What's in a Form 91 check ride?

[simon]

I may be taking my first one late this afternoon. I have completed all the training, SQTR's, several SAREX's in the left seat etc., but I have not actually asked anyone the flow of a typical check ride, certain things you absolutely must not forget to do and have caused people to fail an otherwise okay ride etc.

It is late notice but this may be the only opportunity to take the ride in the next month and it only came up this morning.

Advice from MP's or check pilots on what they are looking for in an MP would be appreciated.

(P.S. Is there any paperwork I need to bring along? e.g. 104's, 101 etc.)

[a2capt]

See CAPF 91 .. ;-)

You are going to be launched on a sortie, you'll have an objective, the examiner will see that you can do that - and cope with whatever comes along the way. Similar to a checkride, only mission related. It's not about flying the aircraft, thats CAPF 5. You've already done that.

Those who you worked with should have worked you through this part, and given you some pointers on what to expect.

Seriously, it sounds like you may not be ready, with this "might be taking my first one late this afternoon", sounds like this is on a whim..  I always knew when I was going to do any such evaluations because I scheduled them and prepared accordingly.

Some examiners want two copies of the form, one for them, one for you to use for submission, some want to see other documents, you'll need to do a CAPF104 as well, and maybe even show the CAPF108 for the whole thing afterwards.

[simon]

Thanks for the advice. You may well be right. I am pulling down the CAPF 91 now. I will read it and that will give me an idea of anything on which I am not confident. I have no problems pulling the plug beforehand if I think the check pilot would not be confident. That's the thing for me - not whether I can squeak through, but whether the check pilot has no hesitation in passing me.

[bosshawk]

Simon: use your check lists, at every turn.  I don't know who you are flying with, but I do know several check pilots in your Group and they all will fail you for not using check lists.  Gridded Chart: a necessity.  Brief your Check Pilot just like you would brief your crew.  Ask him/her if they object to being used as crew on things like GPS and radio work(after you demonstrate that you can use those two items).  Know how the GPS works: too late to learn it on the check ride.  Know how to navigate to a grid using only pilotage.

I could go on, but this afternoon is rapidly approaching.  Like several others on this thread, I think that you are pushing the time line for being prepared.

Remember, this check ride(when completed) allows you to fly CAP missions unsupervised by anyone else.  This is not a license to learn: the responsibility is deadly serious.

If you have the slightest hint that you are not prepared, postpone it.  A week or two or a month will not have the slightest impact on your being put on a mission.

[simon]

Thanks. All your recommendations are consistent with what I have been told by others.

I am take a G1000 since our round dial is down.

Busy reading...

[simon]

BTW, I did pass. I found it challenging. My check pilot was thorough. Not unfairly so. But he tested the limits of my knowledge.

There were procedures that I was iffy on that I still need to go and examine thoroughly. E.g. What does one put in a message drop to make it more visible? Yes, a streamer, but I didn't know that on the day. Things like this I'd come across way back in my reading and had kind of dismissed as unlikely ever to be used, but I was asked questions like this when enroute to our target and it illustrated why I need to get a good MP go bag of cheat sheets organized. If you don't know the answer, at least have the materials handy to look it up.

This wasn't a particularly good example - I made plenty of other small mistakes that I later reflected on to come up with the view that I need to brush up on my reading. A lot of the questions were in flight and we covered a lot of stuff in a short space of time even as we negotiated an area full of towers and terrain. (For those of you interested, SFO 321D was the grid, with the mountains and towers West of South County airport (E16).  In a way, flying was the easy part.

I look forward to doing a lot better on my next Form 91. It gave me a lot to think about, to go out and practice. Some of this stuff I never did flying on SAREX's. Next time I do this I want to romp it in.

[Thom]

BTW, I did pass. I found it challenging. My check pilot was thorough. Not unfairly so. But he tested the limits of my knowledge.

There were procedures that I was iffy on that I still need to go and examine thoroughly. E.g. What does one put in a message drop to make it more visible? Yes, a streamer, but I didn't know that on the day. Things like this I'd come across way back in my reading and had kind of dismissed as unlikely ever to be used, but I was asked questions like this when enroute to our target and it illustrated why I need to get a good MP go bag of cheat sheets organized. If you don't know the answer, at least have the materials handy to look it up.

Congratulations!

That said, I see that you express a need to put together a collection of 'cheat sheets' of knowledge for use on Missions.

Hooray!!! We already have one!

I don't know why they don't make it more common knowledge but the good folks at the National Emergency Services Academy (NESA) have a nice document called the Operational Mission Inflight Guide which contains most of the necessary nuggets of knowledge. (Including the streamer thing...)

Here's a link:  http://www.nesa.cap.gov/Documents/MAS%20Uploads/Operational%20Mission%20InFlight%20Guide%20APR%202010.pdf

And, although it hosts a slightly outdated version of the document, this site: http://www.cap-es.net/Inflight%20Guide/Inflight%20Guide.htm has instructions for printing the Guide and binding or sleeving it for maximum usefulness.

Hope that helps!

Thom

[simon]

Perfect! Just what I needed. Thanks Thom.

In previous flights with a couple of MP's I have noticed their flight binders and been impressed with how comprehensive they were. Everything from the cheat sheet for those not-very-intuitive GX55 menus, to the repeater numbers, to decoders for the orange ground team letters - should you ever need them.

I am short in the equipment department. Time to start getting organized.

Just one more obstacle to get through - the mountain seminar in October - and I will have achieved my CAP training goals for the year - at least on paper. From that point forward the target will be to become more proficient across the board.

[bosshawk]

Looks like I may be one of the instructors at the Mountain flying Clinic the first weekend of Oct.  In fact, it may be held at the airport where I hangar my airplane.

[simon]

Looks like it is going to be based out of Mariposa or Auburn.

[bosshawk]

I am based at Mariposa.

[simon]

Found out this morning it will be based out of Auburn with the high DA airport training out of Truckee, which I thought was a good choice for the facilities and safer than South Lake Tahoe.

[Mustang]

Hooray!!! We already have one!

I don't know why they don't make it more common knowledge but the good folks at the National Emergency Services Academy (NESA) have a nice document called the Operational Mission Inflight Guide which contains most of the necessary nuggets of knowledge. (Including the streamer thing...)

The NESA MAS IFG is not without its flaws. Chief among them is the sheer volume of stuff in it.  An IFG should be a small, easy-to-use quick reference guide. The NESA MAS IFG has wayyy too much detail in most areas and reads like a textbook rather than a quick reference guide. I'd say at least half of the IFG is superfluous and should be removed.  The Briefing Standards section is a perfect example. This content belongs in the MART, not the IFG.  The Briefing Guide itself, without all the explanatory verbiage, is quite good and I maintain a copy of it in my own personal IFG.   But I don't need or want a lengthy paragraph explaining the vagaries of the clock system in calling out traffic, or what to do when a stuck microphone is encountered.  Do the authors really think anyone is going to read all that while in-flight?  Talk about a safety hazard!

The second major problem with the NESA MAS IFG is its format. As I said above, an IFG should be a small, easy-to-use quick reference guide. The current version is formatted for standard 8.5" x 11" letter-size paper, an unwieldy size to manage while flying.  I want something half that size, but the font size used throughout the NESA MAS IFG is too small to be useful when printing the document two-up sideways on a letter-size sheet.

[simon]

Totally agree. Like the section on ground based signals, we don't  need an explanation of how the people on the ground go about setting them up, just a small image of what the signal is an what it means so that we can reference it in the air.

I've seen pilots lugging the whole thing around. Just less useful load...

It would be quite a job for someone to distill the inflight guide down to a quick reference, but so useful.

[PhotogPilot]

I have a copy of the complete IFG in my flight bag, reduced to a half size binder. I took the key pages (paulin signals, gps info, etc and put them in my kneeboard binder.

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

At NESA 2009, they were offering small size IFG and IFG Appendix 2's.  Great ref and easy to carry.

Simon, congrats on the MP and MFC.  I am finally over the Jet lag

[es_g0d]

Mustang, et al:

We'd be happy to take your edits for future versions of the inflight guide.  PM me for contact details.  We've been very careful at what we include and what we disclude from the guide--believe it or not, there are many, many items that didn't make the cut.

Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that it may be slightly inappropriately titled "inflight" guide.  In reality, it is simply a mission guide.  It is a reference you throw in your flight bag and pull out in the air or on the ground when you need some reminders about a particular kind of mission.  If you print it out in the half-sheet format (location of directions mentioned earlier in this thread) the guide will take up about as much room as a paperback book.  If you use a heavier bond paper, that will last a little longer under aircrew abuse.  It may also affect your weight and balance, but luckily enough there are instructions for how to compute that in the guide.  ( <-- humor )

Since it was mentioned, I'll specifically address the briefing guide and standards that are in the guide.  Frankly, CAP aircrew members DO need a guide for briefing--if we can get them (us) to brief at all!  Does that need to be referenced "inflight"?  Probably not; see above.  That particular section is the result of a decade's worth of debate.  That said, perhaps it has now been around long enough that the "standards" can be moved to another venue, such as the MART.  Yet every year many folks are surprised by the standards' existence.  So eliminating the standards would shave off a few pages--what else needs to go?

Good luck and good hunting,
-Scott