CFI : Checkride : Part 1

It has been a long time coming… but today was the day; CFI Checkride day.  I was both physically and mentally ready for the session, and I felt good going in to this one.  Not at all like last time.

The day started out early, at about 5:30am when I got up, got ready, grabbed a pop-tart and some coffee from the local espresso hut.  I had loaded the car up with my 100lbs of books and lesson plans the night before.  A quick check of weather and a small update of my flight plan(Oregon mornings in January pretty much start out the same… 7-9ºC, 29.95-29.98) and I was on the road.

After getting settled in on the road to McMinneville to pick up Jerry's "Old Yeller" for the flight to Corvalis, I called in to 800-WX-Brief to file my flight plan and get a standard weather briefing.  Outlook looked pretty darn good for the flight down, minus a few AIRMET Sierra's in the valleys to the West and a AIRMET Zulu for 10kft.  10kft does not mean much to a Robinson pilot, although mountain obscurement and low level mist/fog tend to stick to the numerous little hills and valleys around here.  The outlook for my flight back was good, but had the potential to get hair near sunset.  With all luck, I'd be out of there before 3pm, so all systems go.

In a practical proof of Murphy's Law, just as I passed Newberg, OR (about 10 minutes North of McMinneville), the front driver-side tire on my Mini Cooper S decided to blow out.  Yup, that is right, 15 minutes before my flight to my CFI checkride I have a total blow-out.  Luckily the Mini has fun flat tires, and a blow out in that car consists of a loud puff of air, slight left drift, and a console warning light.  I pulled over to check out the damage, grabbed my tire pressure gauge figured I would see if it was really an issue or just a false working. I checked the pressure in front… no reading.  Great, and now my tire gauge is shot!  Checked the back tire… 38.5psi.  Hmmm… could it be a total blow out?  I figured I would rub my hands along the tread and come across a mega nail or something.  Nope.  How about the back sidewall?  Reached around and instantly and put my finger into a 2in x .5in hole on the inboard sidewall of the tire.   Total blowout.  0psi.

I gotta say, If it were not for the run-flats, the day would have been over then and there.  The run-flats let the Mini limp along at <55mph for <100 miles - so day was saved - somewhat.

I pulled in to McMinneville about 10 minutes late to see Jerry Trimble just using a very cool portable generator to warm up the Helicopter via the electrical block heater.  "Old Yeller" is Jerry's newest helicopter in the fleet; a Robinson R-22 HP - bumble bee yellow. Nice ship.  Jerry keeps his helicopters in tip-top shape; he just did a track and balance the previous day, and it was ready for me.

I've got to say, the electrical generator and electric engine-block heater is a great combo. Fast and not as tricky as the propane driven hair-dryers that I used before at Hillsboro Aviation.  I suppose each has their benefit, but this method seemed a little more civilized.

After some chit-chat with Jerry, I belted my bag of books and lesson plans into the CFI side of Old Yeller and did my morning pre-flight inspection.  All go.  Jerry disconnected the generator and heater and hung around just until I got the engine started - just in case.  Of course, no problems and I picked up.  Have to say, it is rather nice to have some weight in the left seat on a solo… CG is just better.

I climbed out into a cool, clear MMV day.  Headed west and met up with Route 99W for my travels down to CVO. It was an IFR flight.  (In this case, IFR means I Follow Roads. :)  I called up McMinneville Radio to open my previously filed flight plan and got another all clear on the weather.

Flight down was enjoyable and uneventful.  Winter mornings, in Oregon, are quite dramatic.  There is usually thick mist/fog hanging in the valleys and on the mountain tops - sticking to all the fir trees.  As the morning warmed up and we got a little breeze it all dissipates and you get a nice reveal of what makes the Pacific Northwest such a visually impressive place to fly. 

I've been down this way number of times, but I like to have as much in-flight information as possible.  As such, I fly with my iPhone affixed to my kneeboard, running the Motion GPS application.  I have pre-programmed it with about 30 or so GPS coordinates of local airports and VORs.  It gives me a non FAA Approved HSI analog that I use as information to backup my pilotage and dead reckoning.  In 99% of the cases I just use it for the distance to the airport.  I like to make radio calls at 10, 5, 2, an 1nm out.  May be a little excessive, but there are a lot of uncontrolled and private airports around here and I'd rather fail to the side of safety.

Wind was from 180@3 so I called a straight in, 1 mile final to Runway 17.  Floated in and aimed for the touch-down stripes.  Crossed over the runway to the north of the wind indicator / segmented circle.


View Larger Map

Crossed over 9-27 via the taxiway and parked on the first chevron near the FBO.  I shut down Old Yeller, did a post-flight walk around and called Jerry to let him know I made it in one piece.  He likes to know when his people land at their destination - just the kind of guy he is.  I'm sure I'd be the same way.

I grabbed my bags, had and headed over to the Helicopter Transport Services (HTS) building where I was to meet my Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE), Ron G.  I walked in, but there was not a soul to be found.  Of course at that point, I thought… "great, I'm in the wrong building!".  I walked back outside and looked for another entrance and found none.  I called Jerry on his mobile, again, to see if I he could give another direction on where to meet Ron.  Jerry validated I was in the right spot… just no DPE.  This is the, completely normal everyday occurrence, that throws me off balance on CheckRide day. 

Eventually I met up with Ron and took a seat in his office.  Clearly a busy man as he was on the phone 15 minutes before we actually got to talking.  He was very polite and apologetic for the delay.  In that time, I got to survey his office and get a little visibility into the mind that is Ron.  He is very organized in his own way, but has a good deal of clutter in his office.  I could tell by his 250 well labeled, 3-Ring binders that his a man for records and process.  He had a few pictures drawn by his children, and various computers in places.  Seems like we're going to get a long well.  Ordered chaos abounds.

Once we got things started, at about 9:45am, we started with a bit of chit-chat; or as Jerry calls it, "Foreplay".  It does help break the tension and did make me quite a bit more relaxed with what was about to come.  Ron is just a guy, not a hard-assed judge wanting to break my spirit and cause me to fail.

He started off with a very standard question; "Why did you become a pilot?"  That, of course, can be anything for anybody, and we spend 5 or 10 discussing each of our motivations.  While it did not get us any closer to the CFI Check Ride, it was just good conversation.

Ron kicked off the examination with a thorough look at my Logbook / Certificates / Medicals.  No point in starting the process if I ended up not being legally prepared to continue.  This went rather quickly, and I had all required information, test results, endorsements, identification and 8710 available.  From there we jumped right in.

He asked me to, using PTS, to "design your own checkride examination".  Actually, quite an interesting and probing question.  You better be pretty damn familiar with the PTS to design your own checkride.  There are very specific requirements in the PTS for the CFI checkride and I think his purpose for setting me off on this task was to make sure I knew my way thought the PTS.  It took me about 10 or 15 minutes to write out a 2 page, high-level outline.  During this time he set off for a quick hallway meeting with another HTS employee.  When he returned, I handed it over to him and he seemed pleased that it was complete.

Putting my selection for examination topics aside, he went by his own "outline".  First he started by asking some thought provoking questions about the PTS and Fundamentals of Instruction (FoIs).  A word to the wise for anyone who comes across Ron in their future checkride paths… he loves questions with many wrong answers and no right ones.  What do I mean by that?  Well, things like, "What is the most important characteristic of a CFI? and Why?" and "Give the single choice of 'Critique' or 'Evaluation' what would you pick?  and Why?".  It is definitely an interesting tactic to use.  No only do you have to know the entire subject completely, meaning you need to know all the characteristics of a CFI, but you need to understand them deeply enough to make a good attempt at picking the best.  Then, on top of all that, you need to be able to defend your selection.

This FoI topic continued for about 45 minutes.  More than half was conversational discussion around topics.  I feel like he understood I had the basic knowledge, but kept the dialog doing to see if I knew the correlation between the learned knowledge and how to apply it to students.  I had told him that I did quite a bit of teaching in undergraduate and graduate school.  I suppose I'm pretty comfortable in that scenario and it hopefully came through.

From there we jumped, heavily, into the PTS.  Let me stress this… Ron is a master of the PTS.  He knows it inside and out, frontwards and backwards… and I would be surprised if he could not recite entire pages by heart.  He loves it, and expects you to as well.  Anyway, one of the standard "Ron-ish" questions came up; "What is the most important part of the PTS?".  This question brought up about 45 minutes of discussion around the Introduction.  If I had to put the PTS Introduction into a few sentences, it is, "The Introduction to the PTS acts as the rules of engagement for all that follows.  It lays out requirements for passing and failure of candidates."

I don't plan to explain ever question and answer put to me in my session… but just be familiar with the PTS.  You can ignore the following:
    - the inside of the cover,
    - the last 3 pages,
    - and the inside of the back cover.
Go get your PTS.. check out those pages… you can skip those.

Next we reviewed regulations on CFI logbook entries, record keeping, certificates, endorsements.  This should come as no surprise to the CFI candidate coming up for their Check Ride.  This stuff it pretty obvious and straight forward.  They are regulation and you have all been through the Private and Commercial regulation cycles.  You should know 'em.  No surprises here.

Ron then dove into performance.  A rather out of the box question, actually.  The question was, "How many lbs of weight can 1" of manifold pressure lift in a R22?".  I can honestly say that I had never come across this question in any of my training, but all the information you need to solve this is in the PoH.  The discussion was pretty lively and I truly enjoyed chasing this one down. I gave him a reasonable answer by applying known theory.  Once satisfied at my response, we moved on to blade flapping.

Ron started off saying that dissymetry of lift is an aerodynamic phenomena that is counteracted by blade flapping.  Without teaching a lesson here, the advancing blade flaps up, the retreating blade flaps down.  As the blade flaps up, the angle of attack decreases and we lose lift on that blade.  The blade that flaps down increases AOA and increases lift.  Great.  Now comes the question.  "Why?".  Wow, with that one question he sent me into a spiral.  I really did not have a good answer as to why, and I quickly admitted that fact, but I gave him an answer that I would honestly give to a student, "Honestly, I don't know the answer, but if you want to research it with me right now, we will find it.".  He liked this response, and let me dive into my books.

Well, about 20 minutes later I had a pretty good idea.  I had drawn about 15 pictures of rotor blades at various phases of blade flap in multiple view angles with their resultant force vectors.  Think one of the scenes in "Beautiful Mind".  Unfortunately, as he said, "You are going to kick yourself when you actually get this.  You are circling the answer, very closely… you just need one more step to get you to the answer.  Lets move on."

Wham, there it is, with that single question "why?" he found a true and honest hole in my knowledge of helicopter aerodynamics.  No reason to beat around the bush with it… he got me.  But, I think the fact that I admitted it and said that right up front kept me from failing right then and there.  I'll come back to this a little later.

We talked then about Settling With Power, and with the obvious hole illustrated with the previous question, I gave him what he needed.

He, then, asked me to prepare a lesson on anything I chose.  I prepared a 20 minute lesson on the Lift Formula, Low Rotor Blade Stall and Low Rotor RPM identification and recovery.  I got to say, I'm really proud of myself for this.  I was really in my element here and I used the white board to illustrate my points.  During the entire presentation, he sat back and just nodded. I asked pertinent questions to "probe the understanding of my student", and he played right along.  About halfway thorough he asked if he could start in on his lunch.   At the end of my lesson he said, "well done, why don't you grab your lunch and head out and pre-flight he helicopter."

I asked for the number of the CVO FBO fuel truck, and I gave them a quick call to request fuel.  After adding 2gal of fuel I finished the pre-flight and was ready to rock and roll.  Ron strolled out a few minutes later and jumped in the right seat. 

I kicked off the flight by asking if how he wanted me to "treat" him; as a student or as a DPE?  I suppose I was most interested about carb heat.  Left seat in the Robinson makes pulling carb heat a bit difficult.  Honestly, I thin this is one of the failing in the R22.  As a CFI you don't want to let go of that collective for any longer than you absolutely have to.  Reaching over or under your knee to pull carb heat may take 1-2 seconds.  Depending on your student this might be .999 seconds too long.  So, I asked.  He said he would be more than happy handle the carb heat for me.  Good.  One less thing for me to do in flight.  Cockpit resource management, baby!

I asked for the startup checklist and began the startup procedures.  I have a tendency to talk this whole process out loud and mark my position with my thumb as I do it.  It has always been one of my things and I think as a CFI it is a good way to help the student know where they are as well.  Plus, when taking a passenger on a scenic, they seem receptive to the whole thing as it helps them understand what is going on.  Some are quite interested in how these things work as it is, and hearing you call out that "magnetos, check" seems to give them a thrill.  On the other hand, if you are a very knowledgeable pilot I sound crazy.  So, just prepped him for that.

He did like to ask questions and chit-chat during my startup, but I think that was purely to see if he could get me to skip something on the checklist, but no…  I mark my progress with my thumb.  Not catching me on that.

We picked up and took off with a normal departure.  We headed East and did some straight & level, controlled turns to specific headings and then validated "best rate of climb" and the fact that power usage is different at 40, 60, and 70 knots.  He had a few questions about various Robinson specifics, VNE, max weight, etc.  After about 10 minutes he had me head back to that airport and pointed out a nice confined area. 


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This is, clearly, a space he comes to often because it was perfect, about 75f wide and 400ft long and surrounded by 75foot trees.    Certainly not a place I would take a private student, but Commercial and CFI… it was a great test.  I'm pretty sure I could have refused it and he would have picked another, but it really seemed good at first glance.  I did a high reconnaissance left orbit for AWOTFEEL and found the space to be suitable.  Came in on for a steep approach and cleared the trees on the leading edge by about 40ft.  I came in to a gentle hover about 75ft from the end of the space.  He then asked, "how do you plan to get out now?".  Gentle 180º in Old Yeller and headed back to the furthest point and turned back around again.  Nice max performance on the way out.  There was no wind, so it was a bit on the close side on the way out.  Not dangerous or concerning, but with two big guys in there we needed every bit of power for our climb. 

After we were out of the confined area he asked me to do a normal pattern on the "Closed west taxiway".  I've got to say, this is a pathetic excuse for a taxiway.  Cracks, puddles, mud.  Sure, it is closed, but geez, what a poor excuse.  Looked like a back road at the beach.  Anyway, came in for a normal approach and then took off for another "survey" of the pattern area.  About 2/3 of the way down the taxiway there is a 6x6 foot box with an "H" painted in day-glo orange.  This was going to be my "target" going forward.  The next time around he asked for a steep approach and executed that flawlessly.  He then asked for a rapid deceleration / quickstop and knocked that out without any issues.

He asked for an autorotation with a power recovery on the next time around.  I came in a little hot the first time. I have to say that "target" is pretty hard to see. Anyway, I entered the auto smoothly, got RPM under control and started my glide.  Within the first 5 seconds I got a clear view of the landing pad and was able to recognize that I would be about 100ft high if I let it go, so I called a "Go Around" and recovered at about 400ft.  Next time around I entered a earlier and was about 5 ft short of the spot.  He asked for another "autorotation with a power recovery".  I think I knew he was going to want a touch down, but played right along.  Came in, same as before, and right at the flare I felt him take grip of the throttle.  I knew this was going to be my surprise touchdown and just got ready.  As I touched down I was slightly right of center and drifted slightly left.  I would would have preferred a centerline slide, but given that it was a "surprise" I was OK with my performance. 

Once we stopped, he said "I guess that was your touch-down, eh?".  I said that I guessed so, and motioned to the collective on his side.  He responded with a "What, I didn't do anything."  Ok, whatever.

He asked me to do a hover autorotation.  I picked up, and turned to the left by about 30º to line up with something in the distance.  "Eyes outside, hand all the way around the throttle, establish a smooth and low hover, in 3, 2, 1, roll off throttle, correct heading with pedals, wait and raise collective to the max."   Now, I know this is going to sound like I'm bragging.  And, well, I am.  That was the best hover auto I've ever had… no question.  There was almost no perceptible contact with the taxiway.  Seriously, like falling into a 150lb marshmallow.  Heading control was spot on as well.  Maybe 1º right deviation?

Ron then asked, "Well, was that within commercial PTS standards?" and I said, "Yes, sir… well within." with a grin.   "Well then, take me back to parking, please."

And that was it.

As soon as I touched down, he said, "Flight was enjoyable and I'm happy with your performance there.  The oral went well, except for your explanation of flapping.  You were very close and reasoned it out pretty well, but you never got it completely.  I'd like to have an additional conversation on the topic after you have some review with your CFI.  I'm not going to charge you or anything, I just want you to know this stuff completely."

So, I'm not done yet.  Not a pass, not certainly not a fail.  Honestly, I feel very good about the whole thing.  While I would have loved to have been done, I really feel that I held my own with one serious DPE.  He did find, and exploit, a true and honest weakness in my knowledge.  Unfortunately neither my Private or Commercial training ever answered the question, "Why does a blade flapping up reduce lift?" 

I've been studying the answer to this question and will be taking that knowledge back down to Ron in Corvalis next week.

Stay tuned…

Mea Culpa...

I've been really bad about updating my Blog. So, consider this a formal apology.  

Here is the situation. I'm going for my CFI license, and I've found the perfect place for me to get this training; Jerry Trimble @ Jerry Trimble Helicopters.  He's on Facebook if you are interested in learning more about the school and his programs.


I've been under Jerry's expert teaching since 2009-08-10, taking my time, getting the most out of this experience possible.  Short version, it was the perfect decision. Great pilot, great CFI, period.

When I pass this checkride, I'll be back to explain it all, I promise.

It has been a hell of a ride.