Should be. Sometimes applicants ignore the basics. Several years ago, astounding circumstance and poor planning overwhelmed a pilot applicant when the local VOR station was assigned a new frequency the same month that the government issued the latest local VFR sectional chart. (The new chart showed the new frequency, and notices to airmen [notams] had warned pilots about the impending change for about two weeks.) During oral testing before his flight, he answered all questions correctly, but the chart's battered, line-crossed face betrayed its obsolescence, so his examiner did not ask about the chart's expiration. Aloft, the applicant could not verify the first checkpoint, which was but a thinly penciled VOR radial unsupported by any surface landmark. The obsolete frequency, which he repeatedly sought from the obsolete chart, only resulted in a rumbling, red-flagged hum from the VOR navigation radio. This so unnerved the commercial (yes - commercial!) pilot applicant that in minutes he was lost within sight of his home field.
Although this example was extreme, its root in shoddy preparation supports the FAA's recurring cry that poor preflight planning remains the leading cause of aircraft incidents and accidents. It also reveals a creeping trend in flight training away from new pilots' understanding of a most fundamental flying skill: pilotage. Pilotage is simply navigating by reference to landmarks or checkpoints. Our growing reliance on VOR radio navigation in the early 1960s, then loran in the 1980s, and now on the global positioning system, has eroded the joyful tradition of looking out the window and proclaiming with authority, "That's White Pigeon!" Costly cross-country training flights rarely ignore navaids. Ground-based training devices cannot successfully imitate pilotage-based navigation scenarios. So, for too many students, pilotage becomes an exercise in academic study, with discussions between flight instructor and flight student the rarity. That leaves the checkride. Your pilot examiner's questions in this area reinforce flying safety and bolster your confidence in your ability to plan an uneventful cross-country flight.
Despite course lines, checkpoints, and the varied airspaces that your planned flight traverses, the destination, as Shakespeare would say, "is the thing." Examiners display an almost perverse interest in what information applicants gather concerning their destinations, how it was obtained - and particularly on applicants' interpretation of that material. Your examiner's questions may avoid mentioning it by name, but they will lead you to the Airport/Facility Directory, most often called the A/FD. Examiners' curiosity centers on their applicants' determination of airport elevation; runway and lighting facilities; available services, including fuel; communications frequencies, if any; traffic pattern altitude; and other pertinent information, including notams. Since A/FDs appear every 56 days and notams even more frequently, these government publications are deliriously popular with the pilot examiner family. These government publications should be just as popular with pilots.
Commercially produced products imitate the A/FD, in some regards surpassing the government booklet. Airport diagrams for smaller airports, for example, once were platinum-rare or were completely ignored in the A/FD. That is changing, as each A/FD seems to thicken with every printing. On the other hand, few if any commercially printed directories are as frequently updated as the A/FD, and the growing presence of small-airport diagrams in the A/FD makes it much more attractive. Incidentally, where at one time pilots would welcome even a fingernail-size airport diagram, as the twenty-first century dawns, its ubiquitous Internet has Web sites from which pilots can print full-page airport diagrams for almost any airport that one can imagine. Your examiner would almost perform handstands to see you arrive with these added to your flight planning.
Pilot examiners also enjoy seeing applicants display their awareness of the listings of sectional chart changes that are found in the back of each A/FD. Compared to most commercially produced airport guides, these aeronautical chart bulletins become a value-added resource beyond measure. When an examiner asks how often a nongovernment resource is updated, unless one can truthfully reply "every 56 days," the applicant can expect tough questioning to follow. Why? First, the PTS in its tenth element of this task mandates that applicants "extract and record pertinent information from notams, the Airport/Facility Directory, and other flight publications." Some students, pilots, and even ground instructors have argued that the word "other" allows equivalent commercial publications to replace the A/FD. Look again. The PTS does not say "or" after naming the A/FD. It says "and."
Legalities aside, there is a second, more human reason why examiners gravitate to the A/FD. Because a given sectional chart may be up to six months old, this listing of changes becomes critical. As discussed above, sometimes even crisp, newly issued sectional charts can present obsolete information. You should know that airports close, navaids move, their frequencies change, and new obstructions are as prolific as migratory waterfowl in the springtime. The aeronautical chart bulletins in the back of A/FDs provide this information to you, and the information can be vital. Some examples from a recent A/FD include: "Change obst. 1,067 feet MSL (593 feet AGL) to 1,160 feet MSL (698 feet AGL), 38�37'39"N, 90�11'21"W." If your examiner happened to know that the tower was more than 100 feet higher than listed on the chart, but you did not, it might trigger some additional testing.
Just because your examiner assigns an airport for your cross-country destination does not mean that it exists. Another aeronautical chart bulletin advised pilots to, "Delete Conlen Airport 36�14'30"N, 102�14'31"W." It is too common to see airports die in these brief A/FD notices, while their ghosts haunt the sectional charts. Examiners sniff bloodhound-like about the applicants' information trail in cross-country flight planning; weather and notams first, then the A/FD; those will be the sources that your examiner wants you to know. You don't know what you don't know, and the A/FD helps you to know.
Anecdotally, one broad expanse occasionally appears in the A/FD, and both flight and ground instructors overlook it. Some pages are marked "intentionally left blank." If your examiner wants to lighten the mood of oral testing as you thumb through it, he could chuckle while asking why this phrase appears in the A/FD. It is not to trick you: Your examiner may have simply forgotten that what is basic to him may not be basic to you. "Intentionally left blank" reassures the reader that nothing has been omitted on a blank page.
In those expanses between their sparse airport information, sectional charts present seemingly countless potential checkpoints. Many of these seem useful until a pilot considers them carefully. Because this is true, the PTS insists that examiners be able to report that their applicants have selected "easily identifiable en route checkpoints." The caveat that your checkpoints be "easily identifiable" has raised the occasional question or dispute. One might more easily define "fun," but the issue is one of validity rather than semantics. My introduction to sectionals was during the now-ancient days when certain cattle trails appeared on Nebraska charts. Adrift over sandhills in a Champ or a Cub, bereft of radios, navaids, highways, lakes, or towns, a cow path could be easily identifiable. Move the clock forward about 40 years, double the airspeed, triple the altitude, consider the cockpit workload, and one can understand why today's pilots can't identify even small towns. The airplane, your workload, the day's visibility, and other conditions will weigh heavy on what you should call an easily identifiable checkpoint. Your examiner wants to see you display good judgment above wishful thinking at this point.
The PTS lists 11 objectives regarding oral testing on cross-country flight planning, and most pilots are reasonably prepared by checkride day. Surprises are bound to occur, but ideally they do so during the planning phase, rather than in the sky. Your examiner will be detail-oriented, but that is because aviation is. You need not be perfect, just thorough and accurate enough to avoid getting yourself or a passenger frightened or hurt. Having such a reputation within the aviation community becomes the best proof of your good judgment and aeronautical decision-making.
Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. A commercial pilot, he has been a CFI for 22 years and has given about 2,000 hours of dual instruction.
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