Checkride preparation and document review

What this lesson is for: making sure that nothing procedural stops your practical test, and that you know what happens if you do not pass.

This is a working session, not a teaching lesson. You will not teach anything today. You will open your logbook, produce your documents, and check each one against the regulation that requires it. It is the only lesson in this program where that is the whole job.

Bring everything. A lesson where half the documents are at home is a lesson that has to be run again, and the week before your checkride is not the week to be running lessons twice.

Read:

• policy/CHECKRIDE-DOCUMENT-CHECKLIST.md, in full, before you arrive. You are going to be asked to produce these things, not read about them.
• policy/CHECKRIDE-AIRCRAFT-AND-COST.md, in full.
• 61.39(a) and 61.183, from the live regulation rather than from a summary. These are the two sections that say whether you are eligible.
• FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1, the section headed Possible Outcomes of the Test.

Bring, and this is the deliverable:

• Your logbook or logbooks. All of them.
• Both original knowledge test reports. Originals, not photographs.
• Your pilot certificate, your photo identification, and your medical certificate.
• Your view limiting device.
• Your IACRA login, working, tested before you arrive.
• Anything you believe is your spin training endorsement.

Also bring one written page: your own list of every endorsement you think you need and the regulation that requires each. Written from the regulation, in your own words, before you read ours. We will compare the two lists, and the gaps in yours are the most useful thing this lesson produces.

1. The application, and the way your examiner wants it.
2. Your knowledge test reports: the originals, how long they stay valid, and the codes on them.
3. The four logbook endorsements, and which regulation requires each one.
4. Your spin endorsement, read line by line against what it has to say.
5. Your personal documents and eligibility, including two items that surprise most people.
6. The aircraft records for N41459, and inoperative equipment.
7. Your view limiting device, which is yours to furnish rather than the school's.
8. The examiner, their airport, the ferry, and what it costs you.
9. The three possible outcomes of a practical test.
10. Disapproval, discontinuance, partial credit, and the two clocks.
11. The spin retest rule, and why it matters more here than at most schools.
12. What North Aero does if you do not pass.

Your instrument rating is an eligibility requirement. 61.183(c)(2) requires it for an airplane single-engine flight instructor certificate. You hold one, so this is a box to tick rather than a problem, but candidates are routinely surprised that it is a requirement for this certificate rather than a thing they happen to have.

Fifteen hours as pilot in command in airplane single-engine land. 61.183(j). You almost certainly have hundreds. The point is that it is findable in your logbook, because you will be asked and "obviously I do" is not a demonstration.

1. Produce every document on the checklist, physically, and find each one yourself.
2. Say, for at least six of them, which regulation makes them necessary.
3. Read your own spin endorsement out loud and judge whether it says what 61.183(i)(1) requires.
4. Work out the ferry time and what it will cost you, against your actual examiner and airport.
5. Answer one question: if you fail a task halfway through the test, do you continue or stop.
6. Work out both post-discontinuance clocks against your own booked test date.
7. Take away an action list, and own the items on it that are yours.

1. You produce every document on policy/CHECKRIDE-DOCUMENT-CHECKLIST.md sections 1 to 5 physically, or the item is recorded as an action with an owner and a date. No item is left unresolved.
2. You state, for at least six checklist items, the source requirement that item satisfies, without reading it off the checklist.
3. You read your own 61.183(i) spin endorsement and state whether it certifies instructional proficiency, naming that as distinct from certifying that training was received.
4. You name the three possible outcomes of a practical test and state the difference between a notice of disapproval and a letter of discontinuance, including that a discontinuance is not a failure.
5. You state what you would do if you failed a task partway through the test, choosing to continue or to stop, and give a reason. Either answer meets this standard. Having no answer does not.
6. You calculate both the 60 day credit clock and the 2 calendar month completion clock against your own booked test date, and state which one expires first.
7. You state the ferry time and what you will pay for it, in hours against the school's hourly aircraft rate, having worked it out in the lesson.
8. You state that a spin-related disapproval requires a retest in an airplane certificated for spins, and that N41459 is not established as one.

Falling short does not block lesson 40. There is no proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

An unresolved document is a different matter. It does not block a lesson, but it can move your test, and a missing or defective spin endorsement moves your test without discussion. That is not a punishment. It is an eligibility requirement under 61.183(i), the person who can fix it does not work here, and no amount of good will at the examiner's desk substitutes for it.

• Treating this as paperwork. Every line on the checklist is a regulation you will be applying to your own Students within a year.
• Saying a document is fine without opening it. Open it. Being wrong today is free.
• Assuming your spin endorsement is valid because the flight happened and you paid for it. Read the words. "Received training in" is not "is competent and possesses instructional proficiency in", and only one of them satisfies 61.183(i)(1).
• Not knowing the difference between a disapproval and a discontinuance. It is the most common gap on this subject and the cheapest to close.
• Believing a weather discontinuance is a failure. It is not, and believing it is will make you press on when you should stop. That is a habit worth not building the year you start instructing.
• Thinking the 60 day rule is the only clock. There are two, and the shorter one wins.
• Assuming the spin endorsement means spins will never be flown on a test. 61.183(i)(2) says an examiner may accept it, and it does not apply at all on a retest after a spin-related failure.
• Treating the ferry as the school's problem. It was disclosed at enrollment and it is yours.
• Leaving the application to the morning. IACRA accounts and examiner preferences are all knowable today.
• Bringing a photograph of a knowledge test report. 61.39(a)(2) requires the original, presented at the time of application.

Not applicable. This is a ground lesson and we do not fly it.

The intervention threshold for your mock flight is stated in lesson 41, and it is the same one we have used since phase 3 started.

Not applicable. Video Slots hold Clips of a Student flying a maneuver. This lesson teaches no maneuver and shows no flying.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not any Video Slots exist.