Private pilot checkrides usually begin as if you are launching on a cross-country flight. For your flight's cross-country portion, you should have a navigation computer and the appropriate charts. Most assignments involve only one sectional chart, although your individual situation may require more. Examiners assign cross-country flights that they find appropriate; some want to evaluate how their applicants arrange multiple charts in the cockpit. Even a single chart demands preparation. It impresses few examiners (and no anxious passengers) when a pilot approaches the first checkpoint and only then wrests the still-folded chart from a flight bag to hunt for panels that should have been exposed before flight. Folding your sectional chart to heighten course line visibility is a life-saving skill. Each moment that your eyes probe needlessly inside the cockpit is a moment lost to detecting dangers outside the aircraft. Your examiner will also be conscious of whether you have a pencil and note pad aboard. (Of course, pencil and paper are wonderful on local flights as well, so bringing these items and keeping them handy should be one of your cockpit management habits.)
Whatever your cross-country plans, and whatever aircraft you fly, your flight-aid materials should be arranged so that they are secure, at hand, and ready. Most examiners have tested the applicant who, having leveled off at cruise altitude, asked the examiner to take the flight controls so the applicant could reach behind the seat and rummage in his flight bag for items that should have been efficiently in place before takeoff. Some examiners simply reply that the practical test standards (PTS) disallow the examiner to assist in the flight. Others ask, "Would you have a nonpilot passenger assume the flight controls while you distract yourself to the point that you are not piloting the airplane?" I have watched applicants turn around in their seats and rifle through their chart cases only to realize that the chart has been left behind. Other applicants have become lost because their obsolete sectional charts displayed incorrect navaid frequencies - frequencies that the current charts showed correctly.
This raises a point that some folks contend makes compliance with the practical test standards unlikely in certain training airplanes. The standards direct that you ensure that all loose items in the cockpit and cabin are secured. Good housekeeping is a hallmark of professionalism in pilots, drivers, astronauts, or anyone operating any equipment that moves. Aviators especially must know that turbulence will find them during their careers with all the kindness of a jackhammer. Accident reports every year reveal some hapless pilot bested by loose cabin items answering insane turbulence by bouncing into the flight control cables near the pilot's feet. Some light airplanes lack obvious, purpose-designed places to secure charts and flight computers, plotters, or pencils. The keyword is obvious. Does your airplane have pockets behind the seats? Many well-prepared applicants place their prefolded sectional charts, navlogs, flight computers, plotters, and other items in the seat pocket behind the examiner. That renders their in-flight aids secure against turbulence while keeping them within easy reach. Other applicants have wedged these items between the pilot seat and the bulkhead or between the pilot and copilot seats. Certainly a pouch or holder is best, but if the aircraft has neither, a pilot must find a safe and easily accessible place to house these items or find the airplane incapable of meeting the PTS requirement of securing cockpit items.
Another cockpit consideration is your seat position. This often seems a senseless point, especially to those who commonly fly only one airplane. Life cannot guarantee that you will have that airplane for your checkride. It happens more often than you might think. The day arrives, and the airplane develops a mechanical defect, but the flight school has just placed in service another airplane of your make and model. Logically there should be little difference between them, so you take the unknown airplane for your test. Once seated, though, it feels not quite right - like wearing another person's hat. That discomfort can taint your performance. You should be seated in your customary position; knees slightly bent, feet positioned to allow full movement of pedals whenever necessary, and comfortable enough for a long flight. Examiners know this, and being social creatures, we fight our natural response when applicants ask us to hold the brakes and flight controls while they readjust their unfamiliar seat. That should be part of the before-engine-start checklist. Remember that your examiner is only a passenger and should act the part by not holding the controls.
Another aspect of your seat position is how well you see outside. You need to see inside and outside references without straining. Aviation's most popular trainers have enjoyed a wide range of seat materials and seat thicknesses over the decades. Seats wear out, and replacements vary in both thickness and density. Slight shifts in body position change your sight picture and thereby your perception and judgment. Poor vision also causes apprehension and confusion and hinders positive airplane control. (I can hear a thousand voices across the land asking, "If examiners understand this so well, why don't they simply make allowances for it in applicant performance?") The best answer is that, as pilot in command, you should know this also and position your seat properly before engine start. That is principled cockpit management.
I occasionally see airplanes taxi past, their shoulder harnesses' metal ends dangling from their door frame troughs, waving like passengers on the departing Titanic. Restraints must be fastened, and you need to brief your examiner as if this is his first time in an airplane, just as you brief your passengers. The PTS directs your examiner to determine that you brief your passenger(s) on how to use safety belts and shoulder harnesses, and on emergency procedures. Too often examiners hear applicants describe how to put the safety belts on but ignore how to release them. When I was a charter pilot in the early 1980s, I had a frequent passenger, a forensic pathologist, whose laboratory late-nights made fascinating conversations as we flew back home. He told of autopsies on passengers who had survived the impact but succumbed to smoke and fire, and of their broken thumb bones and torn thumb muscles. It seems that these passengers, so familiar with automotive restraints, instinctively pressed with panic's wild strength on non-existent release buttons as they strove to free themselves from their shattered airplane's entrapping harness. Your examiner wants you to explain how to release that seat belt.
If you've accomplished all of these things, you've nearly succeeded in demonstrating your cockpit management skills. One vital point remains. Your pilot seat should be locked in position. As nearly a no-brainer as this seems, a number of light airplane cockpits now bear placards admonishing pilots to ensure that seats are locked in the desired position. The results, these small signs say, can be any degree of bodily injury or one degree of death. How is this possible? Seat tracks wear over time, but pilot inattention can make even a new seat unreliable. The steep deck-angle of a short-field takeoff over an obstacle causes gravity to pull seats backward, startling the unsuspecting pilot into the natural response - grab something to arrest that backward travel. The handy item to grasp is the yoke. At low altitude and low airspeed with a high pitch attitude, the airplane pitches up even more. As the seat track stops halt the runaway seat, the pilot discovers that he is too far away to move the flight controls sufficiently to prevent the stall-spin that follows. The time to make certain that the seat is locked in position is before starting the engine. It is a checklist item and a vital part of cockpit management.
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