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Brainteasers
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Apr. 13, 2009

Brainteasers
Interactive Quiz #142:
Tame That Checkride

All pilots experience the jitters when the Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) slithers into the aircraft and hisses, "Let's see what you know ..." So, let's quell all fears and see what you know about Practical Tests Standards.

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the questions as best you can, then click on the "Score my quiz answers" button to see your score and read the explanations. If you don't like your score the first time around, you can change some of your answers and resubmit. To get the most out of this quiz, we suggest you keep trying until you get a perfect score.

NOTE: When more than one answer is true, only the most complete, correct answer will be scored as correct. The answers are assumed to apply within the United States unless otherwise noted.

1. A half-year of slogging around the local skies crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with a flight instructor who smells of Old Spice and even older cigars leads to the glorious moment when the student is ready for the practical test, or what's more commonly called the checkride. Once the instructor endorses the student's logbook (and completes the necessary paperwork) attesting that the student is ready for the exam, the student must take the checkride within how many days?
a. 10
b. 30
c. 60
d. 90
2. A checkride is nothing if the paperwork isn't in order. Slip a little in your steep turn? No problem. Can't hold heading +/- 10 degrees under the hood? You might get away with it. But forget to check one box on the FAA Form 8710-1 and you can expect a midnight knock on your hangar door by the FAA form police. OK, it's not that bad, but paperwork can be a challenge (to CFIs), so the FAA has a website designed to solve paperwork issues (replacing them with web issues). All FAA programs have an acronym, and this one is called IACRA, which stands for:
a. Interweb Airman Certification and/or Rating Application
b. Integrated Airman Certification and/or Rating Application
c. Internet Airman Certification and/or Rating Application
d. Iowa Airmen Can't Remember Anything
3. Without looking inside your wallet, a Temporary Airman's Certificate (FAA-8060-4) is valid for how many days?
a. 30
b. 60
c. 90
d. 120
4. You earned your Private Pilot certificate on April 3. You added a seaplane rating to the certificate on July 27 (at Captain Ricky's Seaplane Camp up in Michigan), and then on Oct. 31 of that same year you added an Instrument rating. Assuming you still have some money left, before what date will you be required to successfully complete a flight review per FAR 61.56 in order to act as PIC?
a. Oct. 31, two years later
b. Nov. 1, two years later
c. Oct. 31, three years later, if you earned your Private ticket prior to your 40th birthday
d. March 1, two years later
5. The FAA's Practical Test Standards (PTS) says, "Examiners shall place special emphasis upon areas of operation considered critical to flight safety." Although your response may be, "Duh!" that list includes such hot topics as "stall/spin awareness" (kind-of important), "controlled flight into terrain" (CFIT, another good-to-know) and the old crowd-pleaser, ADM. Granted, four out of five pilots might shrug off ADM as just another acronym to be memorized and forgotten, but they've already passed their checkrides. Imagine you're in an oral exam and now must decode it. ADM means ...
a. Aeronautical Decision Making
b. Aeronautical Diversion-Decision Making
c. Aviation Decision Making
d. Aeronautical Decision Matrix
e. Advanced Decision Making
6. Flying hand-in-glove with ADM is CRM, which we know means "can't remember much," a common checkride malady. However, CRM also means "crew resource management (we'll also accept "cockpit resource management"). Other than the pilot(s), which other "human resources" (sometimes called "people" outside the FAA) are included in CRM?
a. Maintenance personnel
b. Air traffic controllers
c. Weather services (AFSS and such)
d. All of the above
e. b and c only
7. During the Private Pilot checkride (practical test, flight portion), the DPE acts as pilot in command (PIC), because the applicant still operates on a Student pilot certificate.
a. True
b. False
8. You arrive at a seaside airport for your Private Pilot checkride only to find your examiner, Mike Nelson, sitting on a park bench, eyeing little airplanes with what seems to you as bad intent. Parked nearby is the examiner's VW van. Passing it on the way to the FBO you notice an array of aqualung diving gear. Chances are that this examiner is a scuba diver and could ask an aeromedical question about what effects excess nitrogen might have on a pilot or passengers in flight after diving. According to the AIM, "The recommended waiting time before going to flight altitudes of up to 8000 feet is at least (_____) hours after diving which has not required controlled ascent (nondecompression stop diving), and at least (_____) hours after diving which has required controlled ascent (decompression stop diving)." Please fill in the blanks.
a. 8, 12
b. 12, 24
c. 12, 18
d. 18, 24
9. Sticking with the aeromedical-factors-of-flight theme, what is defined as, "A state of oxygen deficiency in the body sufficient to impair functions of the brain and other organs"?
a. Hypoxia
b. Hydroxia
c. Hydrophobia
d. Hyperventilation
10. You're on your Instrument checkride (single-engine airplane). Foggles slip down your sweaty nose as the examiner says, "I got the airplane." You reply, "Like hell you do, er, I mean, you got it," and release the controls. The examiner tells you to close your eyes while she flies the airplane into an unusual attitude and then gleefully calls, "You got it!" You're in a descending (nose-low) right-hand turn, airspeed is rising, engine howling, examiner laughing. Your best response would be to ...
a. Increase pitch, add power and climb.
b. Reduce power, increase pitch and then level the wings.
c. Add power, correct bank and then raise the nose.
d. Reduce power, correct bank and then raise the nose.
11. Bonus aircraft ID question. See photo below and answer this: What is it? (Hint: It's very fast.)

Brainteaser Quiz Aircraft


a. "Mister Mulligan" Howard DGA-6
b. Monocoupe
c. Mullicoupe
d. Flewdacoupe 7AC