ATC

To many student pilots the thought of talking to ATC scares them. They are very intimidating to beginner pilots, because they have the power to pull your ticket if you make a mistake. You must remember that they are not there to get you into trouble they are there to help you out and give you assistance. Most of them are vary caring people, and if you have a question do not be afraid to help you out. They would much rather help you out than have to fill out an NTSB (crash) report trust me. It helped me out a lot when I took an ATC course at school and had a controller at Toledo Express (KTOL) teach it. It helped me realize that they are very helpful and they do know there stuff, because we all know as pilots we think that we are the best and we can do everything ourselves, but we can't. If you are not getting the radios as fast as you thought don't worry, because you will in instrument trust me, that is all you are doing is talking to ATC. If you make a mistake don't worry most of the time ATC is very good about it, they come over the radios and give you a stern talking to and tell you that you need to think more. They know that you are a student and you are still learning. If ATC tells you to do something that you don't know how to do just be honest. There was a kid that ATC told them to come in a non-standard way and he ended up stalling to close to the ground and dieing. They are not going to get mad at you for not knowing how to do something if you are a student. Now if you are a commercial student and you don't know how to do an ILS approach they may have a pproblem with that.

Private Pilot Checkride

Once you have built enough hours and understand everything that you need to know you may go on your check-ride. This makes many pilots very nervous to think about. An examiner going flying and asking you questions. There are some important things to remember before and while you are flying. First DO YOUR RESEARCH. You need to make sure that you have a fair examiner, most of them that I have run into are very nice and act like normal people. In fact on my private check ride I forgot that I was even with an examiner. Second, you can either do your flight or questions first. I would recommend doing your questions first, because it allows you to sit down with him or her and just have a conversation. It allows them to understand you and you to understand them. Be the end of the oral you can start to tell what they think is important. Third, do good on your written and it will be easier for you. Many people say that if you get a high score one your written your oral will be easier, and I agree with them, because I got a 94% on my written and my oral was a piece of cake. Plus it gets you even more ready for the oral. Four, STUDY, STUDY, STUDY I highly recommend the ASA test prep on the top left of the article it is the best $10 you could ever spend. Five take a deep breath and relax. If the examiner is asking you question, which they will to see how you can multitask, just have a conversation with them, but that being said, if you are starting to get overwhelmed just tell them to shut up. You should probably tell yours a little nicer, but our examiner for the school is real cool and you can just talk to him like you are talking with one of your friends. I would suggest being very polite, if they do not tell you otherwise, but ours tells us not to do that he wants to just hang out and fly, which makes it much easier on the pilot. The biggest piece of advice to remember is that for your private pilots licence the examiner is not looking for perfection, and wont really care if you make a mistake, as long as you can correct it and show them that you are a COMPETENT pilot. All the examiner is looking for is that you can take off, fly, and land without killing yourself, nothing more. To bad this wasn't true for all of them.