Checkride

Keeping DPEs current

There are certain days each year that your local designated pilot examiner (DPE) will not be available for testing--the training/testing days required by FAA Order 8710-3D, Pilot Examiner's Handbook. These sessions address forms, papers, documents, their handling and processing, plus subtle changes in what examiner actions are acceptable one year but are not the next--and operational changes, as well.

DPE recurrent seminars occur throughout the land and are not restricted to examiners. The FAA section responsible for them encourages flight instructors to attend as well. Like the examiners, flight instructors must also bear the costs of attending, including dedicating nonrevenue time. Few flight instructors who are not also examiners attend these meetings, and fewer still attend a second time.

As has remained constant for over a decade, runway incursion avoidance held a prominent position in the January 2006 seminar. While some pilot examiners are weary of the endless drumming throughout the aviation community regarding its importance, that importance remains valid. The day following the seminar, I conducted a practical test in which the applicant would have fully transgressed the holding position lines had I not intervened with aircraft brakes. Yes, the applicant read back the hold-short instructions verbatim. Yes, a notice of disapproval ensued for violating the special emphasis area, creating one more statistic for next year's seminar.

The first speaker, a former air traffic controller, gave a fascinating and useful presentation regarding the importance of standard phraseology (as he himself repeatedly used several nonstandard phrases in his teaching) and the ineffective pilot use of ATC voice radio procedures. Since this was the subject of my master's thesis, of course he had my full attention. Essentially, because of the ineffectiveness and confused nature of the aviation training industry's approach to teaching elements essential to runway incursion avoidance, including airport marking and signage, the FAA has introduced an enhancement to the taxiway centerline at approximately 72 very busy airports. The additional dashed lines on either side of the solid taxiway centerline approximately 125 feet from the holding position lines should quite admirably serve as a warning that one is approaching a holding position line. This assumes, of course, that a pilot is looking outside and not inside, adjusting radio frequencies or setting up the GPS navigator, or adjusting flight information on the primary flight display, or older analog instruments--you get the idea.

This speaker continued to teach the room about the extension of the Aeronautical Information Manual's Operation Lights On program, found in Section 4-3-23. In essence, the concept is to utilize aircraft lights in an auxiliary communications role according to a chart, which the FAA has prepared. Some examiners privately note that this concept asks pilots (who may or may not be familiar with the program, and who may or may not remember during high-workload moments) to rely upon visual exterior lights (which may or may not be operable) made for other purposes, from aircraft that may or may not be equipped with them, to transfer communications in a fashion that a totally separate system (voice radio) was intended to serve.

In fact, the AIM has addressed these concerns for decades. Both committed teaching and enforcement from the aviation training community in those AIM procedures would have gone far to curtail any perceived need for further procedural complexity or airport expenditures.

Additional training for your local check airman entails specific aspects of the designated examiner's handbook, including handling the form that is the key to your individual future, the FAA Form 8710-1. Regarding this form, the changes are not so much changes as they are emphasizing concerns from the past. Student and flight instructor are jointly responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the form that both sign for presentation to your local DPE. Your local examiner is responsible for ensuring that the form is completed to the prescribed standard, but the accuracy of the included information is often beyond an examiner's ability to confirm.

Your examiner is no longer allowed to make any changes whatsoever to information on the face of your Form 8710. If changes or corrections to the form must occur (as they nearly always must) your DPE must see to it that either the applicant or the flight instructor makes the change by lining out with a single line in ink the incorrect information, and insert in ink the correct information; whoever makes that change must initial the change.

Regarding the accuracy of flight information entered into the Form 8710, at this particular meeting there were some examiners who disagreed with the FAA statement that examiners are to always compare the pilot applicant's logbook or training record with the 8710's experience totals. Disagreement sometimes arises regarding those applicants who present graduation certificates from Part 141 flight schools. Since the graduation certificate confirms the experience requirements, and not all pilot examiners are familiar with the experience outlined in those schools' training course outlines, the examiner relies (according to some DPEs) on that certificate in lieu of researching the applicant's training records or logbooks.

Those presenting the course noted that flight schools have erroneously issued graduation certificates, and the examiner's signature on the back of the Form 8710 certifies that that individual DPE has in fact verified the information. Sadly, this likely means that some examiners will do X while others will do Y.

Regardless of one's individual will, technology continues apace, and pilot examiners who came from a Piper Cub and Aeronca Champ era of minimum round instruments now live in an era of glass cockpits providing mega-data to mini-minds. (At least, I feel so about mine!) Technically advanced aircraft became a focus of this year's DPE training. Discussions concerning today's glass instrument panels, the long-awaited paperless cockpit with its electronic displays of approach charts and moving maps--and even reference takeoffs and landings using enhanced flight vision systems--greeted each participant. These luxuries change the timeworn arrow (although the radio station license now is required only for international operations) chant regarding documents required to be aboard an aircraft, as pilot guidance in the form of manufacturer's information for these systems must accompany you skyward. Updatable databases are today's current charts, so these must be current as well. The times, they are a-changing.

One thing, however, never changes: government efficiency. A week after having met all the online and in-person requirements for the seminar, I received an e-mail advising that I had not registered or completed the online portion. (I did both, on the twenty-third of January. I even scored 95 percent and 100 percent respectively on its two tests!) The e-mail gave me a telephone number to call. I have, repeatedly, and left messages on an answering machine. Pray for me!

Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. He has been a certificated flight instructor since 1981 with approximately 2,000 hours of dual instruction, and is a single- and multiengine commercial-rated pilot.