Checkout, night checkout, and currency

They answer different questions and they are recorded separately.

The endorsement is a regulatory finding under 14 CFR 61.31(i): this pilot is proficient in the operation of a tailwheel airplane. It is portable. It attaches to the pilot, it goes with them to any taildragger, and North Aero has no say in how it is used afterwards.

The checkout is North Aero's own finding: this pilot may fly this airplane, from this field, alone, and knows how we do things. It is not portable and it is not a regulatory document.

For a student finishing Lesson 5, both are considered the same day, and the checkout is a form and a conversation rather than another billable hour.

For a pilot who arrives already endorsed, the checkout is the only gate North Aero has. Someone with a tailwheel endorsement signed in 2009 can join the Club and rent. What follows is what that flight contains.

Ground, with a CFI

1. Aircraft documents. The pilot locates and reads the airworthiness certificate, registration, POH, and weight and balance data, and states the inspection status.
2. Weight and balance, computed. With their actual weight, for a real flight, arriving at a fuel load. N1302B has 463 lb of useful load and full fuel is 180 lb of it. A pilot who has not personally hit that constraint does not believe it.
3. Systems and starting. Fuel system and its management. Electrical system. Starting procedure on the starter. North Aero does not permit hand-propping, and the pilot is told so rather than left to work it out. See EMERGENCY-PROCEDURES.md.
4. Fuel and oil. Grades, quantities, where it is done, and the away-base reimbursement rule.
5. Securing the airplane. Tiedown or hangar, and what to do when weather is coming.
6. Squawks and discrepancies. What to report, to whom, how fast, and what not to fly with.
7. If something happens away from base. Rental Agreement §15, including the requirement to stop the engine and not move the airplane if it leaves the paved surface.
8. Emergency contacts, written down and carried.
9. Personal minimums, set with the pilot and recorded in their file.
10. North Aero operating limits, stated and acknowledged. There are two. See below.

Flight, with a CFI

For a Lesson 5 graduate this is satisfied by Lesson 5 itself. For anyone else it is a real flight.

1. Preflight, unprompted, with the landing gear and tailwheel assembly inspected and called out.
2. Taxi with correct control positioning for the wind, rudder for direction, S-turns for visibility.
3. Normal takeoff, centreline held through the tail-lift transition.
4. Three-point landing to standard.
5. Wheel landing to standard.
6. Go-around to standard, including from a bounce.
7. Crosswind takeoff and landing to standard, if the day provides a crosswind. If it does not, the checkout is issued with a stated limitation and the crosswind element is flown before the pilot flies solo in one.
8. Simulated power failure to a chosen spot.
9. Airport and area familiarisation: KSNS layout, the runways in use, noise abatement, where the fuel is, and where you would go if the engine stopped after takeoff.

The standards are the same completion standards the endorsement program uses. A checkout is assessed against PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md and the lesson documents, not against a separate and invisible bar.

Night is not part of the endorsement program and is held separately.

Required before a pilot flies N1302B at night without an instructor:

1. The day checkout, complete.
2. A night flight with a North Aero CFI including at least three takeoffs and landings to a full stop, at least one wheel landing, and one go-around.
3. A briefing on what changes: the sight picture in the flare, why the wheel landing is the technique of choice at night, and taxiing where you cannot see the edges.
4. Lighting and electrical system familiarity, including what to do when something quits.

The tower constraint is real and belongs in the briefing. KSNS tower operates 0600 to 1900 October through March, and 0500 to 1900 April through September. It closes at 1900 local year-round. Civil twilight at Salinas ends around 1723 in late December and not until about 2059 at the summer solstice. Towered night operations at Salinas are therefore available roughly mid-October through the first week of March and not at all from mid-March through early October. KMRY runs to 2100 and KSJC to midnight. KWVI is non-towered.

That matters to anyone chasing 14 CFR 61.129(a)(4)(ii), which requires the ten night takeoffs and landings at an airport with an operating control tower. See COMMERCIAL-TIME.md.

Three landings in N1302B within the preceding 60 days.

Outside 60 days, the next flight is with a CFI. That flight restores currency and there is nothing else to do.

A lapse is a scheduling condition, not a violation. It is written that way deliberately. Rental Agreement §11 pulls North Aero's operating limitations into the contract, and §8(c) removes the $5,000 liability cap where a loss follows from a breach of that agreement. A currency rule written as a prohibition would mean that a pilot who flew on day 63 had uncapped exposure over a rainy month. Written as a re-currency requirement, it does not, and a pilot with a lapse has every reason to say so rather than hide it.

The FAA minimum under 61.57 is three takeoffs and landings to a full stop in the preceding 90 days for tailwheel airplanes. North Aero's 60 days is tighter, and it is ours rather than the FAA's.

Annual recheck

One flight with a North Aero CFI every 12 months.

This is the Club's annual currency flight, which Club Membership Agreement §5 already provides with no instruction charge. It is deliberately the same flight rather than a second billable one. Aircraft time is at the standard rate.

Use it to review the checkout items that decay: weight and balance with current numbers, the personal minimums conversation, and whatever the pilot has been avoiding.

Two, and only two. Both bind. Both are North Aero limits rather than regulatory ones.

• Maximum 10 knot crosswind component for solo flight.
• No passengers until 5 hours solo in type.

The list is short on purpose. Anything North Aero publishes as a limitation becomes a contract term by way of Rental §11, and a long list is a long list of ways for a good pilot to be in technical breach. These two are the ones worth that cost in a light taildragger.

The intake form collects the pilot's own minimums: ceiling, visibility, total wind, crosswind component, gust spread. Those belong to the pilot.

They are recorded in the pilot's file, reviewed at the checkout and at the annual, and they carry no contractual force. A pilot who wrote 12 knots and later lands in 14 has not breached anything. They have something to talk about with themselves.

Set them with the pilot, not for them. A number the pilot proposed and defended is a number they will hold. A number assigned to them is one they will quietly revise the first time it is inconvenient.

All of it lives in the student's Progress Tracker. See PROGRESS-TRACKER-TEMPLATE.md, which carries the checkout record, the night checkout record, the operating limits, the personal minimums table, and the currency log.

One student, one file.