. I had to study, I had to apply myself. But I got through it and I did well. I did really well at the police academy. You can do the same thing with the check ride. You know, Gary recently said it's always about remaining calm. Well, it is. It's about remaining calm on the checkride. It's about remaining calm in anything you do in life. You know, becoming a pilot teaches you so many other things about being a person. And becoming a pilot improves, you know, things about you in other areas of your life. And so never really openly used that statement that the checkride is just hype. And I don't want you, you don't want you to think that I'm just saying, oh, checkride ain't no big deal. That's not what I'm saying. If you are prepared and you use these tips that we talk about and you study and you apply yourselves and you know the material, you're going to get through it. I already mentioned earlier, it's just different when you're sitting across the table from that guy, you know, and even our examiner, long time, one of my best friends, all these hundreds of checkrides, and he'll say, I get nervous when I sit across from the FAA to CheckRide. We all do it. And examiners know that you're nervous. And our examiners are pretty darn fair. When somebody gets a little upset, they don't just slam down and go, failed, get out of here. You suck. It's not like that. Usually if you're hyperventilating a little bit or you're breathing heavy and you're getting all upset, usually they'll go, hey, let's just take a minute, go grab a cup of coffee, take a walk outside if that's what you need to do. Normally, an examiner, when they see you freaking out, they usually will try to help you a little bit. They're not going to give you the checkride, but they will help you. Gary might have some insight on that. We know that one of his checkrides, the examiner told us about what was on his list of things, things to go through. Do you remember what he said about the small talk.

Oh, you're talking about he was going down through his checklist as an examiner.

Yeah.

And Kenny was allowed to sit in with me on my commercial. That was probably one of the last check rides you were allowed to sit in on when they really changed it. But you were sitting in with me on my commercial checkride. And the examiner said, okay, I have a checklist I have to find make student feel relaxed. He says, okay, this is the refrigerator over here. We have drinks. The restrooms are down the hall. And he says, I'm here to pass you today, not here to fail you. So I really hope that we have the same goal that you're going to leave here with your certificate. He made it clear that he wasn't a monster. His goal was to pass me if I meet the standards. And so we both had the same goal and we moved forward from there. And I guess Kenny's probably going to get to this. But the big thing is when the examiner asks those questions is just to be calm, Think about the answer and just answer the question. Don't turn the question or the answer. Don't turn the answer into a lecture. And then if he asks you about retreating blade stall, don't lead that into the helicopter's leaning, pitching up on the nose because of gyroscopic precession. And gyroscopic precession is this. And this is why you could turn it into let him ask the questions that should follow. So keep it simple, think about your answers and just give him the answer to the question he's asking. And don't go on and on. Let him ask the next question. I go back to Kenny. He's the experienced one.

You preluded to number nine.

Okay.

And that's okay because I'll throw my take on there too. Let's catch up here real quick. Jack. Hello. From Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. The Great White North. Heck, yeah. Very nice. Then Sam said, that's the way to see who is a nervous wreck or not under fire. You'll need that in the field to find a calm place is good thing to find medication can help pre fly in your mind. Armchair flying hangar flying. Yes. In your mind. Yes. Medication only after checking with your medical examiner. Being calm. We just talked about how anything in life it's always about trying to keep calm. Take a big deep breath. We do that in the helicopter when you're messing up trying to learn how to hover. We go breathe and they're not breathing. All of a sudden they start breathing and the hover smooths out and gets Better. So, yes. And here's a little trick or tip that I think a lot of you may surprise you. Here's the deal, people. And I always tell people, when I'm working with somebody, I only tell them this one time and then I won't repeat it because I don't want to fall back on this. But here's what I've seen all these years of doing checkrides. They suck the night before and they're nervous and freaked out. And after the checkride is done, they go, wow, I did really well. I did good. Well, nice. How'd the flight go? Flight went great. Examiner will go, nice job today. And that gives me goosebumps. Goosebumps because you walk out going, yeah, we did it. We did it. A person will. Those last couple days, you're going to be a nervous wreck. But somehow the nervousness of the checkride, for most people, it pulls out the good in you. It pulls out that somehow people, majority of the time, even if you suck the day before, and you will, the last one to two days for a check ride, you're going to suck. Your knowledge goes out the window. Your flying goes to hell. But then somehow they get through the oral. And if you do everything we tell you and you got there early and you got on time and you had your stuff and you were prepared and you cemented your knowledge and you went through all these things and then you have that confidence. And most examiners are really cool. There aren't many. You know, I'm not saying there's not an examiner that might get a little crazy out there. You know, we had one one time that I would never use again, but. Because he went overboard the other way. But most examiners will usually work with you. They want you to be safe. They want you to have the knowledge and back to answer like you're in court. You know, Gary's an ex police officer, retired. I'm an ex cop and I learned this, you know, in law enforcement, when you go to court routinely, okay, that's what you do. And you're taught as a police officer, you just answer the question, but only answer the question that you've been asked. Don't elaborate. Don't try to prove your point. Don't try to prove that you had. You know, the more you talk, the worse it's going to go in court. It's the same way in a checkride. One of the best checkrides I've ever seen is my good friend Dr. Nick, who has the instrument that we fly through the six months of the year we use, Nick had one of the best checkrides I've ever seen, and I prepped him with this. And he's a doctor, he understands about going to court. Smart guy. And he listened to what I told him and he had one of the best checkrides ever. Because the examiner would ask him a question, and every time he would ask a question, Nick would go, That's when the retreating blade exceeds the critical angle of attack. Good exam. We'd move on. He'd ask the next question, Nick would go, Then he would answer. He took five or 10 seconds before opening his mouth. And that is the best way to do it. I have seen other guys. That or girls. Guys mainly. Okay, examiner asks a question, you know, what's your treating blade stall? Oh, well, when you got this advancing blade and you got a treating blade and the advancing blades, it's going up and the retreating blades going down. And because of this difference in lift and pretty soon, I'm telling you, if you do that, the examiner is going to dig you right into hole. You're digging your own hole. He's going to go, tell me about that advancing blade. Tell me about that retreating blade. He's going to nail you. You don't give him everything. You go in there all excited and you're like, oh, I want to show this guy that I've been studying. I want to show him what I know. Just like being a cop in court, you want to go, yeah, but this guy's a dirtbag and you know, he's been arrested 10 times before. And you want to just, ah, you know, you can't do that on the checkride. You got to go answer like you're in court. Answer like you're protecting your own family member and you're doing it within the limits of the law by going, yep, nope. And just get the shortest answer possible. I'm sure that we're going to roll it up to our hour here, so let's see what we got. Soon to be all white here. Yeah, we haven't had snow here yet, but we will soon. Hopefully not. But number nine, I was just thinking the same thing when Gary discussing his experience with explaining. Too much. Yep, absolutely. Meditation, says Jessica. Yep, meditation. If that works for you. Remaining calm. Breathe, breathe in and out. Relax. Know it's all hype. Roman. Hey, Romans from Ohio. The training is beat into your mind. It just comes out. Sometimes I wonder how exactly. And that's kind of what it goes on with what I was saying, you'll do better than you expect most of the time. Being a certain amount of nervous is good, but it helps you do well. On the day of the test, former police officer from Redmond, Oregon, Levi M. Awesome. Glad you're here. Along with us other former police officers. God, the cops in helicopters. It's amazing. It's just crazy. Former police officer said, already so true. You have to know when to stop talking. Yeah. Okay. And I see it's 1:52pm so that's a hint to me about time to stop talking. So I'm going to add number 10. I failed my first helicopter checkride. And now today, I make my living with that. Okay, so we're all scared of failing. Nobody wants to fail. Is it the worst thing that's ever going to happen to you in your life? No. But does it suck? Yeah, it sucks. But I did, I failed. And in turn, I created what I do today online. And sorry, I just got distracted. There's some drilling in the background. They know that we need an hour of no drilling in the background, but anyway, that's got me distracted. Sorry. I failed my first checkride. Okay. I know what it's like. I went home for six months with my telegram, my legs. I didn't even know if I was ever going to finish. I'm out working as a cop, and one of my cop buddies, actually a guy I was training, is like, you know what? When are you going to finish that rating? And I'm like, you know what? I need to do it. He goes, well, yeah. All that time and effort, and that's when I created the notebook I talk about all the time. And I started studying my butt off. And I went back and I nailed it the second time around. And when I got into my first job, very quickly, they caught on to how good I was with the regs, how good I was with all the ground knowledge. It ain't because I'm so freaking smart. It's because I failed. And I was going to go back and I was going to do it, and I was not going to fail the second time around. And that's why the examiner, he said, I went to a different examiner, actually. And he said about halfway through the oral, he's like, hey, Kenny, why did you fail your first time around? You came in here with a pink slump today. And I, I said, because I didn't know my stuff then. Like, I know it now. And he's like, well, you're doing 100%. You know, you're batting, you know, you're at 100%, you're answering everything. And I go, well, that's because I applied myself. And he said, well, you know what, the examiners are a small world. And he goes, I'm going to contact this guy that you took your first trek ride with and I'm going to personally tell him how well you did when you came back so that he knows you did end up finishing and that you did really well. And that day when he told me, he said after the failure, the first one, he just said, you got to know your stuff. And he said, I do not want to come to your helicopter accident. Okay, if during the oral portion of the test, if you're struggling to answer me across the table, I don't know what you're going to be doing out there when you're in the aircraft. And I took it with the faa. Okay, another tip, take it with a designated examiner. Sounds bad, but the faa, that guy gets paid to just come and give you a checkride. Designated examiner is designated by the FAA but doesn't work for the faa. He gets paid. So he still has to have you do everything in tolerance. But in general, an FAA examiner is probably going to be tougher. Usually you can do that and not charge for it. So there's a reason to do it that way if you, you choose. But you know, I failed. I've had only three people fail in 10 years, 20 years, and now it's been a long time. And one of them became a good friend of mine. Medical doctor, never felt anything in his life. Got himself freaked out the day of, and he choked. He got through the oral, but even during the oral, I wasn't sitting through. I missed it. I think I got there late, late that day. And the examiner come out and said, man, your boy's struggling on the oral. And I'm like, well, you know, he was an add on pilot and recently done a flight review. So he kept giving me the attitude of, well, I just did my flight review, so I'm good on all this ground stuff. And I'd go, well, just be careful. And ends up failing his checkride. Don't hear from him for a while. This guy's wife calls me at home and she's like, kenny, you have got to get a hold of my husband. He has never felt at anything in his life and he's devastated. And she goes, he's moping around the house, he's a jerk at home. You need to get him back in there and make him finish this because I can't live with him like this, he's still married, you know, all these years later. But I called him up and I said, man, get back in here. Let's finish this thing up. All we had to do was go out and freshen up the auto rotation. And that's all he had to do. That's all he had to do is just do an auto rotation to finish. So in the end, we got him done and he got the rating and it was no big deal. The second time around, pressure's off. When you go back in to retest, oral's done. All those other maneuvers were done for him. All he had to do was hop in that day with the examiner and go do an auto. That's all he had to do. And then after the fact, this. And he's still a friend of mine. But he said to me, he goes, I'm only going to say this to you one time, Kenny. From now on, when you work without on guys, you make sure that they know all the VFR stuff. You make sure you go back through with them, everything. And I said, you know, I tried doing that with you and you had to tell me how you just got done with your biannual flight review in the airplanes. And whenever I would talk about basic VFR stuff, you'd always kind of blow me off a little bit, you know, so I'm putting a little this back on you. And he goes, well, I'll never say it again, but I'm just telling you, add on pilots, make sure you go through everything. So I use that today when somebody goes, well, hey, do you have a course just for an add on? No, you need to go through everything. Even if you're an add on, it's fair game. And I watch that, you know, let's make that tip. Number 11, add on pilots, you still got to know basic VFR. And if you fly a lot of IFR, I can tell you. If you come to me and tell me you're an IFR guy and you're ready to go, you got your check ride, you just need a couple hours. First thing I'm going to do is open up a second chart and start asking you VFR stuff, because nine times out of ten, I'm gonna trip you up. If you fly a lot of IFR because you get complacent. Just fly an IFR all the time. The VFR skills kind of go out the window. All right, I'm approaching an hour. Oh, my God, that is an hour I want to see. You want to add anything? Gary's got some stuff he wanted to add.

Oh, just a couple things real quick.

Go ahead and add whatever you want to add, Gary. I'll check out.

So I just wanted to point out that most examiners will keep asking you questions to the point where you have to look something up. So it's key to remember, do not say, I do not know. Do not sit back and give up like that. You've got all your documents with you. You've got your FAR aim your helicopter flying handbook and say something to the effect of, you know, darn it, I just read that I can find it for you and know how to find things for him that's not going to add up to a failure. He wants to see that you can find things anyway and that's why he's taking you to the point of having to look something up. He will stump you. He'll take it until he can stump you or until he can teach you something. Another thing is there's a couple different ways that examiners are operating. Some are using scenarios instead of the traditional questions about helicopter aerodynamics. So be ready, maybe go down through some accidents, read them and see if you can figure out what happened with that accident without reading what the FAA has determined to be the cause. Know the specifics of your aircraft, the aircraft that you're actually going in. Look through that POH and know the specs on it and know what the POH has to say for handling all the emergencies because each aircraft can be slightly different. And that's all I had to add. Except for I've been getting some emails, some people missed the Cyber 30 sale and I talked to Kenny, I made a coupon code and we're going to throw it out there if anybody is not a member or maybe you're a member and you want to purchase another package. This code will work on private commercial, CFI and instrument and it'll be WG20 off. And that will give you 20% off in a yearly or unlimited membership. If you want to add a membership on today or if you're watching because Live Tuesday is an event, people can sign up for Honor Ground School for free and maybe they haven't purchased yet, so it's not too late. We can still give you 20% off by using the code WG2.0OFF. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Tuesday. Hopefully we'll have Taz here with us and we'll cook up something good. Back to you, Kenny.

Hey, do us a big favor and subscribe to our channel if you haven't done that yet, we're almost to 10,000 subscribers and that's a big deal for us to get to that 10,000 mark because it opens up some things with YouTube that we get as benefits to us. So in turn for enjoying our training, please subscribe to our channel. I wanted to mention a couple more things here that came up. Remember to breathe slow. Yep. Sam's filmmaker, Vancouver. Awesome. Levi. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays to all. Live chat, everyone at Hoggs family, Kenny and Gary. Awesome. Thank you. Merry Christmas to everybody, all of you out there that tune in every week and those that tune in the future. Greg Crump. Hey Kenny. I haven't flown since 2004. I have a private in helicopters. What do you suggest? Get out there and do it. I flew with an EMS guy who come out of military and he hadn't flown in 10 or 12 years and he came to work for the EMS company and they took him out. Fleeting a little bit, hired him and he had to brush up on ground school. But you know, you can get freshened up if you're not a ground school member yet. You should join a ground school to help relearn all the knowledge. But I go get an hour with an instructor somewhere and go out and jump an aircraft and go out and see how much you remember. I think a of lot lot will come back more than you may know. Jack. Gotta go everyone. Merry Christmas. Enjoy the show or enjoy the snow. Thank you to all. Thanks guys. Great stuff as always. Harley D. Thanks for good for the info. Good discussion. Dave Faulkner. Take care gents. Have a great week. Excellent recommendations. Hope to see you this winter in Southern California. Dave. I'd love to get back out there this winter. So if you're interested in the remote pilot course, that's joinremotepilot.com you can join ground school the links down below or you can type in joinhogs.com instrumentpilot.com that's down below in the description box. It's up and running. We got members in there consuming the content. We still got a video or two from Taz yet that I got to get edited in there because Taz is a monster and creating all this content and I'm having trouble keeping up. So again, thank you. Taz Chrisman. Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. YouTube channel. Thank you everybody that has logged in. I think that catches up all the comments. I don't think we left anybody out like subscribe go to our channel. Use Gary's code WG20OFF to become a member of Helicopter Airline Ground School, and you can always contact us at any other time on any other questions, put them in Gary answers YouTube comments Monday through Friday when he's here, and I try to catch him up over the weekends when I can. So thanks for being here. Like Share subscribe make your comments use Gary's code WG20F20OFF in the coupon box during checkout@helopterground.com and we'll see you in the next video. Sa.