Skill test - do I keep my mouth shut?
 

This will probably become pretty evident to me when I come to take my skill test (hopefully next month), and I'll obviously speak to my FI about it, but I wondered if any PPL's could tell me how they were told to approach the test in terms of dialogue :confused:

A few examples of what I mean will hopeully help.

1) During Nav flights I normally speak to my instructor during each leg, commenting on things like ground features I have noticed while reading from chart - ground, which indicate I am either on track or driting off track but I would wait unitl e.g. the halfway point before making a decision on any heading or ETA corrections that I felt were needed. I also tell my instructor if I am making a change to the forecast wind when planning my diversion. I don't ask him questions, I just tell him what I've noticed and what I might have to do about it.

2) I normally call all my checks out loud while performing them. Where I know that some things are taught slightly differently by some instructors at my FTO, I say this is they way I have been taught, but I know there are other ways that are also taught.

Do examiners want students to be vocal during their test, or should I basically keep my mouth shut and concentrate on pointing the aircraft in the right direction?

Thanks.

Paul.

I tell my candidates that I will act as an intelligent passenger on the nav legs (e.g. if I see another aeroplane, I'll point it out). I ask them to tell me what the ETA at the turning point will be and if they amend it. Also, if they're off track, to tell me how they're regaining it. Oh - and to wake me up if required!

The diversion again, "When you're ready, please take us here. Let me know your ETA when you've worked it out please."

Once the div is over, I will tell the candidate that the navigation is now "mine, all mine!" until I tell him/her that it's time to go home - but that'll be from a well-known local landmark. Otherwise, to do what I ask - no need to remember the sequence of exercises.

If you want to chant out what you're doing, feel free. But there's no need, the Examiners are sly enough to notice! And remember, if you develop the habit of describing what you're doing as you do it, eventually you want be able to talk quickly enough - so try to drop the habit except for the odd memory-item checklist.

There'll be NOTHING NEW on your Skill Test; it's just an overall assessment of your suitability to take you and your friends pleasure flying SAFELY.

And we know that you will be nervous and will probably make the odd mistake - we all did once!

Good luck - but reading between the lines of your post it sounds as though you've got the right idea and you won't need any luck to get you through!!

I'm no examiner but i talk when i'm with someone else.

i reckon if you are telling them whats going on it lets them know you have a bit of a clue whats going on.

Its also handy to vocally readout checks you are performing so he may be able to guide you in the right direction should you have missed anything. I know i would prefer to pop on a fuel pump or carb heat should it have been inadvertantly forgotten (as we all have before)

Good luck with the test. You can get on with having fun soon:ok:

F.

Quite a few pilots talk to themselves, we discovered when we did a thread on this recently - some of us include in our briefings to passengers "don't worry if I talk to myself at some points, pilots do that".

I think that trying to remember to keep quiet just because you've got an examiner sitting next to you would be an unnecessary complication.

On my test the examiner told me off for talking too much - he was right, as I put my foot in it spectacularly by looking down and saying 'Oh look, there's Rednal'... to which he replied 'Really?' and it took me about 30secs to realise it was Montford Bridge... (about 5 miles away). He pointed out that if I'd kept my mouth shut he'd have had a better impression of my navigation.

On the other hand, I passed...

Tim

I'd keep my mouth shut. It can only get you into trouble. You will be more relaxed if you don't talk about what you're doing and you won't be feeding the examiner ammunition.

I know a chap who failed an instrument test by talking it through. He said he was on a QDM when he was on a QDR.

I agree with the two mentioned above - I too have been slapped on the hand for being too chatty on some of my nav. routes, and it's surprising how much you miss, or how far you can drift off track when all your thought processes are coming out of your mouth.

Cheers, Jack.

I spoke on mine not all the time but when I was doing something like freda, bumpff checks etc. As the examiner had already told me that I should consider him a passenger I decided to explain things to him as if he had not flown before. It was OK he said after that I was not the best pilot in the world but I was never dangerous and he never felt I wasn't in control. So I echo what others have already said, do what you have been taught and if you're not 100% set up and stable for landing GO AROUND there's no shame in it.

Thanks for all the feedback and tips everyone. I think it's great that people take the time to pass on their experiences on the forum to those of us who are further down the food chain.

There are some interesting stories and things to watch out for I think, especially about how you can talk yourself into trouble. Like all of us, I suppose examiners will come in lots of different shapes and sizes and have slightly differing attitudes towards this. I think a happy medium is probably the best approach. Not too much and not too little.

Oh well, guess I'll soon find out.

Thanks again everyone :ok:

Paul.

The most important thing about the Skill test is that the candidate is supposed to relax and enjoy it! It should be a practical flight as far as possible with the examiner acting as a passenger, so treat him as one.

I advise the candidate to tell me the heading height and eta for each leg, they can change anything so long as they tell me. All deceisions are made by the candidate; if the candidate asks me what to do whilst in the air, I say nothing to emhasise the point that he is in charge. I want to see the candidate make a decision, if I want him to do something different I will tell him after he has made his own decision, but then only to enable me to make the flight run more expediciously.

Everything in the test must be pre-briefed so if there is anything you are not sure of, ask the examiner before you take off.

All the examiner wants to see is a candidate who can opperate the aircraft safely, and make sound judgements. If the candidate makes a mistake, and they all do; do they recognise it and are their subsequent decisions reasonable in respect to their experience.

The first sign of overload is when what you say is not what you think you have said; the examiner will be the first to notice, so don't say any more than you need to or you may be talking jibberish!

Aviate, navigate, communicate.

Communication (including to your passenger / examiner) comes in 3rd place.

I failed the PFL because I tried to impress the examiner by going thru' all the checks out loud instead of flying the aeroplane - and me a glider pilot :O

Nailed it 2nd time out - and kept my mouth shut!

SD

Another top-tip which I demonstrated to on my nav test.
When time is up, turn. The examiner asked me whether I could see the disused airfield Raydon(Spelling?, in Essex, I think). I said not or at least that I couldn't recognize it as such but that we would be overhead in 1 minute. As we turned, after the minute was up, he pointed it out to me; it was three different colours of crop which broke up it's layout.

It's one of those tricks of navigation, if you've maintained a heading and a time and checked that it is good, you WILL arrive very close to where you want to be.

There's a lot to be said for doing checks out loud. I didn't learn that way, but I noticed that some people - often those with a military background - always did them out loud. When I did my FI course, my instructor, with 30,000 hours or so under his belt, quite automatically did his checks out loud. I decided to try it, and I now think it's a good idea. You're less likely to miss something, and much more likely, if the checks are very familiar, to DO them rather than just go through the motions (OK, I know none of us would EVER do that anyway! ;) ). So I now do them out loud myself, and teach them that way too.

So I'm not saying change what you do for the test. But if you've learned to do them out loud, and that's what you do, then do it. :ok:

BlueLine

Those comments certainly make sense. I want to enjoy my skill test rather than dread it approaching. My FI has told me just to treat it like another flight with him. A friend of mine took his test last autumn and said he just scraped through. Instead of being a highpoint in his aviation training, he was on a real downer afterwards and didn’t fly again for several weeks. I’m feeling more relaxed about being able to do all the things I need to during the test, so as you say, the best time to ask any questions about the conduct of the test itself, will be on the ground during the flight brief. Thanks for that.

Saab Dastard

Glad to hear you nailed the PFL 2nd time out. From talking with PPL’s at my club, it seems to be the one thing they all dreaded and often fluffed during their skill tests. I suppose the answer is to practise it until it comes more naturally, so I’ll be trying to do that over the next month.

Miserlou

What you said really rang true last week. My FI took me on what he said was a difficult Nav route, which he had done during his commercial training. One of the waypoints was hidden in a tiny valley amidst hills. Although my track and time looked good at the halfway point, there wasn’t much in the way of ground features after that. With 2 minutes to go all I could see was hill after hill and I really thought I had gone seriously wrong somewhere. It wasn’t until I orbited at the ETA that I saw this small village underneath me. That really showed to me the importance of maintaining an accurate heading. I was quite surprised I found the place, but my FI says I really need to stop putting myself down so much, as I’m pretty self critical after my training flights.

Whirlybird

Well, I have learned to do the checks out loud and no-one has ever told me not to. I find it’s a good way of reaffirming what I’m actually touching, moving etc, so I guess I’ll take your advice and just keep doing things the way I have done during the test. I also found myself talking my checks out loud to my FI during my solo circuit consolidation flights (even though he was a thousand feet below me on the ground). A bit worrying, but at least no-one was there to hear. A fellow student told me about a time he had forgotten to release the PTT button after calling downwind and had then gone on to utter some obscenities i.e. "right. let's get this :mad: landing nailed this time or my FI will cut my :mad: off"..... Apparently no-one who had heard him could keep a straight face when he came back into the club after landing. When he found out, he was mortified.

Sorry for length of this post, but I wanted to reply to everyone who had taken the time to offer feedback. Thanks again :ok:

Paul.

Yea I agree with most of whats been said, just treat it as another flight. All the examiner is looking for is a safe, competant flight, not perfection. Like Saab. I too mucked up my PFL on the first go, but nailed it 2nd time.

Good luck!

As the saying goes "far better to keep your mouth shut and let them think you are a fool rather than open it and let them know for sure". I think the worse thing is hearing pilots trying to explain away errors when all they do is to dig a deeper hole for themselves! Just about everyone screws up on their flight tests, I know I have on every one and usually just comment "oops". Either the instructor examiner didn't think it was a serious enough mistake up or was too scared to fly with me again because I have passed every check ride at first attempt so far and I'm certainly no "top gun" pilot.

Must be said that on my initial IMC test the examiner commented afterwards that yes, I had made a few mistakes, but I'd always spotted them by double-checking within 30 seconds or so and told him ('whoops - that was supposed to be heading 145 not 154!', that sort of thing), so safety was never compromised. But I agree, I fly much better when I've got no-one to talk to; passengers distract me.

Tim

My instructor had an interesting way of demonstrating what was a sensible level of cockpit discusion.

We were flying a nav ex one day, after about 10 mins when we were nicely established at 3000 ft and on track, he asked me how work had gone that day, and chatted away, I should have seen it coming really, it was the first time he had ever made small talk.

You guessed it, after 3 mins we were at 2300 30 degrees off track . What a plank I felt.

Lesson learned though. Keep discusion relevant to flying.

That said though I am a great believer of doing checklists out loud. It gives pasengers confidence and I find it helps me not to forget anything. I reckon your examiner will be more than happy to hear you recite them.

I have to relate to that one - I do like to talk when I fly:

"There's such and such" or "Right I am putting the call in for..."

However, sometimes I do come out with something that is wrong, which is good ammo for the instructor!

Best of luck,

Maz

Well, at least I'll know what to do now if my examiner starts asking me about work . :D

Thanks for all the tips and good luck wishes everyone. I'll let you know how it goes.

Paul.