Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

Aug 24, 2018

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Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

Kenny:
All right, so we're here to debrief Gary's commercial. He's got something that just arrived today. We decided today to sit down, now that the commercial's done for a couple of weeks and debrief. Just before he comes in, he gets his certificate in the mail. Go ahead, and open that thing up.

 Gary:
I hope it's my certificate. It's from the US department of transportation, federal aviation administration. Just happened to check the mail on the way to the airport.

 Kenny:
Maybe for some reason they decided to pull your license.

  Gary:
It could be.

 Kenny:
Let's see it.

 Gary:
Well, there it is. Make sure they didn't make a mistake. Commercial pilot.

 Kenny:
Very nice.

 Gary:
My commercial pilot certificate.

 Kenny::
Cool. That's what it's all about, getting the rating, getting done, getting ready to go fly and make money. Very nice, congratulations. By the way, I don't know if I ever did shake your hand, I probably did. We got the commercial did, we promised a debrief, we filmed a lot of stuff that we did. Most everything that we did was on film, there was very little that we did that we didn't film.

Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

In reality, there was a lot of stuff that you just knew so I didn't have to beat you up. We'll start with commercial specific privileges and limitations, because that's what everybody wants to know about, because I preaching the check rides are pretty much the same other than commercial privileges limitations, which we know are different. The examiner told us that ahead of time. He said, "Make sure he's good on 119, and good on emergencies and good on limitations." Those were the 3 areas he wanted us to focus on.

  When you and I sat upstairs and went over the privilege limitations, you'd already studied it hard enough that I just started asking you a few questions and you just started telling me all the things you could and couldn't do and I went ... You had it fresh in your mind. There was no reason for me to sit there and ask you questions over and over, because you knew it. You did that by studying 119, right?

 Gary:
Yup.

 Kenny:
Just open up the FAR/AIM manual, going through it piece by piece, and just figuring out what you could and couldn't do.

 Gary:
Yes. Just following the suggested study guide in front of the ... FAR/AIM takes you through all that. Then, of course, you had pointed out on my private check ride to tab the privileges for the private pilot, and then of course we had the little hint from the examiner that I needed to be sure to know what my privileges would be with a commercial license. I take some extra time to read and be familiar with that.

 Kenny:
All in all, did it feel like a private check ride, because you used 2 different examiners. We used the guy we've been using for years on your private, now we tried a new examiner on the commercial just for fun. Pretty similar right, don't you think? I mean, in general.

 Gary:
Absolutely.

 Kenny:
He didn't do anything any different than the guy I've been using for 15 years. Pretty much the same stuff, they hit the same things, they do go into it deeper. They hit a little harder than they do with the private. I'm trying to remember commercial questions. We should've wrote them down, we didn't. I remember him asking, "Okay, as a commercial pilot, can you drop objects out of the aircraft?" Your answer was?

 Gary:
Actually, my answer was I had dropped things out of the helicopter. I think even was more specific about, hey, at church, comes to you and wants you to do a candy drop. Can you drop things out of the helicopter? Of course, having experience doing that already for a church, I was able to reflect on that and tell him yes, just like a private pilot, so long as you don't put anybody in harm's way, you can do that.

 Kenny:
Right. What other questions can you remember him asking specifically, commercial wise?

 Gary:
He wanted to make sure that I knew the difference between the exceptions in 119 and what would be considered a 135 operation, because he specifically said, say, you're at the festival giving rides and some guy in the passenger seat says, "Hey, that's my house right there. Can't you just land in the backyard and drop me off there? That'd be cool." Just kind of making sure that I knew the difference between a textbook flight tour and a point A to point B transport.

 Kenny:
What was your answer to his question on that specific question?

 Gary:
I had to bring the gentleman back to the same place that we took off from in order to meet the exception for flight tours.

 Kenny::
Right. In general, you can't take somebody and drop them off as a commercial pilot, because it would be a 135 operation, but I remember you telling him about an exception. Is there an exception to that?

 Gary:
There is an exception where 6 times per year, and there's a section in 119 where you can give FSDO 72 hours notice and they can give or not give you approval to make a flight, a short flight with a passenger, point A to point B, I believe it's 2 passengers, and no cargo.

Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

 Kenny:
Because he asked a specific cargo question too, didn't he?

Gary:
Yes, and in that exception, for those 6 rides a year, it specifically says no cargo. He was really wanting to nail down the fact that I knew the difference between a 135 operation. I really think that that was on his mind, to make sure that I knew the difference.

 Kenny:
It was, and he kept those questions coming and you just sat there and calmly and smoothly rattled him off. You did a good job at pausing, taking your time answering. You didn't get in a big hurry and go, "I can do this, and I can do this, and I can't do that." You sat there, you thought about it a few seconds, and then answered fairly slowly, descriptively, and gave him a pretty good answer. I know I was sitting there, grinning the whole time, going, "Yeah, he's nailing this." Again, just because you hit it hard, because you studied it, you opened the book and read it. That's ...

 Gary:
I think you may have noticed that more times than not I told him I'd be glad to look that up for the exact wording, but this is what I recall, because I believe that certain situations that allow for planning a person should go back and read it 1 more time and not assume that you know exactly what it says. He never took me up on it. Even though I had my book there, I knew right where to go to read it to him. He just wanted to know what I remembered, and didn't want me to go read the exact quote.

 Kenny:
Okay, how about any other specific questions that are popping up to mind? I can't think of any, actually.

 Gary:
He hit me with hold old do you have to be as a passenger before you have to wear a seat belt. Talking about a child under age 2 riding on someone's lap. I had not committed that to memory, because I haven't been put in that position, but I did tell him that I'm sure I could find it for him, to be sure before I made a guess. As it turns out, it's the same as if you're flying southwest or united, it's 2 years old.

 Kenny:
All right, so next question or the question that I might have just asked was what did you notice different between private and commercial check rides?

 Gary:
The examiner I went to for the private really didn't reference any accident reports. I was kind of surprised and wasn't expecting to be handed ... I don't know if he gave me 6 or 7 different NTSB accident reports with helicopter crashes being described. Then, he had taken the synopsis or the cause of the accident and whited it out, and allowed me time to read them and come up with my conclusion as to what caused the accident.

 It seemed like he had an example for some of the common things like trying to fly at an altitude or adjust the altitude that's above your out of ground effect ceiling. I believe there was one that described pretty much settling with power. I believe there was one that pretty much described loss of tail rotor effectiveness and so forth. Just the common topics that he would ask about, and then he used those times then to get into talking a little bit about that. For instance, the accident with settling with power, he then used the opportunity just to make sure that I understood settling with power, and then moved on to the next accident.

 Kenny:
Yeah, I can interject on that. That's probably what a lot of examiners will be doing, because of scenario based training that we're going to be going to. In a way the PTS is going to become the ACS, but with this specific examiner what comes to mind for me, I mean that was cool that he did that. The examiner that we used, I actually did his CFI like 5 or 6 years ago, and when I did the training with him for CFI, all the lessons plans he had that he prepared for me, he would present me with a NTSB accident report. He was doing that back as the new CFI and now years later as an examiner, he's doing the same thing. When I took Holly to do her CFI right after your commercial, and we went over and did a mach check ride with the same examiner that you used for your commercial, because we were going to use another examiner for the CFI.

  
We did a mach check ride with the examiner that we used for you, and that was what interjected for Holly was, "Oh, nice presentation, but pull out an NTSB report or 2 of an accident involving that subject." She did then, and then on her CFI check ride, the examiner was really tough on her. He was really, really tough. When she finally got to present her lesson plan at the suggestion of the previous examiner, she handed him some, she was teaching sloped landings, she handed him a couple of NTSB reports on accidents that happen during a slope, that was 1 thing that he complimented that he liked, even though he was really tough and didn't give us a lot of, "Hey, nice job." That was the 1 time that he really said at the end, he said, "Yeah, I like how you handed me those accident reports."

  
That's good, I think that's awesome, and it helps gear up towards the scenario based questions that they're going to start getting to. Going for your CFI, we know we will definitely do that with whatever you have to present to the examiner, which will probably use the same guy. He'll be expecting that, and he'll love it, because he's the one that kind of introduced that.

  
All right, so next, let's talk about emergency stuff. I remember him specifically hitting VNE pretty hard and really going, talking about the numbers for the RPM range on the auto rotation, power off RPM range. He wasn't big on numbers, but he was big on those numbers, correct?

 Gary:
Yes.

 Kenny:
He really wanted you to know those numbers on the RPM minimum and maximum for power off.

 Gary:
Right, and I think he kind of caught me off guard on that, because in flying different aircraft, I've just known to pay attention to the green and the yellow and the red on the instruments, and not so much the numbers associated with them. When he first started asking about the RPMs given the numbers that are represented on the enstrom gauges, I think he could tell pretty quick that I'd grown accustomed to just looking at the shaded area to see that I'm in the operating range. Then he actually pulled out a color printout of the instrument panel of an enstrom.

 Kenny:
Just looked exactly like what's in here, pretty much, right?

 Gary:
Yup. He just pointed at it and referred back to the numbers as he's pointing it at to make sure I agreed with him on the numbers. When I could see that he was looking at the numbers within the green shaded area, I agreed with him. I think he allowed that to be acceptable, that I didn't have the numbers committed to memory, but I believe he kind of expected me to do and I had failed to do that for him.

 Kenny:
That would probably be a big difference between private and commercial check rides.

 Gary:
Yes.

 Kenny:
What was this examiner at the commercial level wanting to know numbers, more specific, which would make sense between private and commercial check rides.

 Gary:
Right.

 Kenny:
Next, what are you thinking about, what's on your mind?

 Gary:
I think we used that opportunity when he pulled out that color picture of the gauges asking me why is it, why do we have a green area, a yellow area, and a red area? Why is it important to stay within the limitations? I don't remember which gauges he hit, but I know he did specifically ask about VNE and he ask about the RPMs. Why is there a different range for the engine off RPMs on the rotor system and a very narrow area for the RPMs for the engine RPM.

 Kenny:
In my memory, it seems like that's the hardest area he hit was RPM, VNE related. Really hitting the VNE and talking about how you go up in altitude and how much the VNE comes down. We even talked about I think, I was surprised when I looked up, I went to fly 4, 80, 1 time. I was going up to 13,000 and the VNE was like 46 or something. We kind of talked about that. Why people don't think about how much the VNE goes down as you go up, so it would make sense at the commercial level they're going to hit that a little harder.

 Gary:
I'm sure most people are like me. I've had a couple of aircraft of my own and I spend most of my time at a 1,000 feet or less.

 Kenny:
All right, how about the flight? Anything you can think of flight wise? Just give us a general overview of what he thought, commercial wise versus private wise? Did it feel any different training, getting ready? Did it feel any different the day of the test? How much different did it seem than the private?

Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

 Gary:
You had prepared me for the fact that it was going to be the same maneuvers with the exception that I was going to have to be a little more fluid, a little more steady, you know, as I did each maneuver. This examiner did a very nice job right off the bat of putting me to ease. He said, "We're going to hit all the maneuvers, but ... " He said, "We're going to combine some. For example, when you done your shallow approach, I'm going to have you do a slide on, and we'll knock them both out. When you do your confined area, we're also going to be doing a steep approach." He tried to save time in the aircraft by combining as much as he could.

  
His distractions were a little different. I believe my first examiner started talking about 1 of the instruments on the panel that he didn't think was working properly. That was a distraction a little bit, whereas this examiner it was more laid back. He talked to me about do you have a family, yeah I have a family too, we talked a little bit about what college my oldest went to, and so the distraction he gave me was just instead of talking about flying, he wanted me to keep within the hundred foot of altitude and have a conversation about family.

 Kenny:
All right, so next, tell us something happened that you didn't expect.

 Gary:
I guess I was totally prepared psychologically, and of course in my notes and had my sectional. Everything was already to go on the cross country that he'd given me to Detroit. I really expected him to start me on my way for that cross country, and then I figured he'd give me a diversion, divert me to a different airport within the first few minutes, just to see me refigure heading and fuel calculations. He asked me a couple questions about, "So, if we were going to Detroit today, what heading would we take?" I gave him that and that pretty much satisfied him. Of course, during the oral, we talked quite a bit about the cross country, but as far as the practical flying part of it, when we're up there doing the maneuvers in between somewhere, he said, "If we were going to Detroit, which way would we head?" That was it.

 Kenny:
I remember him looking over the cross country, but he didn't pick it apart. He just kind of glanced over it. Did he ask you a lot of questions about it? I don't think did, did he?

 Gary:
I think he tried ... He used it to give me a little bit of his experience on flying in and out using the helicopter charts.

 Kenny:
Charts, and this was something that he had us do was he had you ... What'd he ask us for?

 Gary:
He wanted the helicopter route chart to be ... I guess the way he worded it was make sure that I'm familiar with the helicopter route chart for Detroit and plan a cross country to Detroit.

 Kenny:
We got a route, we got the chart for Detroit, and you worked through it, figuring out what routes you would use, and then you showed it to him, and he was satisfied with it, right?

 Gary:
Yes, he said that worked, but he said, and then he gave his own personal opinion, he said, "I probably would come in a little bit south and go up on this route." I came back with, "Well, realistically I plan on contacting them and asking them what route they want me to bring me in." What I figured was the longest possible scenario to make sure that I had enough fuel.

 Kenny:
All right, so that ended up not being a big deal, but at first we were kind of like, "Oh, he wants a route chart! Oh, man!" We overnighted it and got here, just because we wanted to show up prepared and do what he asked us.

  
Okay, we just had the camera off for a minute as an airplane went by. While he was going by, Gary brought up our fueling loading for the day of the test. Talk about that for just a minute.

 Gary:
I think I ask you what you thought about should we top it off with fuel and you had said, "No, just leave it, and we'll ask them."

 Kenny:
My thought was not being any heavier than we have to be, figuring it would hopefully be a short check ride, knowing we could always add fuel if we needed to before the test.

 Gary:
Absolutely. To me, I guess it put me to ease even more when we finished with the oral and we were getting ready to head out to the helicopter and I said, "I've got 18 or 19 gallons on board. Do you want me to add some fuel?" He said, "Oh, that'll be plenty." I'm figuring, "Okay."

 Kenny:
You know it's not even going to be an hour, it's going to be about 3 quarters of an hour, so you could relax at that point a little bit knowing that they're not going to keep you up there a long time.

 Gary:
Absolutely. Right away, I knew it was going to go fast and wasn't going to be any tricky business, and it wasn't. He stuck with the maneuvers and knocked them out, 1 right after the other. Looking back at practical test standards, he hit them all. He's just crafty in the way that he did it in combining different things to save fuel and time on aircraft and his time, I guess.

 Kenny:
He was thorough, but fair, very laid back and did make us at ease. He gave us some of the outline of what he was going to ask us and how he was going to do it. Since he's a fairly new examiner, he was kind of going, "Well, here's what the FA wants us to do." Start with small talk, put you at ease. That was neat for us, to get a little bit of the things examiners don't always tell you, by kind of telling us how his plan of action was going to be and things that he needed to do and things that he needed to touch on, so that was kind of cool.

 Gary:
Yeah, I remember he even ... He kind of a little bit humorous at first by going down through his checklist. State your name, make them at ease, offer them something to drink tell them where the restrooms are.

 Kenny:
Right, exactly. All right, cool, well we'll try to wrap it up here pretty quick. People don't want to sit and watch the video for too long, I think we hit the main things. You did an awesome job, I was proud of you.

 Gary:
Thank you.

 Kenny:
We know that the private ... You had no problem on the private level. The oral area, I remember that being really good. We didn't do a lot of ground for your private, because you were using my original ground school that I built in the beginning. We did a little bit of grounding, and everything I would ask you I would nail. Then, the private, after we were done, the examiner said, "He missed the standard, but before he comes back for his commercial, he needs to be smoother." I said, "I know that." He goes, "Hey, for the private level, he's there." Then, a couple of years of flying on your own, flying the rotor way, flying the Hiller, flying some Enstroms.

 
 I hadn't flown with you for a couple years, and when I jumped back in with you last Fall, I went, wow, man, you're going to have me in trouble, because that time that you got under your belt from flying the last couple years and everything that you've been through, a couple of equipment failures, probably save that for another day ... We'll do another video 1 day when we're bored, but Gary's been through several major malfunctions that he walked away and everything was fine, and no problems, but he's had some great experiences since the private level to go into a commercial check ride, kind of going in with a little bit of confidence.

  
I even told the examiner that. He's like, "Well, hey, does your guy have any weaknesses?" I thought, "Number 1, am I going to tell you if he has any weaknesses, I'm probably not going to tell you." Also, I did tell him, "Hey, he's got a few hundred hours and he's been through transmission failure, engine stoppage. He was practicing for getting ready to set up and do a straight and auto to the numbers 28. Just as he was getting ready to enter, the engine quit, and he landed on 28 and walked away." He came up to me in the office and said, "Hey, I just had an engine failure." I'm like, "What? Are you all right?" "Yeah." Restarted it and hovered it in. You went into that check ride with knowing that you've been through emergencies and surely that had to give you some confidence I would think.

 Gary:
I can see how a person could lose some of the ground knowledge while they're building that time, and I could see where your flying could improve and you could lose the ground. What I did to stay fresh was I just kept logging on your site when I had an extra half hour and just watch a video again. In the original modules, I've probably watched those videos a dozen times each. It doesn't hurt to get fresh on it.

Kenny:
Right, and you still studied on your own. We discussed on the way home from the check ride, somebody had just did a refund on my ground school and got for the commercial section, the guy's like, "Well, there's nothing in there that I couldn't have read on my own." I went, "Okay, yeah. The information's out there. People don't want to study on their own sometimes. People want to watch a video, they want to hear the audio." You can study the whole thing on your own if you want to, but you said, "I still read." Which you did, you obviously read because you knew the 119 so well. That, you did on your own by just studying the FAR/AIM. My point is we're plugging my Helicopter Online Ground School of course, but you still studied on your own too. There's other things that we do as much as we can with online ground school, but a person still needs to do some studying on their own.

 Gary:
I think where your videos come in handy for me is I can multitask. If I'm working on a report at work and I have it playing in the background, I'm halfway listening and halfway concentrating on my work. The things that I have already committed to memory, maybe I ignore that part and then maybe start hitting on a topic I'm a little rusty on, I'll listen to it for a minute. Also, on the treadmill, I prop the iPad up on the treadmill and put a half hour video on and start running. You can't really read a book doing that. There's different ways to study, and I think if you bring them all together and hit it from every angle, read, watch the videos, keep the ground fresh in your mind.

 Kenny:
All right, I think we'll wrap it up. We've hit a lot of stuff. One last thing, what would you tell somebody watching this, getting ready for their commercial? What would be 1 tip? Anything that you can think of that we haven't talked about?

 Gary:
I think take a day off before the check ride like we did, and not go there stressed out. If you're going to the check ride and it's a matter of life or death whether your pass or fail, you're probably going to fail.

 Kenny:
Yes.

 Gary:
I think go there knowing, hey, I'm going to do my best. If I have to come back another day and finish 1 part of it, then so be it.

 Kenny:
Right, that's great advice, because we ... That was our goal to be done a day or 2 ahead of time. Flying last minute always sucks. Everybody's always nervous. We were in good shape, we got everything, the paperwork, done that work a few days ahead of time. We got most of this on video. The last day, we were kind of like just going. Okay, I think we left here like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We just did some ground stuff, we thought about flying, but we're like, "You know what? We're feeling good. There's no use to go out and beat it up in the pattern 1 more time." We did leave about 2 o'clock the previous day, right?

Gary:
Yes.

 Kenny:
About 2 o'clock before the check ride, we just said, "That's it, we're going home." We walked out both feeling good about it. Everything done, no freaking out, no going, "Oh my god, we've still got to fix this." We left going, "Yeah, we feel good." The next morning we went and did it. You did a great job, and that was 1 of the best check rides I've ever done, 15 years.

 Gary:
Thank you.

 Kenny:
100 people, I've never ...

 Gary:
Thanks a lot.

 Kenny:
It was 1 of the best, it was that good. 

Commercial Pilot Check Ride Debrief With Gary Cleveland

Let us help you with all of your ratings! We have four FAA certified courses, Private PilotCommercial PilotInstrument Pilot, and Certified Flight Instructor. We have a bundle pack called, Professional Pilot Lifetime Membership, that includes all this for life.