How to Pass Your Check-ride: A DPE's 5 Tips
Show notes
A Designated Pilot Examiner shares 5 tips to pass your checkride, plus the story of his engine failure and landing on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive at 3 PM on a Friday.
Johnny Ginley, a young DPE and fellow Ohio State aviation alum, explains what examiners see from the other side of the table. The advice applies to private, instrument, commercial, CFI, ATP, and type-rating checkrides. Many checkrides end before they even begin because of missing flight time, a bad endorsement, or aircraft paperwork that can't prove airworthiness.
In this episode:
- Logbook mistakes that disqualify applicants, and why airlines still want clean logbooks years later
- Proving airworthiness: inspections, ADs, and why a printed status sheet isn't enough
- "Know your numbers": why cruising at 2,300 RPM needs a reason behind it
- Don't force the flight: making a go/no-go call when the wind picks up on checkride day
- Don't force the landing, and the one maneuver where a go-around now counts as unsatisfactory
- Average checkride pass rates and how the ACS changed the CFI oral
- The throttle cable failure that put Johnny on Lake Shore Drive, and how he got back in the cockpit afterward
Got a checkride coming up? Send this episode to someone who needs it. You can read Johnny's full article in Pilot to Pilot Magazine.
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