Checkride

After earning your private pilot certificate, one of the first things you’ll probably want to do is fly over your house, or perhaps a friend’s home. Everyone does. It’s part of the joy of flying. But there are sad statistics of pilots who attempted this sightseeing maneuver—and lacked the ability to conduct it safely. As important as this skill is, it’s hardly the primary reason for learning or for testing ground reference maneuvers during practical tests.

Every time you approach an airport for landing, you accomplish the skills required for the various ground reference maneuvers, each of which requires division of attention; coordination; and precise control of airspeed, altitude, and bank angle—all while fairly close to the ground.Your instructor should have introduced ground reference maneuvers to you early in training.

There are seven different ground reference maneuvers described in the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook, but only three of these are considered fair game for the private pilot practical test: rectangular courses, S-turns, and turns around a point. Of these, your designated pilot examiner (DPE) must select at least one for your test. Testing more than one is at the discretion of the DPE, but most will not choose this option unless a deficiency is suspected while observing a borderline performance of the initial selected maneuver.

There are several common requirements for each that must be observed. First, as with any flight maneuvers, complete your safety check: Be sure to clear the area for potentially conflicting traffic and ensure that your maneuver will keep you away from congested areas, cities, towns, tall obstructions, or terrain.

Next, establish your maneuvering altitude, remembering that the ground reference maneuvers must be accomplished between 600 to 1,000 feet above the ground and never lower than 500 feet above the highest obstacle over which you will fly. Generally, the faster your airplane, the higher your selected altitude should be. You will want to be low enough that you can easily see the effects of the wind on your ground track, but not so low that things appear to be happening quickly because of your higher groundspeed.

You will also want to select a location for your maneuver that has suitable emergency landing sites just in case the engine should fail. And be sure to enter the maneuver on the appropriate (usually downwind) heading. The practical test standards require your examiner to look specifically for you to divide your attention effectively in order to maintain the desired ground track required for the selected maneuver while maintaining proper airplane control, rudder coordination, airspeed, and altitude. The common thread that ties each of these together is the requirement for the pilot to be able to combine and effectively adjust for the effects of varying groundspeed, wind drift, and ground track so that turns are entered at the proper time, using a safe and appropriate bank angle that permits the airplane to complete ground-referenced turns at the desired spot over the ground.

Since flight instructors are responsible for training their students to the highest level of learning (correlation), one of the most effective methods of determining that this has occurred with ground reference maneuvers is through consistent demonstration of effective wind correction while flying the traffic pattern on windy days, particularly where a crosswind/tailwind exists on those statistically riskier turns from base to final.

If the student is able to judge, in varying conditions, when to begin the turns, and establish an appropriate bank angle that results in the airplane consistently rolling out exactly on the extended runway centerline, the instructor will be wearing that big correlation smile on his or her face. And on checkride day, that same smile will be on your examiner’s face, too.