Checkrides

[Michael Blakely]

Don,

There's no time limit when you receive the next checkride. You can work on it for days, weeks, or months while you continue to fly your regular bids. You can ask question, practice sections, and record several attempts to try and capture your best effort.

[Harold Henderson]

I thin (Desi Arnaz spelling of the word "think") Don makes a good point. Don't want to give away the specific details of the checkrides, but it would be helpful to produce a matrix of the skills to be possibly tested in each checkride.

[Wayne Pierce]

The following is my opinion only.

The way now to get your checkride is to request from your HUB manager to be sent it, officially, to you. When that is done the AAV computer system marks you as having the checkride in your queue and it remains there until you take the checkride. This can be as long as you want it to. There really is no time limit for the advancement checkrides. Hopefully it is done within a few weeks or months, this would show that your serious about flying with the AAV and advancing in positions. Your choice, no one is pressuring, you in any way.

A checkride issue is just a set of AAV ATC instructions, nothing special. Like taking a test in school. You study, do homework and the day comes when all you were supposed to study for, you get a test. This is an open book exam, with no time limit. Any nervousness or apprehension comes from the fact that, now you have to fly with someone seeing what you did. All the flights you made for your FREQ's may have been less than standard IFR flights. We fly under the honor system here. On line Vatsim flights are the only way to see what has been flown. Off line flights, no one knows what you do. If you cheat, then your only robbing yourself from the knowledge of the practice of machine powered flight.

While your flying your FREQ's you use the departure and arrival charts already ,at least you should be, as all your flights for the AAV are IFR and using them is the way to learn what is to be done. This is not the place to just fly using a GPS and straight line flights for your flights. Already using charts for your FREQ's is the practice that you need to fly any checkride. Each checkride uses a bigger aircraft. How many of us just fly one aircraft the whole time with our FS game? I fly all kinds of aircraft and learn each one as best as I can. So if a checkride use one type of aircraft you have never flown with or for sometime, grab it from the hangar and then learn how to do it. PRACTICE is a good line item here.

The best way to learn the procedures is to fly our friday GFI's. We always fly on VATSIM, so you get ATC practice. We always fly IFR and use charts, you get exposure to that. We talk amongst ourselves on Teamspeak and that is a good way to learn as we are always questioning each other about what we are doing, when, where and how for our flight.

As to what is on them; OK

2nd Officer; Flight navigation using a small turbojet aircraft under IFR conditions.
1st Officer; Flight navigation using a medium turbojet aircraft under IFR conditions.
Captain; Flight navigation using a large turbojet aircraft under IFR conditions.
Sr Captain; Flight navigation using a heavy turbojet aircraft under IFR conditions.
Commander; Flight navigation under IFR conditions.
The Retro checkride is available for your viewing already on the web site.
Euro 1 -2 ; Flight navigation under Eruopean IFR conditions and AAV ATC.

For the routing of these, depart from an airport using a SID and arrive at a destination airport using a STAR. That is it. Knowing how to operate your aircraft is also part of it. Knowing how fast or how high you can fly with each aircraft is essential. Knowing where all the functions of your aircraft are before you take a checkride. Knowing how to fly the aircraft manually is the key point here as the checkrides for the AAV are not to be flown, except for heading and altitude hold in level flight, using the autopilot, FMS, or autothrottle. If can read your Navigational equipment the you have no problem as your not allowed to use any GPS, navigational or addon flight management control system.
Why? What would you do if your FMC stops operating, as it does alot. When your autopilot will not accept any of the functions you are trying to input. Can you fly an airplane using, I know this is a strange concept here, only the manual controls? Pride your self in that you could. Fly an aircraft sometime with out using the mouse and sitting back and drinking Lattes with your feet up on the "cockpit".

Now at any time if you have questions about any phase of a checkride or a flight procedure please e-mail the training department at training(at)aavirtual.com and we will answer your questions. There are several real world pilots whom can answer your question.

I am not a real world pilot and do not profess to be. All that I have learned about 'flying", and very little at that, is from the time spent here at the AAV and taking all the checkrides.

In my opinion you don't need to know what is on the checkrides ahead of time. It is like a present, we are greatly in need of pleasent surprises once in a while.

Thank You,

[Theodore Martin]

I'm in agreement with the others. I greatly enjoy getting that surprise in the form of a checkride. It provides a little excitement (yeah I know...get a life ) in the simming game. Also the checkrides are different from real world in that you get them and can practice until you feel you are ready. It's not like in a RW checkride where you learn exactly what is expected from you during the checkride. And getting a checkride turned down is not a big issue here, you actually learn a little something extra and just do it again.

[Todd Meek]

I'm with the rest of you guys, keep them a secret. I also like getting the checkride packet, reading through it to see what is required then hit the sim and give it a few tries. Sure my first few I would never record and send in, but I just keep doing them and recording all of them until I have one that I'm satisfied with and I send it in.

[Greg Gemelli]

I think Wayne summed it up very well and I agree with keeping the checkride details under wraps. I understand where Don is coming from though and seeking guidance in area's of focus on the AAV checkrides is a valid suggestion. Having a PTS for each of our checkrides wouldn't actually be a big benefit. The tasks that you are graded on are fairly consistent for each checkride as Wayne explained. In the real world at the airlines we have documentation covering the points of our recurrent checks but these are very extensive and last 3 days (at least thats the way it is at my airline). The process here at AAV is very simplified and the directions for the checkride rarely need more than 1 page. This is not to say the checkrides are easy, it's more to say that the instructions are meant to be as simple as possible. Do they require preparation? Absolutely. Study? For most, yes. The assigned aircraft and routing are consistent with the position you are taking the checkride for; there really are no surprises or gotchas.

Don if you hold yourself to FAA Instrument PTS standards and are proficient with the tasks in that handbook you'll be good to go. Trust me!

Cheers

[Harold Henderson]

Don, you do get to use more features of the a/p as you progress through the checkrides.

[Arturo Carvajal]

You are right Steve!!!

First law to follow:

Flight straight and level manualy if AP does not work!! As soon you recover control try to engage AP again.

[Harold Henderson]

Very good and informative discussion. AAV at it's usual best!

[Michael Blakely]

We have several special endorsements (Retro, Euro1, Euro2). This conversations makes me think it would be fun to add an AP endorsement. Program the FMC correctly, fly a complex route, flight level changes, direct to route changes, add a hold, top it off with an autoland. Have it done in a sufficiently complex aircraft. Maybe even add a Retro-AP in the RFP 747-200 with the CIVA INS.

[Greg Gemelli]

The biggest limiting factor in writing some absolutely realistic and challenging checkrides is the ability to control realtime failures/scenarios and have them be a surprise. About 6 yrs ago when I was still very active flying at AAV I had looked into doing this with the Level-D using the "saved flight" option. The idea was that along with the checkride PDF the candidate would also get a "saved flight" file. When they were ready to take the checkride they would load the "saved flight" and it would load up cold and dark at the gate of the departure airport. The problem I kept running into was having specific failures occur at a specified time or at a specified location. I wanted to do a checkride that started in JFK and was bound for Europe. Full of fuel and during climb out experiences the loss of the #1 engine due to fire and has to return to the field. Pretty basic but I could not get the desired results to occur at a specific point unless I did it manually (basically eliminating the surprise). So I scrapped the idea. Add to the programming problems that obviously this would have only been available to members who owned the Level-D.

Are there any programs that would allow for a realtime checkride? Basically having an examiner and the candidate logged into a server and the examiner able to have control over failures, play the role of ATC and assign random tasks? Or would allow for triggering failures are specified points and/or altitudes in a manner that it would be surprising to the pilot taking the checkride? If so the opportunities for increasing the realism of our check rides is ripe

Cheers

[Wayne Pierce]

Are there any programs that would allow for a realtime checkride? Basically having an examiner and the candidate logged into a server and the examiner able to have control over failures, play the role of ATC and assign random tasks? Or would allow for triggering failures are specified points and/or altitudes in a manner that it would be surprising to the pilot taking the checkride? If so the opportunities for increasing the realism of our check rides is ripe :)Cheers

I had joined a VA where we fly only the DC3. DCAirways. They had an in-cockpit training program whereon two persons would fly in the same plane as pilot and a copilot respectively. You had to have a program which would log onto the aircraft and you use yours at your computer and the other would fly along in theirs as your copilot. The testor computer had to have a payware program to use, with connection to a server, and the testee used a downloaded program from the testor. With this the testor could watch you fly online realtime while you did the course. I don't know if this is even available anymore. I had purchased it with other ideas in mind but I never used it. I don't even know if the service and server you had to go through is still around.

I never did that checkride as they then offered " on your honor trainee flights".

WLP