361 Multi-engine and MEI Checkride Mock Oral with Jason Blair + GA News
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Have you thought about getting the multi-engine rating? Or if you're a CFI, the multi-engine instructor rating? If you don't have the rating, you might want to put it on your list of things to do in the coming year. And if you already have the multi-engine rating, well, you may find this episode is a great review of principles for multi-engine pilots and flight instructors. So stick around because these mock oral check rides with Jason Blair are among the most downloaded episodes of this show.

Hello again and welcome to Aviation News Talk, where we talk general aviation. My name is Max Trescott. I've been flying for 50 years. I'm the author of several books and the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot.

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So please use that link whenever you buy something from Lightspeed. Now let me tell you a little about Jason Blair. Jason is an FAA DPE, or Designated Pilot Examiner, who gives check rides to pilots, and he's also an active flight instructor. He writes for both flying and plane and pilot magazines. He's the past executive director of NAFI, the National Association of Flight Instructors, and he's served on a number of industry committees, and he's also a supporter who supports the Aviation News Talk podcast.

Now here's our conversation with Jason Blair. Jason, welcome to the show. Great to see you here again. Oh, it's awesome to be back from a lousy weather day in Michigan. We can at least talk about flying if we don't dare go do it ourselves today, right? Well, you're so busy. The only time I get to talk with you is when you have lousy weather. So that's good for us here. That's pretty true. I tell people when they call me, when can we talk? And I say, look at the weather. And if it's lousy, give me a call because I'll probably be bored and cranky that I'm not flying. That's funny. Well,

Well, the topic today, multi-engine ratings and multi-engine instructor add-ons. Talk about that a little bit in general terms. What are some of the major issues that people should be thinking about when they're thinking about getting one? Yeah, sure. And I think this is an interesting thing, right? Because there's a lot of little pieces that come into this, and it's not usually the first thing.

training and or especially practical tests that somebody's going to be doing. So at least when you do this, you've probably got some experience underneath you already. We've done a couple of tests, you know, at least your private, maybe you're adding on a multi-engine rating because you want to do it as a private pilot or more commonly you're doing it because this is going to be your commercial multi-engine qualification and certification. It may be an initial one. You might do your private test.

an instrument first and then do your multi-engine initial commercial. But probably the majority of people out there are seeing this as an add-on rating. They already have their commercial certificate and they're adding on that multi-engine to get themselves qualified to fly that.

and maybe even move on to an airline or that next job that requires them to fly a multi-engine airplane. So this is really an add-on for most people as they approach that training. And it means that it's a much shorter training footprint. It really is a train to proficiency kind of approach in most of these. And as such, sometimes it's done fairly quickly, fairly short, may even be over a long weekend or something if you can get it set up with somebody who does this in a quick fashion.

Yeah, so I did my initial multi as kind of a three-day thing at a school that specializes in that. And often local flight schools have only one multi-engine aircraft, and it's often down for maintenance, which makes it difficult to get a checkride. But speaking of checkrides, what's the issue with multi-engine checkrides?

So a couple of things, and obviously we have, you know, the national question of getting check rides, but multi-engine check rides is something that takes a little bit more effort also, because you need to make sure the examiner is somebody that is able to give multi-engine tests. And not only just that,

also to give tests in the particular make and model of aircraft that you're going to be testing in. So an examiner, just like an instructor, we'll talk a little bit more, does have to have some experience in the particular make and model of aircraft to give a practical test. So say the examiner is used to flying Cessna 310s and 55 Barons and you show up and said, like to get my checkride in an Apache and they've never flown one.

they're not going to be able to give that test. So depending on where you're going to be doing your training, you might need to make sure you're looking for an examiner that has that authorization, the ability to do that test. Most places that do multi-engine training know a couple examiners in the area that do this, they work with them. And I'll be honest, as an examiner who does this, we also kind of try and focus on making sure we make some space for them and

A friend of mine once told me, do the things only you can do, right? If there's 50 people that can do private pilot, airplane, single engine, land check rides, and here's two or three of you, they can do the multis. You know, we do try and focus on that and make sure we help that process going. And Max, to your point, sometimes those airplanes go down. I had somebody this past week, we were scheduled for a check ride. It was an MEI and lo and behold, two days before the Magneto went out. Now we're on the reschedule mode, right? So it does kind of limit who's available, when you can do it, how you can get

that set up. And as we look at multi-engineered airplanes, twice the systems mean twice the things that can break. And many of these are older airplanes and they're getting hard to maintain. So the schools are working hard to find parts, get the thing

the things they need. You know, if we're doing this in 1960s and 70s airplanes, that can be a challenge. It's a little bit easier when we're using modern stuff. Somebody's got new Seminoles or new Diamonds or something like that, and they can just call the factory up and get some parts. But it may be a challenge depending on where you're doing the training to get everything rolling and sometimes running those hiccups. So be ready for that. If you've got a short course for multi-engine that you're setting up,

Be ready to roll with the punches a little bit. And if you have to pivot, you know, be ready to do that sometimes too. That three-day course may end up turning into a two, three, four-month process if something goes down and you got to get back to where you're going to get that training done. So for folks who've gotten perhaps their private and maybe their instrument, now they're thinking, do I get my multi next or my commercial next? What

What do you recommend? Is there an optimal order to do the things in? There is. Let's talk about that a little bit. You know, the best, most efficient path is probably to get your private and airplane single engine land first, get your instrument rating done, and then go get your standard commercial certificate in a single engine land airplane. Now, if you're at a college or university or large training kind of academy where they're doing 141 programs,

some of them do have you do the commercial in a multi-engine airplane first because you're getting some of that complex time that you need you're also building a little bit more multi-engine time along the way and then you do a commercial single engine add-on both of those are very very valid paths to go through if it's a structured program in many cases when somebody's just doing the training on their own though they're going to want to do that commercial multi-engine as an

add on rating. It's a little shorter check ride, saves you a little bit of time in the airplane with experience requirements that you need to meet. And it's actually a little bit shorter training footprint for you that way when you're doing it. So we have people that sometimes do a private pilot multi engine add on first. So let's imagine you went out and you did your private pilot certificate and maybe your family owned an airplane that was multi engine. You thought, hey, I just want to be able to fly this thing. Well, if you do a private pilot multi engine add on,

And then you go do an instrument rating after that in a single engine airplane, your multi-engine qualifications will be limited to only VFR. And then you're going to have to add on another checkride, that commercial in the multi at some point. So the path that does the most efficient, you know, methodology is to get that private single, get the instrument, do a commercial single, and then add on the multi. And it saves you actually another checkride along the way. So unless you really have a reason to go do that private before it, the best process

is to make your multi-engine certificate a commercial level one first, whether it's the initial or an add-on certificate.

Well, let's talk about accidents. You and I have talked about this in the past, and there's a big issue with training in multi-engine aircraft. Go ahead, talk about that. There sure is. And I actually recently kind of read some numbers on this in the last two years. You know, we had about 280 or so instructional fatal accidents, right? And about 20% of that, 18% actually was in a multi-engine airplane. And it seems a little bit counterintuitive when we first think about it, that boy, we've got

that an instructor who's probably already got their instructor certificate, they've added maybe an instrument one on and now they're multi-engine one. We've got somebody who's a little bit more of an experienced pilot. One would think with two semi-experienced pilots in the plane, the accident rate would be a little bit lower than that, but it's not. And, you know, we're seeing some of these fatal accidents in multi-engine airplanes. And we've certainly seen a lot of things that don't show up in that fatal accident reporting.

a lot of training providers have had cure-up accidents and things like that in their multi-engine airplanes. So, you know, I think what we've got a little bit of here is we have a very young instructor core who doesn't have a lot of multi-engine experience. We look back 20 or 30 years ago, a lot of the multi-engine instructors, what we'll call sage old gray hairs that have been doing this for a while, right? And

some of those things that they knew and learned over many, many years of flying and light general aviation, multi-engine airplanes, whether it was Navajos and Chieftains and 421s, and then we're doing some instruction. Those aren't things that our younger instructor core gets to do anymore before they have to be thrown out into the system and give training. So now we have

a very busy training environment in many cases, right? We're simulating engine failures, we're simulating gear systems failures. There's a lot going on in this multi-engine training. And if the instructor isn't really on top of it, it's pretty easy to miss it. So we've even had over the last couple of years, I know of at least two or three examiners who've missed the fact that a gear wasn't down on a practical test and

You know, here we are in the middle of a practical test and the student who's at the top of their training and an examiner is watching them miss the fact that the gear wasn't down and they ended up on the belly. So, you know, it was a very busy environment. And I guess the best advice I can give CFIs in this is be very methodical, be very thorough and protect yourself in this, right? If the students get a little outside of tolerance,

go ahead and stop the maneuver and then debrief it and talk about it. You don't have to let them push too far. And the VMC stuff is probably the most dangerous, right? If we lose control of the airplane, really bad things happen. And I'll tie that to just general multi-engine flying as well. We're usually pretty good as pilots at

when it comes to VMC maneuvers of going through our initial response to an engine failure, we get that control performance, mixture, prop throttle, gear up, lapse up, identify, verify, fix or feather, right? So we're going to beat that into your head when you're a multi-engine training. Matter of fact, I tell most of my students, I should be able to call you at two in the morning and you should be able to run through that without even thinking about it. And that's a response rate. But then we get to a decision chain in there and it's,

fix or feather right now that should be a pause point when we do this this is what we teach us as you know the instructors and certain something we want you guys as students who are training for your multi-engine to be able to work through that we're trying to do is get ourselves in a configuration where that aircraft is least likely to end up in a vmc condition a condition where we have overpower on the one engine that's going to roll us over we lose directional control

When we have a lot of accidents, though, what we find in many of these VMC maneuvers is let's say we have a climb out engine failure. The initial accident response or the initial response when the incident is not what kills people. It's once they do that response and then try and get back to the pattern. So maybe they drop the nose, they get through all this stuff, they're climbing out straight ahead. The performance is now different, right? But they're going to turn back to the airport and they overbank. And the VMC actually, in many cases, happens laterally.

subsequently to the initial response, but as they're trying to maneuver the aircraft back to the airport with the less performance, you know, sometimes we're at performance levels where we are above an altitude where the airplane can maintain its altitude, either for weight or density altitude or actual altitude conditions.

all of these things. And many of our late GA airplanes are very underpowered, right? You know, we take an old twin Comanche that's 180 horsepower per side, or, you know, we get an old Geronimo that's 160 horsepower per side. My God, when the mean old examiner pulls the throttle back on an engine, we're not really climbing. So these are things we got to learn to manage. And that, that VMC process really becomes an after the initial response is what

kind of focus on too in some cases to not kill us. Well, let's talk about the VMC maneuver since it's so critical and since it does lead to so many accidents. Just step us through what you would expect the candidate to do to get us into that demo and what the recovery is that you're looking for from them during that demo. Sure.

Sure. This is that VMC maneuver is on every multi-engine checkride, Max, right? We're going to have to do this, whether you're doing your initial multi-engine or whether it's an add-on or if you're doing this as an instructor. And, you know, as we listen to the podcast here today, basically anything you hear me say the applicant's going to do, you can think if you're an MEI candidate, you need to teach the applicant to do and protect yourself during which format.

they don't hurt you right so the vmc is a good example of that so we're going to be looking for a simulation of loss of power on an engine typically we're doing this with the critical engine if the airplane has one right so that critical engine usually your left engine and conventional twin it's your whichever one failed it if you're encounter rotating airplanes a lot of the

A lot of the airplanes we do training in are counter-rotating, and that makes it a little bit less problematic. But it's still something we're going to work with at VMC. So we're simulating that engine back. It is in basically our worst configuration we can be. We're going to have gear down. We're going to have some takeoff flaps in. We're taking off if the airplane uses a slap string takeoff. We're going to not have the engine feathered on the bad engine, the simulated failed engine, because that makes it better for us. We're going to simulate this the worst, and we're going to add

full or take off power in our remaining good engine. There are actually some airplanes out there where we're not going to be able to go to full power based on rudder authority or some of the control input without ending up in a VMC condition. Most of our light general aviation airplanes, that's not the case. But, you know, if we got crazy and we're doing our training in a Duke or a 56 TC Baron or something like that, there might be more power than you can handle. So what we're going to be doing is simulating going to full power

It's our response that we had an engine failure, right? So we, you know, control performance, our mixtures prop throttles up, right? And then our gear, we're going to be bringing that up in a response. But in this case, we're simulating it's down. We're having a bad day. We're in climb out. We've got our bad engines back, our good engines forward. And what we're trying to do is

climb out in that configuration or pitching up. And what we're watching for is anything that is a loss of directional control, maximum control input that we don't have anymore there. The airplane is drifting or any indication of an impending stall, whether it's a horn or a buffet, anything like that, we should be recovering. So recovery from that VMC is very, very simple. It's reduce your angle of attack.

As you're reducing the throttle on the good engine, so you're decreasing that rolling, that torque, all of those left turning tendencies that happen by having a good engine producing maximum power. So what we're trying to do is we're reducing the roll of that airplane so we don't end up rolling over, ending up upside down and having to deal with that. Now, some good practices for the CFI on this.

We're trying to build a skill in our student. We're not trying to get ourselves to the absolute closest possible point to a real VMC, right? We're trying to build a skill and a response by that student. So it's not without a lot of logic here that I would tell you to, you know, go ahead and set your foot on the floor and block that runner a little bit. Maybe you don't let your student get all

all the way to full rudder on this. Maybe, you know, a little bit less power is okay. We go to climb power instead of full power as we're teaching this and working with them. Now the checkride, we're going to have to fill up for it, but you know, we want to build that skill as we're doing this with them. We're not trying to induce a BMC while we're doing the training.

So protect yourself if you're the CFI on that. Now, this doesn't have to be a fast maneuver. I like to teach things in multi-engine airplanes. I've been using the mantra, think turtle, don't go octopus. It's really simple, right? Do things slow and

and methodical and don't just start grabbing stuff. This is one of the challenges with the multi-engine airplane. You got two of everything. We got two knobs, right? We got two throttles. We got two prop controllers. If we are not phatic, we got two mixtures. We got four magnetos. There's a whole bunch of stuff you can start grabbing. Don't do it unless you've done it like a turtle, really methodically and thought about what your next course is. We talked to some of the old school airline pilots. They used to say, what's the first thing you should do in the emergency? A lot of them would jokingly say, take a sip of coffee.

Right. Take your time, work your way through this or you do scary things to the examiner, like shut all the magnetos off instead of, you know, just two of them. We'll talk a little bit more about that a bit here in responses, Max. But, you know, take your time in this VMC maneuver. There's nothing that has to happen fast. It's very methodical. Nothing wrong with having a checklist with you for that maneuver either as you're going to perform this and talk the examiner through. Hey, this is what we're going to do now. Let's do it. Super. Yeah.

Well, let's imagine that I have walked in the door. You're going to do my multi-engine add-on. We've gotten through the initial stuff where you've reviewed my documents. You've figured out that I'm qualified for the check ride. Now we're going to get into it. What's next?

So, Max, you're putting this up in the coolest way possible as an add-on. So as the examiner, I don't have to ask everything. All I have to really do is ask about things that are related to adding on your multi-engine qualification. If you look in the ACS, there's going to be a table in there, and it will be kind of towards the back in the appendix. It's adding on a multi-engine, but it's in both the private and the commercial. We'll kind of simulate the commercial here right now. And it's going to limit what I have to cover.

So it's going to be some airworthiness stuff. We're going to have to make sure the airplane you've brought to me is legal. You're going to have to show me that. We're going to talk about some currency stuff. Hey, we're switching gears here and flying, you know, maybe two different classes of airplane, right? They're both airplanes, but now we have classes and categories, maybe even makes and model. If we have a type certificate relates to this, right? I mean, if you're doing this in a King or something like that, that has a type rating, or maybe that becomes applicable if it's over the 12, five.

But really what we're looking for here also in terms of currency discussion is very simple. Do you need two flight reviews? You need to say current different categories and classes of airplanes. And, you know, a good tip here is that the flight reviews are related to anything you can fly. Right. But then your currency is going to be class specific. So if you're single engine and multi-engine, that means you're not going to have to do those three take us landings day or night and multi and single engine airplanes. Right.

If it's a tailwheel, even mix that into it. So we might ask that question. Then from there, we're going to dig into the airplane systems, the performance information about the airplane, multi-engine factors, and we're going to go to the flying part after that. So now it sounds like that's not a lot, but it's usually going to take a good hour and a half to get through some of that stuff because on the ground, we're going to cover some of the systems that are specifically usually related to the multi-engine airplane and

Definitely the one you brought with. So this might include the gear system. Maybe this is the first time you're flying an airplane that the gear goes up and down in, right? We have a retractable gear airplane. It might be your first complex airplane you're flying. We're certainly going to talk about the constant speed propellers on this. We're going to tie that probably to some VMC discussion because we have an airplane where that can

usually feather the propeller, whether it's auto feathering, most of them aren't, a few of them might be, or you will manually feather that airplane to increase your performance and decrease your VMC factor. So we're going to talk about how that prop system works. And if you're used to flying a Custis B prop in a single engine airplane,

This is backwards. Instead of the airplane going to a low pitch, high RPM setting in a loss of power and a loss of hydraulic pressure in that system, it's going to actually go to a higher pitch, a lower RPM, and you can feather that to reduce drag by getting that prop flat into the wind, which I'll say, Max, is always one of the coolest moments when we do this, somebody in training. And I'll tell you, after doing hundreds and hundreds of these as an instructor and as an examiner, I still get geeked out when I look outside the window and see that prop stop.

And I still get a little nervous at the same time too, right? Because we really do like them to restart. So these are things we're going to do at altitude. We'll talk about that in the maneuver section a little bit. Definitely going to talk about our fuel systems in these and most of these multi-engine airplanes. We have fuel systems that are left and right. So, you know, the left engine feeds off the left side, the right engine feeds off the right side, but we might be able to cross feed that fuel in this case. And we might even have air

that have multiple fuel tanks. You know, we fly a Cessna 340 quite a bit and that darn airplane has three tanks per side, so six total tanks. So we get a pretty complex fuel system. So some of these airplanes you train in for multi's, you really want to know that fuel system. You know, what are the limitations of it? Can you operate on all of the tanks during takeoff landing or are some of them just cruising? And how's that going to affect your management of that airplane during flight?

Some of them hydraulic systems, right? I mean, whether it's a gear system that's hydraulic or like the old Apache I was in the other day, the flaps are also hydraulic. A good tip there. We can't run the flaps and the gear at the same time, right? So maybe what I'll call a fault of design that also happens to be on the critical engine where the only pump for that is. So if you lose your left engine, you also lose your flaps and your gear pump.

A little scary, but they give you a good hand pump too. So we have a backup, right? You know, how do those backup systems work in these as well? And that's a good critical thing to make sure you're familiar with. Tying that to our engine failure moments and our gear system, right? So most of the light twin airplanes also have the ability, if you reduce power,

throttle that may unfold pressure beyond a certain point, or you introduce more than just approach flaps, you may get an auditory or visual warning if your gear isn't down. So we got our cool three green or maybe one green light. And if we have a system in there that says, Hey, the gear doesn't look like it's down. We have a backup way to check with those gear systems. And this is something you should be able to definitely detail and explain on your practical test because your examiner, that mean old examiner is probably going to say,

gee, what if that left gear light didn't illuminate? What can you do? Let me want you to walk through that process and explain that.

I bring the heater system up too, especially where I live. It's pretty cold. If that heater system in the winter isn't working, we're going to need to know that it's typically a very different heater system in these airplanes than we had in most of our light single engine airplanes. A lot of them are actually fuel fired. So know some limitations of them. Know what the failure modes of those are. Know where that fuel comes from. How would you handle a fire in it? And then another hot topic on a lot of these airplanes, if equipped, is the de-icing and or anti-icing equipment that we have on it.

You know, know whether it's capable of flying into known icing, know what that means, know what the systems are, how they work. Is it boots? Does it cycle through? Is it pneumatic? Do you have a mix? Do you have some glycol and some heat? So these are things we're going to poke at when it comes to the systems, Max, before we then dive into performance considerations as well.

So for someone who's flying only single-engine aircraft, it might not be immediately obvious to them why heater systems are going to be different in multi-engine aircraft. Just talk about that for a moment. A good question, yeah, that heater system in most single-engine airplanes for the lack of function that most of us have in them in terms of providing us really good warmth in really cold days, says the guy with the 1947 Stinson that...

It barely feels like the heat's even turned on. It's just an exchanger of heat around that muffler, right? So in these multi-engine airplanes, it's actually usually a fuel-fired heater. So it's actually burning avgas in your airplane and then heating the cabin up with that.

For those of you that are in a Seminole, I will warn you that if you're going to be doing this, even in cold climates, barely on is too much. But if it's really too cold, that little heater in there, it does a wonderful job. And I think it would probably heat up a 737 if it had to. But that small four-place cabin of the Seminole, you're going to have lots of heat. I guess if your mean examiner wants to leave it on and make you sweat the whole time, they could do that. But yeah, you're actually burning that gas to make heat.

Yeah, and part of the reason is that in the singles, we've got that hot thing, that engine sitting right in front of us, so it's pretty easy to duct all that heat just a foot or two back behind the engine. And yet, in the twins, those engines are cool.

quite a ways away from the cockpit so that they are you can't use the same kind of system well let's move into performance considerations talk about that so it's a good uh kind of segue to like how are you going to actually use this airplane as a multi-engine pilot and this may be your first commercial thing right so um we're going to probably ask you questions about multi-engine performance assuming maybe you're going to be the commercial pilot flying this so it might be somebody that got

you know, hired to fly a Baron or hired to fly somebody's 310 for them. And the boss, boy, he's kind of a mean guy. He puts pressure on you too. So we're going to test your personal limits a little bit. And your job as the pilot is going to be to work through those performance charts for the airplane and come up with how you might handle some situations. So we're going to be talking about takeoff and landing calculations, just like you do in the single engine airplanes. You're going to dig into the charts for the airplane and see, you know, we have normal takeouts, short field takeouts, density outs, and all those kinds of things.

But then we're going to have the things are broken kind of considerations too. And a lot of this relates to single engine performance in the airplane because we have two engines. Maybe, just maybe, we can hold altitude and get ourselves somewhere safely instead of just turning this into a glide to somewhere off-road.

field if we have an engine failure. This is the big benefit of the multi-engine airplanes, right? We have another engine to keep us going hopefully to a safe landing, not just to a further away crash site. But depending on the performance of the airplane and where you're at, that may actually be the case, but it might extend the time you have to respond to things. So we're going to start with some basics, takeoffs and landings. And we might say, hey, the boss wants you to

You know, take a ride out to Mount Rushmore and bring the kids out there for a school trip, right? Well, Mount Rushmore has got some airports that are 3,000 and 4,000 foot ground elevation. Or maybe the boss wants to go skiing in Telluride, even worse for us than that old Apache, right? So how are we going to handle what the performance limitations are in the airplane in different considerations?

With that, we'll also probably talk about something called the accelerate stop distance. This is a chart you don't have in a single engine airplane because the assumption is if we have an engine fail, we're stopping. In a multi-engine, we have to actually decide, are we stopping or are we continuing? And in a few airplanes, depending on the performance, you may even have it in accelerate and go chart where you're

If you had enough airspeed and power, you could continue a takeoff. Now, I will tell you, in most light general aviation airplanes, those charts I've seen get exceedingly long distances. I mean, it might be something like an 8,000 or 9,000-foot runway to barely squeak yourself off. And if you have had an engine failure on the takeoff roll where that engine barfed a little bit, you really probably want to stop at that point.

even if there's something just partial power or something a little bit awry, we're going to want to stop and fix that. Very few times are we going to want to continue to go unless there's a significant risk, but we're going to run an accelerate and stop distance chart. Basically what this is, is the assumption we've gone to a full power setting on the takeoff roll,

And then had an engine fail, it's going to help us come up with the distance it'll take to get to that point where the engine would fail and then still bring the airplane to a stop. And this is a little bit longer distance. A lot of pilots consider this a number that unless they have a real significant reason to do so, they're not going to use a runway that's shorter than that accelerate stop distance.

distance. I know a few pilots even bring in an extra 20% or so because there's a reaction time they would want to have if they had that startle moment of an engine fail just about the time they were going to lift off. Now, that distance will typically be longer than a short field takeoff performance calculation, and it's usually longer than a landing configuration consideration. So you're going to run those kinds of numbers and try and figure out, do we have appropriate performance for the airport we're going to use?

Mixed in with that, we're also going to probably talk about if you do have an engine failure and you've climbed out or you're at altitude, what is your single engine service ceiling and where are you going to be able to maintain a climb rate? If we're doing this, you're doing a checkride out in Arizona and ground elevation is 4,000 or 5,000 feet. You're going to have to get up to 3,000 feet AGL or greater to recover from your maneuvers. We're getting to 7,000, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000 feet for doing some maneuvers and demonstrations on your checkride.

when we simulate an engine failure, are you going to be able to maintain altitude? Are you going to enter what's called a drift down? We're going to be slowly drifting down to a lower altitude, eventually to an altitude where the airplane can maintain its altitude and not sink any further. So, you know, this can be something we talk about in the performance calculations for the takeoffs too. You know, what if we're climbing out in a cool airport, maybe at a golf course and

northern Georgia or western North Carolina and we're at three or four thousand foot we have an engine failure as we get to pattern altitude as we're climbing out are we going to be able to maintain altitude we're going to be able to clear those next ridges or are we going to have to make a turn back to the airport at that point even if it's a short one or something we don't like because we simply can't maintain a higher altitude so be ready to calculate what it's going to take and where those numbers are going to be in terms of what you're

And this will change on any given day based on the density, altitude and temperatures and things we're experiencing as well. So that that is a changing number that you're going to have to kind of get familiar with and be able to show on your practical tests. So along with this, we're going to probably talk about what's your performance like on a single engine approach as well. You know, are you going to climb to an altitude to do our approach if we need to? Are we going to be needing to divert somewhere else if we have to?

So these are some of the big performance considerations that are going to be mixed into the ground portion of that test. And we're going to be asking you to go ahead and demonstrate your ability to show this. So a couple of numbers for speeds that are different for multi-engine aircraft that we don't have for single engine. V1 and V2, tell people about the difference between those two and the significance of them.

So when we've got some of these, you know, the V1 cuts that everybody hears about, right? What's our main numbers for multi? I will tell you in the jet land, we have that V1 cut, right? That's the, if we're going to, if we get to this spot, we're going to either shut the engine down and stop, or we're going to continue going. And most of our light GA airplanes are,

we don't have enough performance to continue a takeoff after that point. But there are two really, really important numbers you do need to know. And that is your VMC number and your VYSE number, your single and decline, which

The good news is usually also a best glide. I have a mantra I use with people. Blue is your friend. Blue plus 10, right? Blue plus 10 is your friend. So blue line plus 10, your VYSE plus 10 keeps you at a good single engine climb rate in most single engine configurations on an airplane.

It's also generally a good climb rate in a lot of multi-engine airplanes overall and keeps you in a condition that if you had an engine failure, you have sufficient airspeed. The much lower number in most airplanes, although not significantly lower in a few, is that VMC, the minimum controllable airspeed for a single engine. This means if you go slower than that under certain configurations, you're

The airplane may not be maintainable in terms of control. And so you're going to probably get asked on the checkride. And certainly if you're an MEI, you're going to have to be able to teach what is a VMC and under what configuration that VMC is. And it's typically a worst case scenario.

scenario for us, right? So it's the plane's heavy and we have not feathered the engine. There's a whole list of stuff you're going to want to teach through here. And then what are we going to do when we go through our single engine monitor and how's that going to affect our

VMC speed and that VMC speed is affected by configuration of the airplane. So a couple of things that are important with that is we're going to probably put some gear down to land. Our gear going down is actually going to decrease our VMC speed. So let's say we have an airplane and the VMC, you know, hypothetically is 80. When we put the gear down, that should be bringing the speed down.

down if we feather that prop we're increasing our performance we're dropping our vmc speed a little bit so we're increasing our controllability that airplane we're decreasing the actual vmc speed

probably going to put some flaps in for a landing in a single engine configuration. A lot of airplanes, it's approach flaps only. So in all the Seminoles, they'll say two notches of flaps. A lot of them don't go to full flaps for a landing in a single engine configuration. And that will additionally help us by decreasing the VMC speed a little more, produces the lift, hits some drag, and makes us in a better configuration than the

placarded and published VMCs. A lot of things we do when we respond to an engine failure for multi-engine checkride makes our VMC speed actually go down from the published numbers. You're going to need to know what that published number is, but you should also be able to talk about and tell us as you make configuration changes, how that is going to affect your VMC speed that's actually being encountered. Max, my fun one that I like to ask people sometimes is, okay, so imagine you're doing this in a twin otter and skydiving airplane, right?

Do you throw the passengers out? Does it make it better for you? If you had a single engine, you're climbing out, you're at eight, nine, 10,000 feet up for that jump run. The skydivers in the back, you tell them, hey guys, we just had an engine fail. Do you move them forward? Do you move them after you throw them out? And my answer usually is I think the skydivers are jumping out no matter what you tell them to do, because you have an engine failure and they feel probably safer jumping out. But it's a good way to kind of go with the example of how's this going to affect loading and things like that.

that VMC speed. And then, you know, as we make configuration changes, what's that going to do for your response and your danger, right? Right. I mean, how close are to that VMC? And we know that keeping blue or better is always going to make us happier. So blue or better is your friend in a single engine condition. Sure. So blue lines marked on our airspeed indicator for VYSC, the best indicator

rate of climb with a single engine. Red line is going to be our VMC. And of course, there are some things that will make that VMC get better. And I thought that was a clever one you just mentioned about the skydivers jumping out. I presume that they're behind the center of gravity most of the time. So when they jump out,

that's going to move your center of gravity forward, which is going to give you a longer lever arm between the center of gravity and the rudder, which means the rudder will be more effective, which is going to give you a lower VMC, which is going to be safer for you.

Aloha did that one perfect for us, Ben. So let's get those skydivers out the back of the airplane. And you mentioned the 10 conditions of VMC. One of them is the testing is going to be done at zero bank angle. And yet the FAA recommends that you go up to five degrees of bank if you're flying along with just a single engine to keep your VMC lower.

One of the things that really stunned me was that the FAA says that for every degree of bank that you have in, that it can reduce VMC by as much as three knots, which means the difference theoretically between flying along with a five degree bank is going to be as much as a 15 knot reduction in VMC. So just flying along straight and level is not a good way to stay safe. You really want to have the wing banked about what,

to five degrees into the good engine. Correct. So raise the, raise the wing with the dead engine. Raise the dead. Yup. Absolutely. Good bond for a lot of people. Now I, we get this question a lot as examiners. Does that mean you cannot turn into the dead engine?

Well, no, it doesn't mean that, but it does mean if you're turning into that engine, you want to keep shallower bank angles and be aware. Even just reducing that angle of attack or having a little bit more power in can help make it so you're less likely to encounter a VMC2, right? So, you know, if you're flying that

that pattern and it means you got to fly a turn into the dead engine to make the pattern you know it's probably safer to make a 90 degree turn to final when you had the engine than to fly 270 degrees back around or all the way around the airport flying opposite pattern under a single engine configuration the less time that you're going to be under single engine less turning you're going to have to do the more you can maintain straight and level the higher probability you're going to get that airplane to the ground safely which is what we like

All right, so let's talk about some of the maneuvers and some of the ones that we should be concerned about when we're on our checkride. Sure, and I think we've kind of beat up that VMC demo, but Max, I went through really fast earlier what you do when you have an engine failure because it was control performance, fixture props, throttle gear up, flaps up, identify, verify, fix.

Or feather, right? But that's really fast. So let's talk through what's happening. So in any time we have an engine failure, we're going to be doing this on the checkride. Us mean old examiners seem to just have really bad luck with you and have lots of engine problems during your practical tests.

Sorry, we're just not a good passenger. We like to make things fail for you. And we're going to simulate those in a few ways. We might do it with a throttle. We may do it with the mixture. There are still a few examiners doing this with fuel selectors out there in some cases, but we're going to fail, simulated fail, engines on multiple portions on this practical test. What we're looking for you to have is a response that's going to keep that aircraft in control and bring us to a position where we can best test

manage whatever simulated problem we have is, right? We might even be simulated something like, hey, we had an engine driven fuel pump fail and it might be something as simple as turning the fuel pumps on, solve it. I got to tell you, my accountant called me one day. He had a twin commuter in this and said, hey, Chris, what's up? And he said, hey, I just thought I'd tell you I landed safely today.

And I said, well, that's great. But that seems like you don't normally call me when that happens. So there's probably more to the story. And he had a twin Comanche. He said he was flying along and he had some roughness and the engine wasn't wanting to run real well. And he said, I grabbed my checklist and I just went through it. I turned my electric fuel pump on and it rained great all the way home. He said, I'm getting a new engine driven fuel pump now.

But you know what? What had happened is in his primacy in training, this is really critical in the multi-engine stuff. We want to build in you a process that's going to get you safe. So the first thing is maintain control of that airplane, right? So control. We want to stay straight and low.

And when I say performance here, I mean airspeed. We want to be blue line or better. From there, we're going to bring our mixtures forward. Our props are going to come forward. Our throttles are going to come forward. We're going to have the gear up to reduce drag unless we're low altitude and we're going to immediately land. We might retract the flaps if we're higher altitude unless we're low altitude and get immediately land. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And then we're going to go choose to identify which engine has failed.

So we do that using our throttle. So slowly, methodically, we're going to have one leg that's pushing a lot harder than the other one. The dead leg, the one that's not working, should be the one that is your dead engine. So if my left leg's doing nothing, my right leg's working hard, I'm going to kind of tap my left leg and say, hey, I think it's my left engine. And I'm going to reach up with my hand and I'm going to slowly pull back that left throttle. And if I don't have a change, I have now verified that that's the engine that is my problem.

Now, I have a choice here, fix or feather. This is a pause point. I think I want people to really understand this is a pause point. And we have a choose here, right? This is like choose your own adventure. If I'm at low altitude, I'm going to want to get that airplane feathered immediately, especially if I'm in the traffic pattern. I'm just going to be returning the airport because I want to get that drag from that windmilling prop off.

off and I'm going to return to the airport. I'm close. I don't have time to really figure out why it's broken, what's going on. I'm just going to put this airplane on the ground and get safe, right? So at that point,

If I'm low altitude, I've just gone back and I've reached up. I checked. Remember I checked with that left throttle? Now I'm going to take that left propeller and slide all the way back. We're going to feather the engine. And that engine is going to stop spinning. I can, if I want, at that point, pull the left mixture. But I'm going to probably not even go into the rest of the checklist at this point. I'm going to stay in control of the airplane and land it on the ground.

Now, if I'm at a higher altitude, 3, 4, 5,000 feet, and I will tell you when we simulate this as an examiner, we're going to do this so you can recover at minimum recoverable altitudes because we have some prescribed numbers for that.

as checkride and training. Now, as an MEI, your job is going to be to make sure you bring us up as the examiner and simulate these maneuvers at an appropriate altitude. Please do not go out and show me VMC dev roles at 1500 AGL because Piper and the FAA in most cases say that we should recover these maneuvers

at least 3,000 AGL. Now, some of the airplanes are higher. Some of them say 4,000 AGL. And when you get into the Twin Comanches, they say a 5,000-foot AGL minimum recovery. So if I'm doing a Twin Comanche checkride, which gets really hard in Michigan this time of year with our ceilings,

I basically need a 7,000-foot ceiling to do that checkride because I'm going to have to go up, give myself 1,000 feet of room to recover. We're probably at above an altitude where I'm going to be able to maintain altitude. So while I'm doing my thing, we're going to be drifting down a little bit. And I want to stay 1,000 feet below the clouds. So sometimes these multi-engine checkrides are the hardest ones to get in because of that ceiling requirement. But that's what keeps you safe by going up. Now, at the higher altitude, we're going to choose fixer feather. Well, I've got some room. I've got some time.

I might choose to try and fix. And this is where I'm going to go turtle again, Max. And I'm going to get my checklist out and I'm going to go, all right, well, there's an engine shutdown or an engine failure checklist. I'm going to pull it. I'm going to go back through what it says that I should have done already, which is that control performance, make sure prop throttle gears up, flaps up.

identify, verify, I'm at my fix. So I've done all those things, make sure I didn't miss anything, right? It wasn't something stupid where I went, oh God, I forgot to put the mixture forward. And now I'm going to check through things. And it's really kind of a flow in most of the airplanes. You could do this by memory quick, but then go back to the checklist. It's usually, am I on a tank that has gas?

Maybe I even switch tanks or have an ox pump that I'm going to flip on. Maybe something in the fuel delivery is not happening. Do I have a magneto that's a problem? Do I have curb ice that's a problem if we're in a carbureted airplane? And there's not much else I can try to fix at this point, right? So I'm kind of doing a little T-flow. I go down with my fuel, make sure I'm on a tank that works, come across, check mixture master mags, fuel pumps, any switches like that.

And honestly, that's probably all it's going to be on most of the emergency checklists that I'll do. Hopefully, one of those solved it for you.

But Max, I have a feeling on your checkride it just might not. And you're going to go through that and do it nice and slow. And when the examiner says, man, that didn't seem to work, now we get back to the, well, geez, I tried to fix it. And I have my last thing one more time, which is feather. And they're going to have you actually shut down that engine. We have to do this on a practical test. So you're going to reach out and say, boy, that didn't work. And if it was my left engine, I'm going to use my left...

prop controller. If it's my right engine, I'm going to hopefully use my right prop controller. Make sure you get that right because it does scare the examiner when both engines stop. Okay. And we're going to reach up and we're going to set that propeller and we're going to shut it down. And you're going to go through your securing checklist at this point.

Once you've gone through that initial shutdown checklist, your checklist is going to have some more stuff. And it's usually going to have shutting the magnetos off. It's going to have shutting the fuel off to the affected engine, probably shutting that alternator off. Fuel pumps are going to come off and, you know, you may even close a cowl flap or something like that.

These are going to be your shutdown and secure. And then your examiner is going to say, wow, that was great. I like how you did it nice and slow. Show me a couple of turns because boy, if we just had an engine failure, I'd really like to go back to the nearby airport. So this might be a, hey, we're going to divert back to home or whatever the nearest airport is at this point. They do need to see you maneuver under that single engine configuration.

Then they're going to let you restart it, which is always fun, right? So you're going to pull that checklist out again. You're going to go through the restart checklist and make sure that engine starts back up. Some airplanes have unfettering auto accumulators. Some have nitrogen charges that will help them unfetter. Some of them are just dependent on the starter.

cranking to get that propeller to come out of feather. And that can be a pretty heavy load on the airplane electrical system. So make sure you're good and familiar with that if your airplane does that as well. And as that prop starts to spin, everybody gets happier again. And we realize we're going to have both engines running for the trip back to the airport until that mean examiner

fails it on your approach. Well, we're going to talk in a moment about things that MEIs should be concerned about when giving instruction, but tell me first about the time when somebody shut off both the engines on you.

Oh, Max, just one? You think there's only been one, huh? So this happens frequently, and this is back to the thing, turtle, don't go octopus. And I will tell you, the biggest thing you can do to scare the examiner on the practical test is shut off both engines, especially when you're low altitude. I mean, so here we were getting set up for an ILS approach because we have to do a single engine approach on this. Assuming you're an instrument rated pilot, you want to keep that instrument rating. You're going to do a single engine approach.

instrument approach. So we're going to simulate that. We're going to only probably do this with the throttle because we're low altitude for this. And so I had simulated, you know, throttle came back and the applicant just reached up and shut all four magnetos off for me. You know, there was a brief moment of, whoa, what do you do? And I'll be honest, I actually reached up and this is where training I think is important, right? So this applicant in this case said I could still glide.

And I thought, boy, we got to be a really good glider pilot if we're going to glide a Seneca for six miles with 1500 feet elevation and no engines. So I did pop those back on and we had a chat on the ground. But, you know, don't treat this stuff as rote, right? Because the applicant in this case had been treating some of his multi-engine as rote. And I'll tell you that the similar on the climb out, we had a scenario where I simulated an engine failure two or three thousand feet off the ground and climb out to the practice area. And he said, well, this isn't where the engine failed in my training.

And I said, well, but it did today. So how would you handle it? So, you know, as you're a multi-engine instructor, think about this. If you're getting multi-engine training, make sure your instructor is simulating these scenarios in different positions in your flight, different flight kind of scenarios along the way. So you're able to think through and use the tools, use those checklists and those responses to handle a situation in different phases of flight as well.

And again, don't shut both engines off. You scare the examiner. So it does wake us up a little bit. I will say that. Yeah, I do tell people I'm working with sometimes the most important thing is do not scare the flight instructor. So I think we don't enjoy those kinds of situations. But talk a little bit more about the MEI, the multi-engine instructor.

Sure. This is kind of the twist on, okay, so we've talked about how you do all of these things, but we also have to talk about how do you teach them. And if you're a multi-engine instructor wannabe, you have to be able to not only guard the student from the safety, but manage the risk of doing these maneuvers while you're doing it. So make sure you're doing this at appropriate altitudes. There's nothing wrong with going higher, right? I actually really like doing, especially the single engine stuff. When I've got a shuttered engine down,

I like being near an airport with a longer, larger runway in the event that I cannot get the airplane to restart. I want to have a good out for myself. Right. You know, I was doing some training west of Fort Lauderdale out over the Everglades with somebody one day and I was actually me getting some training in a seminal. And it was kind of funny because he said, man, he said, you're from North. He said, you are.

You do all this stuff like over Lake Michigan sometimes. And I said, yeah, aren't you afraid of the water? And I looked down and I'm thinking, oh,

What about the Everglades Rover right now? There's stuff out here that's going to eat you, right? And I've actually done some training in South Florida with a friend of mine. I was pretty good at making sure that we weren't out in the middle of the Everglades. We were out by that big Dade Collier airport out there. So that if we had somewhere to go, we could, you know. So if you're in a controlled airport, get away a little bit. There's nothing wrong with flying 10, 20, 50 miles along the way, doing some maneuvers. When you're going to do this single engine stuff, put yourself in a position where there's a nice big runway, you know, 5,000, 6,000 feet, a non-towered airport maybe or another airport.

that is, you know, controlled, that isn't super busy, that there were services if you needed them. I've actually had a couple of cases where we've landed airplanes, single engines in training because we couldn't get them to restart. And so, you know, when you really got to do this for real, it does kind of leave you with the, why don't you leave yourself some outs? So think about that when you're doing the training for your students.

It's also good to just make sure you know the airplanes, right? So one of the things the FAA does say is for a multi-engine instructor to give training, and I'm going to characterize this carefully because a lot of people mix it up, to give training in a multi-engine airplane training

toward a rating or certificate, you have to have five hours of make and model experience. So if you're a brand new MEI and you did it in a seminal and George calls you and says, man, I want to do my private in the 310, you're going to have to get some experience in that airplane before it. Now, what you can still do

is things like flight reviews, IPCs, do some cross-country or some insurance proficiency training for people. And those are actually great ways for MEIs to gain experience in new airplanes with a pilot who's familiar with their own airplane and proficient already. You're not trying to teach somebody something that you don't know. Put the work in in these multi-engine airplanes. If you're going to be doing some instructing, make sure you know how all the systems we talked about before work.

You know, what are the gear warning system indications and what are the emergency options in the poor barons? How do you crank that gear down in a manual gear extension? I really encourage anybody, if you're doing multi-engine training and there is an annual or 100 hour going on in the airplanes on jacks, jump in there with the maintenance guy and say, hey, can I do a couple of

simulated emergency extensions on the gear. I'm going to tell you if it's in a Baron or a 310 where they're hand cranked, that maintenance guy's going to love you because they're going to let you get in there and crank all 56 or 60 or 70 cranks or whatever it takes to get that thing down. And be aware of how that system works and have done it a couple of times because

You don't want to have to do that for the very first time in an emergency when the engine didn't restart and you got a 3000 foot ceiling and there's icing and you're losing altitude because the airplane's underpowered. Boy, that sounds pretty scary with you and your student trying to figure it out the first time. So get familiar with that stuff and figure it out and take time if you're going to fly in these airplanes and instruct them to really know the system. Now, some of them are a lot simpler. They might just be a hydraulic drop system that, you know, is really simple to work. And in some of them,

Boy, that hand crank they give you is just in an uncomfortable place. So might be a situation where you or the student, vice versa, if you ever have to do it in real or if you had a passenger or a good autopilot might choose to help you stay straight and level while you did an emergency gear extension.

I think that's a great tip. Never heard of that before, to go to an annual and practice cranking the gear down because I know in some aircraft you're not allowed to practice doing that in flight. So what a great way to get a chance to do it for real. Yeah.

So I know you have a book on multi-engine flying. Tell us a little bit about that. I do. So I've had the opportunity to work with ASA on their multi-engine oral exam guide. And actually that book is kind of like we're doing today, a mix of both the MEI and multi-engine. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff in there. I will tell you, it is not every question that an examiner might ask you, but it's a lot of questions that gets you a flavor of it. So,

certainly hope if anybody grabs it, it's helpful. If you see things in it, we should add or change, send me an email because we're always updating these books and trying to make sure we get better stuff into them. So if you got examiners out there asking you questions that we didn't give you topics on, send me an email and we'll update it for the next version at ASA. And I'll include a link to that book in the show notes. Tell us, where do people find more about you on the web as well as schedule a check ride with you if they're up in the Michigan area?

Cool. Yeah. So I'm pretty easy to find, Max. Just jasonblair.net.net. Actually, all of the books I do are on there. Links to your podcasts are on there and a lot of articles and stuff. You can actually get a hold of my checkride schedule there. I will tell you, it's still pretty booked out right now. I kind of do a different thing in the winter than most examiners. I book everybody to checkride slots because we're in Michigan.

And we lose a lot of them. So when we book it, we try to give you a backup slot. But certainly anybody needs some help, either I can help you or I can help get you to somebody that will. As much as I can, we stay in contact with a lot of examiners around the country. And I know this has been a challenge for a lot of people. So looking forward to seeing people get more multi-stuff done here. Jason, thanks so much for sharing all this with everyone here today. Always good to see you again. My absolute pleasure. Now, if anybody out there knows how to make the weather better in Michigan in the next month for it, send it my way. Hello.

You can find out more about Jason and his books at jasonblair.net. And if you live near Michigan, you may want to schedule a checkride with him. In our show notes, you'll find links to Jason's website, his page for scheduling a checkride, and his YouTube channel.

And just a reminder that I love hearing from you and I read many of your emails on the show. If you'd like to send me a message, just go out to aviationnewstalk.com, click on contact at the top of the page. That's absolutely the best way to send me a message. And of course, I also want to thank everyone who supports the show in one of the following ways. We love it when you join the club and sign up at aviationnewstalk.com slash support to

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right coming down. Wait until your side is maybe sliding upside down. You can always