October 25, 2024 • 41 mins
In this unique episode, Hollie Bellino and Adam Levine, DPE, discuss how Adam became a DPE and his military background. Adam trained as a pilot for the marines and actually attended the prestigious Top Gun training program. He has professionally flown aircraft from the T-2C Buckeye to the F-35.
This episode is part 1 of 2! Part 2 will encompass details relating to the PPL checkride and ways to be prepared for the checkride whether you’re a student or an instructor!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome aviators. It's a pleasure to have you again here on The Aviator's Guide. I'm
(00:11):
Hollie Bellino and today with me I have a DP, which is a Designated Pilot Examiner and his
name is Adam Levine. Thank you for being here today, Adam.
Hollie, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to join you on your podcast.
I'm so happy that you can do this with me today. As you know, I had previously had an
AME, so it's good to get all the different facets of aviation on the show for the newer
pilots out there or even the ones who've been in for a while. So just today only I'm taking
(00:32):
a short break from my new mini series that I have out on ways that you can build flight
hours. So I will be going back into that after this episode today.
First off, how did you get started in aviation? Truth in advertising, right? Hollie sent me
like a list of questions, so I had some time to ponder this, but grew up in an aviation
family. You were a third generation pilot?
I was. That's amazing.
My dad and my granddad were both Marine fighter pilots. As long as I can remember seeing like
(00:57):
their old flying helmets or their deployment books, pictures of my granddad flying in the
Pacific in World War II or in Korea, and then pictures of my dad flying in Vietnam. I was
like, wow, that's really cool. It was never really a general aviation thing. It was always,
I really want to be a fighter pilot when I grow up. So that was kind of there in college.
(01:17):
There were several programs where you could join the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.
I remember very vividly being a freshman in college and walking through the student union
at George Washington. It was like career week, so they had all these recruiting tables out
there for different companies. I remember seeing Captain French, he was a recruiter
and there was a big poster of an F-18 behind him. And I just kind of beelined over the
(01:40):
table.
I'm like, that's it. That's what I want.
And he's like, oh, we got a sucker today. No. So they had this program where you were
guaranteed an aviation contract if you met the testing requirement, the air medical requirement.
And what it meant was you will join the Marine Corps and they'll guarantee you a spot in
flight training. It didn't mean you'd be a pilot. They just said, we're going to guarantee
you a spot in flight training.
The free training alone is really good though.
(02:02):
Yeah. You know, when you think about, so you have to like bifurcate that, right? You think
in terms of general aviation, it's like, oh my God, it's going to cost me $130,000
to become a CFI. Like none of that's a factor when you're thinking in the context of serving
your country, right? The higher order, you know, joining the Marine Corps and then becoming
a pilot. So the cost doesn't come to mind. It's that end state of, oh my gosh, if I get
(02:23):
through this, they're actually going to give me the keys to an F-18, potentially one day.
And like I said, there's no guarantee you'll be a pilot or what you're going to fly. But
essentially you go through the training. It was obviously Canada school, which had nothing
to do with flying. It had nothing to do with just surviving that experience. And then you
go to kind of an infantry course for six months where all new lieutenants go. And then after
you've been in for like a year, you finally go to the Mecca of Naval Aviation, which is
(02:46):
Pensacola, Florida. And then you wait and you wait. You do this thing called aviation
pre-flight indoctrination, which is imagine like all the ground training instruction,
you know, you would receive in the context of a professional flight school, either 61
or 141. They jam it into about three weeks. You haven't even touched an airplane yet,
but it's a lot of aero theory, weather, navigation. It's nothing more than really in that context
(03:10):
an intellectual exercise to cram as much information in and then test you on everything in very
detail minutia to wash people out essentially. And then you do a lot of survival training
where, you know, there's a lot of time in the pool with all this equipment on. But anyway,
at the end of that process, then you finally go to your primary flight training. And I
went through it in 99 or 2000. Yeah, 99. The airplane they're flying back then was called
(03:31):
the T-34C. And we'll hit pause here for a second because part of that program that the
Marine Corps had when you were going to go for an aviation contract was it actually pay
a local flight school to provide you instruction. And I would not say it was up to a pilot certificate.
It was to get a sense of you may have this idea that you want to fly. Let's not spend
(03:53):
hundreds of thousands of dollars on the T-34. Yeah. So I went to a small flight school outside
of Washington DC. I think it was like Hyde Park and then flew in a Cessna 152 for about
eight or nine hours and up to solo. And that's what they did. It says solo or 10 hours, whichever
came first. I remember my recruiting officer was like, so what do you think? I'm like,
that was awesome. So then kind of fast forward about a year and a half later in flight training
(04:13):
and the first airplane he flies, the T-34C, which has not been mostly retired from pilot
training, but it's a turbo problem. So complex high performance in the context of FAA terms,
PT six engines. So very common kind of power plan. I think that you still find in multiple
variations of turbo pop aircraft and high performance. So I mean negative two or three
to plus six G. So I mean it's fully aerobatic aircraft. Oh yeah, absolutely. And totally
(04:37):
overpowered for what it was doing. The kind of similarity with general aviation is like
you have a primary instructor and that person will take you up through your first solo and
then you kind of parse out from there. And I had this guy named Jeff Toeil, who was super
cool, old crusty Marine major, had thousands of hours of flying experience and he was like
the benevolent dictator, you know? But we had such a great time together. I learned
(04:59):
so much from him. And then I remember like getting up to that pre-solo check. It's like
the first time you go with someone else, not your instructor. You fly in the pattern, you
navigate, you communicate, fly the aircraft, pass that and then you move on to basic instruments
and then we moved on to navigation and then we actually do some formation flying. So it's
kind of all leading towards a context of military aviation where the takeoff and the landing
(05:22):
is a byproduct of the mission, right? We're going to go out there, we're going to do something,
right? So then about six months later, you get about 70, 80, 90 hours in the airplane,
depending on weather or breaks or whatnot. And then there's that selection process where
you put your dream sheet on. Back then, I don't know if it's changed, you have to do
better than 50% of the last hundred kids that went through in order to qualify for jet training.
All my buddies, I've always wanted to be fighter pilots. Some people want to buy helicopters,
(05:44):
get on them, or transports. You get your grades right at the end of the syllabus, but then
you're being compared to not just your little squadron. And we had three squadrons in our
base and then two squadrons in another base. So we're talking about five kind of graduating
classes every other week with five kids each. So it's quite a number.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you have no idea how they did, but you know how you did relative to the last hundred
people. You'll line up in front of the commander. He takes out your dream sheet. He's like,
(06:08):
all right, hey, Adam, Jets was your number one. You broke out, you were number whatever,
two out of 25. Whatever that number was. And you're just thinking, just get over it. Just
get over it.
Just tell me.
Just tell me. He's like, hey, man, congratulations. You qualify for jet training. Best of luck
to you. After you just said, congratulations, Jets, I just like, I think I mentally shut
down.
You're like, saw I wanted, I'm so excited.
Yeah. From there, I went to Meridian, Mississippi. I flew an airplane called the T2C Buckeye.
(06:31):
It's been retired for a while. It was built in like the sixties. They modified it and
went from single engine to engine. So here you are, 22, 23 years old. You got 70 hours
on D34 and then you're jumping into basically high performance subsonic fully air aircraft
twin engine reflecting back on avionics. It had an app. We call it the Aba Jabba. It was
like this big attitude indicator. It had a DME drum for VOR DME and we got a tac can
(06:54):
and it had a heading, a receiving needle on it, which is about six radials thick. Right.
So I mean, you were plus or minus always three, you know, when you're navigating around. There
was no for flight, no GPS back then. Generally now I see kids at like 50 to 60, 70 hours
going through private pilot and then you go into instrument, right? So imagine that kind
of same number of hours. Now you're flying a high subsonic aircraft, moving around at
(07:18):
300, 400 knots of the ground. First thing you do is you sit in the back for the first
couple of rides and you do basic instruments, just doing 180 and 360 turns, S patterns,
right? Just learning how to fly instruments. And then eventually you take the hood off
and get in the front seat and you learn how to take off and land. And now you're going
into naval aviation, right? There is no concept in that level of training where you're doing
a normal landing, a soft field landing, a short field landing or a powerful 180. Like
(07:40):
everything is focused on landing on the carrier. From that first starting in the front seat,
when you come back to the landing pattern, you have a carrier landing box. You have an
optical landing system, right? Think about a VASV or PAPI, but on the aircraft carrier,
it's much more precise. And then you're focusing on lineup, energy management, angle of attack
and then glide slope, right? And you're on the backside of the power curve on these air
(08:01):
points. So you're not pointing your nose at the ground. You are getting the aircraft dirty,
all the flaps come down and then you're using power to adjust your glide slope. You're using
stick inputs to adjust angle of attack and then obviously lineup. So slightly different
construct from how we think about general aviation flying.
You said that there are PAPIs on there or?
Flaws, optical landing system.
(08:23):
Okay. Yeah.
And so you know how like usually PAPI's at a normal runway, they're helping you aim for
the thousand footers. Where are they helping you aim on the carrier?
Well, on the carrier, everything is designed to spot a wire or an area in front of the
wire. And really it's to grade the hook from an approach point about three quarters of
a mile behind the ship on a defined glide slope down to touch point.
(08:44):
That makes sense.
That is between generally and the old carriers are four cables out there. You want to land
between the second and third. And I think it's about 240 or 280 feet from the aft end
of the carrier to that spot. So when you're in intermediate flight training in the T2,
it's all focused on getting to that point. We'd go do aerobatics, navigation, low levels,
whatnot. And then you'd save enough gas to come back in the pattern and do like 10 landings.
(09:06):
But all that said is you get through that training. We then moved it to T45, which is
called the GOSHAC, I think built by Boeing. At any rate, now you're going from an airplane
that was built in the sixties, you know, with seventies kind of avionics to what was then
in 2001, 2000, a modern glass cockpit. We had two digital displays, a heads up display.
(09:28):
We had ILS. I'm like, I have an ILS. This jet was capable of going to 30s, 40,000 feet,
you know, and then you learn how to fly the aircraft and immediately going into tactics,
right? We would do bombings. You carry like these little blue 25 pound bombs. We go to
the bombing pattern and you drop a bunch of bombs and you get great and how well you dropped
them. We do low level navigation. We have basically a sectional equivalent flying at
(09:50):
500 feet and about 400 knots. You're doing these low level routes called VR or IR routes.
There are kids training out there every day and you just go fly these routes all around
Mississippi, Alabama. I think we went to Georgia for a little bit. You know, you're doing your
VFR flight plan or your VFR navigation. Now you're at 4,500 feet and you're flying in
a 172 or even a Cirrus and you're like, Oh my God, I'm going to miss my checkpoint here
(10:12):
in 10 minutes and three miles away. And here you're going at 500 feet, 420. You can't even
see much more than a couple of miles in front of you. It's all happening very quickly, but
the whole concept behind that is to start employing the aircraft. So we do bombing,
you do aerial combat, a bunch of other dynamic maneuvers. In naval aviation, it's takeoff
from the carrier, do a mission, come back to the carrier. So at the end of that training
(10:33):
about a year, now we've got about 230 hours total. You actually train to go to the carrier
and we went to the carrier. So you go land on the carrier 10 times during the day and
that was a lot of fun. Very interesting experience because you practice this in a very confined
environment on a base. There's lots of pilots, you know, the ship's on a time clock, you
know, they got to get the mission done. There's a lot of pressure on there.
What are those things that are called that capture the aircraft when you don't land on
(10:55):
the carrier?
It's well, what you're seeing is actually called a cross deck pendant, but people refer
to it as the wire. You see you want to the hook, you want to touch down about 10 or 15
feet before the three wires. He catches rewire.
How long after you one pilot lands on the wires? Does it take to get everything out
of the way for the next pilot?
We're shooting for about 55 seconds. But when you're a student naval aviator, you're like,
(11:16):
I just want to land on this thing safely. But you're flying in formation. So we had
a four ship, right? So number one is instructor pilot and then two, three, four students.
So you take off, everyone joins in number one. You fly it off the coast, 60, 70 miles.
Flying in formation, I don't know if you were flown in formation?
Yes, I did once in flight school.
Okay. All right. So I mean, this is like you were flying 20, 30 feet away from your instructor,
(11:37):
you know, kind of close formation and you dare to look down on occasion and oh my gosh,
there's a darn ship down there. And you're like, I can't do this. And he kind of you
hold the radio chatter and number one goes to the downwind. And then I think you count
like 15 or 20 seconds, whatever it is, it was like, it felt like way too short, but
took like way too long. And then you just drill straight ahead. And then you turn on
your interval, you're about 600 feet AGL, you turn downwind, you configure the aircraft.
(12:01):
This is all happening pretty quick. But you've practiced this hundreds of times.
Before you're landing on the carrier.
Right. But don't forget the ship is moving all the time at 12 to 15 knots. Oh, by the
way, it's an angled deck. So your final bearing where the ship is actually heading is slightly
off step from where you're actually gonna land about six, seven degrees, right? When
you get a beam, the point of a tenant landing like think about like a powerful 180 concept,
(12:22):
like you start your turn. And it's a very deliberate, very optimum angle of attack turn
to arrive about three quarters of a mile behind the ship, I think 375 to 400 feet AGL with
lineup solved, then you are basically transitioning into that visual scan looking at the meatball,
which is the optical landing system got a datum to show optimum glide soap. And then
(12:46):
you've got a kind of a light pattern where if you're on the glide soap or above, it's
orange as you get low, what color do you think it turns into? Red, red, red is dead. So it's
a lot of visual landing aids. So you're working on glide soap, you're working on your angle
of attack and you're working on your lineup, right? Because the ship is always moving away
from you, if that makes sense at an angle, you're not supposed to actually look at the
wires or the landing area. All you're doing is you're looking for the lineup, broadly
(13:11):
speaking, angle of attack and your glide soap and you are supposed to fly that lens and
meatball all the way down a touchdown. And then we got landing signals officer out there
that are basically one grading you but to making sure that you're operating safely.
So you are aligned up left or right, they'll give you corrections that they'll say you're
a little high or you're a little low and they can actually look at your angle of attack
(13:32):
and there's an angle of attack index of lights in front of the aircraft that will repeat
what you're seeing in the cockpit. So the landing signals officer may see a green or
red light and then say you're fast or you're slow, a reminder for you to get the right
angle of attack on because there's no one in your backseat, you're by yourself. At the
completion of that training, you select a platform and now you've been a naval aviation
(13:54):
training. You've really been away from the Marine Corps for about a year or two and then
you select and I went to Naval Air Station Lemoore and learn how to fly the F-18 for
a year and that was all tactics right at the very junior level if that makes sense, like
how to be a good wingman and then at the end of that training, you are assigned a squadron.
I was assigned to go down to Marine Corps Station Miramar and beautiful San Diego but
(14:15):
I get to my first operational unit and at least in the Marine Corps then it was all
F-18s and Miramar for the fighters. But you had land base, single seat, two seat and then
you had the carrier base and I'm like I want to be in a carrier base squadron and I joined
the world famous Black Knights, VMFA 314 and like 90 days later we're on the ship getting
ready to go in deployment. I spent 10 years in the F-18 at Miramar. I did a carrier deployment
(14:39):
and I did a forward air controller tour so we take our pilots and we attach them to ground
infantry unit and they become like a liaison officer and then I went back and I did a couple
land base deployments in the F-18. Then I taught in the F-18 training squadron in Miramar
for a couple years and in that time I was fortunate to go to Top Gun and then the Marine
Corps Weapons School Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course. You went to Top Gun? I did. That's
(15:02):
so cool. I can safely say that it was a very humbling experience. You're assigned a call
sign early on in your training. If you like the call sign you keep it. If you don't like
it you keep it. There is no training it back in. So what was your call sign? My call sign
is Beavis. Beavis? Yeah. You get to their first unit and they don't know you. They're
(15:24):
like hey new guy. They have their new guy rules which I don't think I can recite here.
But it's basically join up, shut up, be humble, study as hard as you can. If you're asked
a question, answer the question. If you don't know it I'll find out the answer. There are
a bunch of tests and you join up to your first unit and the list of publications. It was
like a stack of books like this. Fun. One is how to fly the airplane, write the NATOPS
(15:48):
manual which is like the POA and then all the tactics manuals. And you're like I'm never
going to figure this out. And you're never, you can never be in the right formation. You're
always losing sight. You're not shooting the right people. But like in air to air combat
training there's a lot of employment of weapons simulated of course in training. But you know
are you shooting the right weapon? Are you shooting at the right range? Are you keeping
formation? Are you doing all the things that you need to do in order to be successful?
(16:10):
Oh by the way you have to employ the radar while you're flying. So imagine flying in
formation near supersonic speeds, dynamically maneuvering, looking at the radar, trying
to sort the right contact, trying to shoot, trying to defend, trying to find the merge,
trying to employ. And then you got to go back to ship and land on that ship. And if you're
doing it at night it's a wholly separate experience. That can be very frightening. You know during
the day it can be fun. Sometimes at night it is a deadly serious business. Absolutely.
(16:35):
Yeah. My goodness. Do you have any advice for anybody who wants to join the military
for the aviation side? Well I've got a couple jokes but you know I've not made any of these
up but today you know writ large in the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps like equipment's
all brand new. You know I get to fly the F-45 as my day job and you know we're delivering
that amazing aircraft to the fleet. Guys and girls that want to join they're going to find
(16:57):
brand new equipment which is really cool. It is state of the art, the best if you're
going to go into combat. These are the airplanes you want to go into combat with. Marine aviation
exists to support the grunts. That's the ethos of the Marine Corps. Marine aviation exists
to support the grand scheme of maneuver. Whether you're flying a fighter, a helicopter, a transport,
how do we help the grand scheme of maneuver? Air power doesn't win wars broadly speaking.
(17:17):
It's achieving that objective and that is we've got to take real estate. In order to
do that you need people on the ground generally speaking. Being a DPE is your like part time
job. Oh yeah. I did 22 years right so just to kind of go back a little bit is I did the
10 years in the F-18. When I was teaching in the F-18 training squadron they were finally
starting to build the F-35. There was a selection board. Shocker in the military, anything you
want to do of prestige. There's a selection process and people are going to talk about
(17:41):
you and look at your records. It was very very competitive. The first board I was not
selected I was alternate. I was like super bummed. But then six months later they had
another board that was selected primary. And then the F-45 program delayed so I kept teaching
at the F-18 schoolhouse. Eventually got orders to go down to Eglin. We showed up there and
were like where is the F-45? There were no jets. We sat around there, flew in the simulator
and eventually the jet showed up so I did the F-45 for another 10 years. Finished up
(18:02):
as a commander of the Marine Corps' F-45 training squadron. So think about like the
equivalent of like a part 141 school where you're teaching people how to fly. That was
the squadron in the East Coast. We had 30 airplanes. We're training American Marine
pilots that fly the aircraft. We're training British pilots that fly the aircraft and Italian
pilots that fly the aircraft. We even had British and Italian airplanes in our squadron.
(18:24):
So it was very much a multinational thing. But all that said it was focused on flying
the aircraft and employing the aircraft as good wingmen and then we'd send the kids
out to their first operational units or pilots that came from other platforms that were
learning how to fly the F-45. So maybe from the A-8 or the F-18 or the A-6B you're just
teaching them how to fly this new airplane. I was going to retire. I had this great opportunity
(18:44):
to come down here to Fort Worth to fly at Lockheed on the government side for a government
agency called Defense Contract Management Agency and then retired out of that job. Worked
at Textron for almost a year. Nice. And that kind of ties into the DPE part. And then I
had this job offer I couldn't refuse. We were hiring a civilian acceptance pilot to go fly
the F-45. Oh that's how you got there. So I had a, yeah I remember talking to my wife
(19:06):
like oh my god what do I do. I had this amazing job at Textron. I loved what I was doing.
I loved the management. We had a great mission there. I was the director of flight operations
on the Mirage program. Or is this a once in a lifetime opportunity to go back and fly
the F-45 as a civilian. I'm like I gotta do this. It's been great. I've been doing that
for four years as a full time job. And you know who you're working for. You're working
for the war fighter. You know getting the privilege to accept these aircraft on behalf
(19:27):
of the contractor and the government. Test them and then deliver them out to the war
fighter has been amazing. You know flying jets to Korea. Flying them to Israel. Flying
them to operational base in the US. You know it's really neat. So how did you become a
DP? Right so I'm a Textron or ATAC, Airborne Tactical Advantage company. So they have a
campus up at Alliance Field. Several years ago the Air Force like hey we need more adversary
(19:50):
support. They solicited industry. Textron and ATAC bid. In that background they bought
a lot of Mirage DAF-1. It's a fighter jet that the French built in the 60s, 70s, modified
in the 80s and flew them through like 2010, 2012. And then they had Half Life on them
but they retired them. They didn't need it. Textron comes around like a world by all of
them. They shipped them to the US. Took the wings off, the tails off, the engines out.
(20:13):
They assembled them up at Alliance Field and at any rate ATAC was hiring for Director of
Flight Operations. I competed for the job. I got the job. It's twofold. One is hire,
recruit, train Mirage pilots. Then it was interact with the customer to get the airplanes
and people out to the operating locations. We won three contracts. Eglin, Luke and Holloman.
In 90 days we had to send 12 or 15 airplanes out and like 20 pilots. And we had like three
(20:36):
flying airplanes and like four pilots. It was a mad scramble. How do you learn how to
fly Mirage? Well, it's not on contract yet so everything we're doing is under part 91
but it was a specialty aircraft right because it's not a general aviation airplane right
the way it's catalogued. It's a swept wing, high performance supersonic aircraft right.
So we're training under basically FAA part 61 and 91. So everything was based on executing
(21:03):
and performing an ATP style check ride in a supersonic fighter. You know we do academics
for a week and you jump in as an instructor in your backseat and you learn how to taxi
the aircraft, take off and land and do basic maneuvers. But in the ATP there's no air combat
maneuvering. You know the FAA doesn't care about that. They care about you operating
the aircraft safely so they basically said well it's not a commercial private like let's
(21:26):
just put it into an ATP. I do a couple rides and the next thing you know this specialty
aircraft examiner shows up. I had no idea what a DP was, what an ATP was. I didn't
know and didn't really care at the time. I was like I just need to pass the check ride
and he's like alright here's your 8710 so we're going to fill that out. It looks at
the log book, you know the training, all the documentations, all the endorsements. I'd
never had a civilian log book until I got in. I had to like create one. That's true
(21:49):
yeah. And based on all the hours. I had done my MILCOMP right for commercial aircraft multi-engine
land, single engine land and powered lift and I'd done MILCOMP for CFII. So I have
these military equivalents and the DP shows up. We taxi, all the things you have in your
plan of action. Took off and we did clean and dirty stalls in the Mirage which is kind
of laughable. We did unusual attitudes and then we did a precision, non-precision approach.
(22:14):
We did malfunction simulated because it is a single engine. By the way the DP is in the
back seat. There was no hood in the aircraft because you're in the front seat right. You
had to fly the aircraft so you are flying referencing your instruments and we're doing
a non-precision approach. So take a guess how fast the Mirage goes in gear down configuration
no flaps on final. 140. 220. Oh my gosh. So you're doing 210 to 220 no flap and you're
(22:40):
just screaming down final. There's not a lot of away forgiveness right because you're not
creating a lot of lift because your stubby little wings don't have the flaps down. To
kind of simulate a malfunction right and then you go and you do a precision approach and
you have full capability. So there's about a 60 knot difference between no flap and full
flap in the Mirage you know. One is a true no kidding emergency. At any rate gives me
(23:01):
my temporary airman certificate as a authorized experimental in the DAF one. I'm like wow
it's really cool. A managing specialist by and large they have to sample a certain percentage
or number of applicants that are reviewed or that are given a practical by DP. My managing
specialist really any managing specialist will do a sample and often times it could
be via paperwork to look at the quality of the paperwork right because we do a bunch
(23:22):
of entries to talk to the FAA whether it's AIAC or DMS we could do that in a little bit
but there was only one authorized experimental he had a temporary approval to do check rides
in Mirage. He was not even qualified in the aircraft at the time but industry needed to
make Mirage pilots. There are two companies out there us and Drakken. Now it's like we
need to train lots of pilots like right now. I'm sitting at my desk and I get a call one
(23:45):
day it's like FAA I'm like oh man what did I do and someone introduced himself he says
hey I'm you know I'm the managing specialist for this DPE or special aircraft examiner.
So he's like hey how did the check ride go. I'm like it's great got my temporary airman
certificate and he just has questions like did he brief in a plan of action. Did he determine
eligibility. Did he do the maneuvers that set forth and like you just just generic questions.
(24:07):
I'm like yeah I did all those things and he goes do you have any questions and I said
yeah I don't even know what a DPE is or does like this guy showed up. I feel like I'm more
qualified to be a DPE or an examiner than he is like I'm flying the aircraft I'm an
instructor pilot of the aircraft I'm actually the PIC of the aircraft and we're teaching
people how to fly the aircraft and he's like well that's actually an interesting question.
90 days later I'm sitting in phase one training to become an examiner. I had no idea about
(24:30):
any of the application process where DMS was any of that stuff. We spend what should have
been a five minute conversation turning into like three hours on the phone and then I immediately
pour myself into learning about the process of becoming an examiner. The end state behind
that was not become a general aviation designated pod examiner. It was learning how to become
an examiner only in the Mirage which is a specialty aircraft examiner so an SAE and
(24:54):
there's a long application process for anyone who wants to become a DPE but you have to
go through this big filter in order to be selected. It doesn't matter what kind of
an examiner you want to be but there's a standard. Some things get fast tracked just because
of the need of industry and the fact that we had just a few like one or two people that
need to get this training done in order to fit industry and we were more qualified in
the aircraft. The experience at the FAA was amazing. Talk about a group of people who
(25:15):
are underpaid and overworked. Absolutely incredible on that whole team. This is also in the middle
of the pandemic right so phase one training. Everything's on Teams online. Learning about
the standards and reading PowerPoint size and phase two training is now done in person
at Oak City. All the new DPE class gets together and you sit there in academics for a couple
weeks and they teach you how to become a DPE. At any rate I'm sitting there in this Teams
(25:35):
room. You're around the room. You got some 141 person there or you know a chief instructor
of another school. These people from all these backgrounds. There are no fighter pilots.
And I'm like I feel like the kid in the back of the class you know like not paying attention.
What did I get myself into? And they start talking about determining eligibility for
the applicant in the aircraft. Looking at endorsements. Looking at airworthiness. Looking
(25:58):
at all stuff that you are not familiar with at all because you weren't civilian. I had
no idea what they were talking about. It's like well the applicant presents to you their
long cross country from their you know point of departure to their first stop straight
line disk and all these things that now are like really really important in general aviation.
I'm like how do I just audit this class? You had to get through that right? And it was
(26:22):
very fascinating at the time but I'm like I just need to get through this training. So
it was two weeks of ground school? It was the time I think we did like a week of just
you do an academic space one. It was like looking at slide decks and taking an exam
if I remember it right. And then it was another week or two. It may have been two weeks. I
can't quite remember it was a few years ago. That was really how to become and exercise
(26:44):
the privilege of being a designated pilot examiner. And again like I said you have people
from very different backgrounds. It's especially aircraft examiners. You know pilot examiners.
Commercial pilot examiners. People working for airlines. And so everyone's like trying
to get a different authority from the FAA but we have to go through this training. Imagine
like you have gone through your private and some commercial mold. The FAA is not just
going to give you the keys. They go and be like yeah here have fun. Give this guy or
(27:05):
girl a pilot certificate. So there's a very specific format. My interaction with an applicant
is maybe four to six hours and I'm only able to sample a little bit of what they know.
In order for us to even start the exam you have to determine eligibility. So you have
to know how to parse out a logbook right and look at all those very very important endorsements
and making sure all the hours are valid right. Because you look in this ACCA application
(27:28):
you can put anything you want in terms of hours. You could. But you have to go back
to logbook and then you have to determine eligibility for the airplane right because
I'm going to put my pink fleshy body into that airplane and I want to make sure that
it's safe. And then you have to go through the ACS for the appropriate certificate that
the applicant is going for. How do you administer that evaluation. The oral and the practical.
So a lot of time is spent on scenario development on how you're going to approach that right.
(27:53):
Because what you don't want to do is just open up area of operation one you know section
two and look at airworthiness requirements just like ah one knowledge one risk one school
and then you want to weave that into a scenario because you have to have a reason to do the
evaluation right. And then a lot of it also has to do with how to conduct the practical
right. If you just open up the ACS and you should go in order you could sit there for
(28:14):
eight hours. Oh absolutely. You know so a lot of its mentorship on how to accomplish
everything within the ACS in a reasonable amount of time. And you're sitting there with probably
some of the most experienced DP mentors and they kind of mentor you through that process.
And then you do a bunch of demo briefs where you are going to role play with another DP
applicant. They're going to show you a sample log book and you're going to have to find
(28:36):
errors in there or make sure that they're eligible for that. So you get through that
training and then there's a really really hard test at the end. Really hard test. And
that I mentioned it's a hard test. Again I'm just trying to get through it from Mirage
training right. But everyone else is like they're going to go out and do private pilot
check rides. A couple weeks later this FAA rep shows up at ATAC. We have to teach him
how to fly the Mirage because he is going to conduct an evaluation for me to become
(29:00):
an examiner. So I have to teach him how to fly the aircraft. So we spent a week. He's
in the front seat. I'm in the back seat. We have a couple instructors. So we teach Chris
how to fly the airplane. Great great guy. Former Air Force pilot. Finally we have its
examination day. So you actually go in the aircraft for some training then. Oh 100 percent.
Okay. Check this out. You're going to be a new DPE. Let's say you got a 172. So you
get the applicant and you've got the soon to be DPE and then you have the FAA rep in
(29:25):
the back seat to conduct an observation. Right. Well that's cool because you got a couple
seats in the airplane. Well the Mirage only has two seats. So it's going to be kind of
a problem unless Chris is sitting on someone's lap. What we basically did is Chris observed
me conducting the oral with an applicant who is no kidding going to be coming up for a
(29:47):
test ride. I administered to Chris the oral as if he's going to go and fly. The whole
time he's grading me on my ability to meet that that PTS standard for the ATP and the
oral discussion as it's focused on flying the Mirage. Right. And then Chris jumps in
the front seat. I'm in the back seat and then I administered the practical to him and then
we land. Chris is like ready. He gives me my seal away to become an authorized examiner
(30:12):
on the DAF-1 and I give him a temporary airman certificate that he's authorized experimental
F-1. OK. And then in the afternoon I conduct an oral for the applicant. Chris is observing
me now administer that and then I go and fly with the applicant and Chris is basically
watching him for a flight they were doing the maneuvers and he sits in the debrief.
So it's kind of a weird way very non-standard. But at any rate we finish that and then I
(30:33):
do about 20 or 30 Mirage check rides the next year or two. At the end of the two year period
kind of leading up to the GA part Chris calls up and he says hey you ever thought about
doing general aviation. Now I'm flying the Mirage on the side. I'm flying the F-45 as
the main job. I've got eight hours and one fifty two and from 1998 I'd never even thought
about it. I'm like GA I don't know general aviation goes no man you've been administering
(30:56):
valuations on behalf of the FAA you are a special aircraft examiner in good standing.
You know how to determine eligibility like it's just it's all it's eggs and bacon. You
want to scramble. Do you want to move over easy. And how do you want the bacon cooked.
Just think about that in the context of another airplane and maybe a different ACS format.
I was like well that kind of makes sense. He puts it that way. I said well what do you
know how do we go about this. He's like well you need to ask a request to expand your seal
(31:20):
away certificate letter of approval giving the authority for an individual to conduct
examinations on behalf of the administrator of the FAA. So I had to request to expand
my seal away just from doing the Mirage or special aircraft to becoming a PE and a CE.
So to do private pilot examinations and commercial pilot examinations. I had three thousand fighter
hours but twenty five hundred of them were dual given right because I'm flying the F-18
(31:42):
in the back seat or you know evaluating someone from a wing position or in the simulator but
literally thousands of hours instructing right. So all that was there you just got to kind
of modify it into GA but the concepts remain the same. So I went out to local flight school.
I flew a bunch with their CFIs. It's kind of comical doing turns around a point. He's
like all right we're going to do turns. He puts all this stuff up there. He's like you
(32:04):
know we got to watch the winds. He's like bro we just doing like going around that house.
He's like yeah it's like really hard. I was like uh huh. Yeah cool. We go out and do it.
He's like that's awesome. I'm like how's that hard. He's like well imagine if you only got
fifteen hours flying it's like really hard. I'm like ah good point. We go through the
rest of the maneuvers. He's like are we going to do the power off 180. I'm like all right.
He's like you know you're just going to pull the power back and you have to glide the aircraft
(32:26):
and land on the runway. I'm like uh huh. Pulls the power back. Do the glide. Land the airplane.
I'm like I don't understand what's hard about this because imagine you don't have a lot
of experience. Why? Because the F-45 we do practice precautionary even flame outs from
10 or 15 thousand feet at 230 knots. You know it's bigger, faster, what not. But the concept
remains the same. So I really quickly began to appreciate what they're trying to impart
(32:50):
on me. I have to take a step back from like I have this experience. I'm like no dude you
are here to evaluate these kids, guys and girls that are going for these certificates.
This is like really important. They're new. They're new. They're new. So think about Adam
back in the T-34. I'm like oh yeah. So kind of taking a step back. At any rate I fly in
a Cessna and a Piper Warrior and we go through all the maneuvers and then do some multi-engine
rides on the mighty Piper Apache at the time. Conventional twin. A lot of fun there. And
(33:14):
then I'm able to actually watch another D.P. administer check ride. You have to get special
permission from their managing specialist in order to have someone else in the room.
But I was like this is all kind of resonating. Determining eligibility. You know going through
the oral area of operations. Doing the practical. The scenario. The plan of action. Okay all
that kind of resonates from being a special aircraft examiner. And then one day a managing
(33:34):
specialist comes down and observes me. We do a multi-engine check ride. We do a commercial
check ride. And at the end of that day he's like alright here's the updated seal away.
I was like about a year and a half ago. Now I do private instrument commercial multi-check
rides. Okay so the initial training then was about two to three weeks including ground
and flights. The initial training is about two to three weeks ground and then you have
to get on their calendar for them to come down and conduct the observations. How many
(33:57):
flights is it? Well we did one. I think we did a private and a commercial and multi.
He just had a day or two so he was able to watch several different. Okay. But to take
a step back right I think it's important is that's not the normal way to become a pilot
examiner. Okay. Right when I went through. So I did take a couple notes right. So for
your folks out there that are interested in becoming an examiner I would say the first
(34:20):
thing you want to do. You want to go to your favorite browser and type in FAA and how to
become a DPE. It will take you to the FAA website and there is a bunch of great information
on there on how to become a DPE and it will drive you to Designate Management System,
DMS. In there there is how to contact a DPE if you need to schedule a check ride that's
(34:43):
all free or it takes you to the policy and current policy is the 8095 Charlie. Not to
be confused with the Bravo. Okay. Charlie came out I think summer 23. Chapter three
is how to become a designated pilot examiner and it takes you through all the different
paths. You want to become private commercial instrument, hot air balloon, gyrocopter, all
(35:07):
these different flavors. So you got to look at the flow chart and then basically it's
like hey if you want to become a pilot examiner let's just say it's like 2000 hours of total
PIC and maybe I think 500 hours of dual given right. That's just the basic minimums that
could be awful to have been in the hours and then there is a bunch of criteria you have
to have met in terms of previous experience. What are some examples of those? Well are
you like if you've been the chief instructor of a 141 school? Are you the chief instructor
(35:30):
of a 61 school? Have you trained pilots towards achieving a type rating? Different criteria
like that is basically have you held a leadership position in some kind of pilot training environment.
So being your perk time CFI on the weekend is probably not going to meet that benchmark
or maybe if you're at one of the bigger flight schools and you've been grinding it out for
several years you know basically running that entire school you may meet that criteria right.
(35:52):
So look in chapter 3 and you'll see kind of all the requirements. I was able to leverage
while I was a chief instructor as a squadron commander I was also the training officer
you know when I was teaching the F-18 I had 2000 hours of dual given between those two
platforms. They recognized that right. It's like well you know you're teaching people
how to get a type certificate i.e. an evaluation on the F-18 and F-35 if you're doing general
aviation the same concepts apply. So do you meet the basic eligibility? Then you create
(36:16):
an account on DMS then you will apply and then you need the letters of recommendation.
There's an interview panel and probably the biggest thing is there a need. Hollie is there
a need for more examiners in the FW area? Yes absolutely. How long are people waiting
to do an evaluation? At some flight schools they've been waiting three to six months for
an evaluation. It's terrible and so we're going to kind of jump between that thing you
(36:38):
just mentioned from is there a need. Well I'm managed by AFG 970 which is like the national
branch but many DPs are managed by their local FISDEM. There's work in the FAA background
to maybe make like a national office role DPs right because we're no longer geographically
constrained. You can do evaluations anywhere in the United States. That's helpful. Yeah
I know it is. I think right now, I can't say this is 100% true but there there's probably
(37:00):
a list of hundreds of applicants waiting to go through DPE training. So they have a pool
of applicants ready to go. It doesn't mean you can't apply. You should apply if you meet
the eligibility but just human capacity. They got to look and screen all these applicants.
Oh by the way before they even consider sending you to training or being like yes you got
to thumbs up. You've got all this review and panel work that you need to kind of go through.
(37:22):
The normal way is one day some managing specialist is going to call you up and be like hey I
got your application front. They're going to do an interview with you. They're going
to go through your resume, your background and actually determine if there's any BS in
that application right. Well maybe you were an instructor pilot like 20 years ago. You
haven't flown an airplane outside of flying for an airline. You know like you've been
grinding doing something else for a long time. So let's just say you pass that and then they're
(37:44):
going to come down and they're going to fly with you. They're going to see can you fly
an airplane. Which obviously if you've done this application you should but they need
to fly with you. So you've done the interview, you've done the board process, they've flown
with you. Good and then you got to wait for a school seat. Now they can only take let's
just say 20 or 30 applicants at a time. Maybe they do a class every couple months. So you
can see how the backlog builds. The pandemic didn't help. They kind of stopped classes
(38:05):
for a little bit but I can tell you this. There is a team of people at Oak City and
the entire Airman Certification Branch. They are working day and night to set the conditions
to train the backlog of DPEs and get more people out there. But then you're also constrained
by managing specialists and there's a finite number of them. So in the FAA structure I
report to managing specialists. He's got something like 20 or 30 different DPEs. I probably talk
(38:28):
to him every week, email, text, phone. I had this issue. I got that or I got a paperwork
issue. He'll send it back. Imagine that 20, 30 people and then he's got other things that
he's got to do along with that. So it's human capacity to be able to process that. So you
get in the school seat and then they got to come back and they got to do the observations.
I've met new DPEs and I've asked them how long did it take you and I think from the
(38:48):
time they created their login and DMS until the time they got their seal away was probably
a year or two. It depends. But if you're interested and you meet the eligibility in the 8,000.95
Charlie please look at the requirements and apply. Nothing is stopping you from applying
if you meet the eligibility and then get Girela's recommendation and don't give up. Don't give
up. Are there any requirements or recurrent training you have to do as a DPE? You have
(39:13):
to do recurrent training every two years. But every year you have to request to have
your seal away updated. So I just went through mine and that's like a do you meet the annual
requirements. So I think broadly speaking it's have you flown 60 hours PIC in the last
12 months and then have you flown I think it's like 10 hours in each category and class.
So I'm doing aircraft single engine land, aircraft multi-engine land. Well, you know,
I fly the F-45 so that's aircraft single engine land. But for the multi-engine land I have
(39:35):
to go out there and maintain currency and proficiency. So rent an airplane, rent a twin
or you got to fly new twins. You need five hours PIC in order to conduct an evaluation
in a GA twin. Learn how to fly Baron or Twin Comanche last year. So it's five and five
there's ten. Well for the next year I'm going to go and fly a couple more new different
multis and make sure I maintain that. But that's for each category in class. If you
(39:57):
have the hot air balloon thing on your seal away you got to go be a pilot in command of
a hot air balloon I guess for a couple hours. It depends on what you got. And then every
other year you go through kind of refresher training. Last January I went and we did it
at the FAA office by DFW and it was great. In a room with like 50 other DPEs you get
the smartest people you know from the FAA giving you the latest trends. And then there's
(40:21):
always a test. So took another test kind of refresher test you know kind of sample all
the requirements that you have to know when you give an administrator a checkride and
then you get that updated seal away. So that's what you got to do. Oh aviation the career
of examination. That's right. Alright guys so that is the end of the first half of the
DPE episode. I hope that you enjoyed it and found it beneficial for you and maybe you
(40:42):
even shared it with somebody else that you think would like it as well. Don't forget
sharing is caring. Please come back next week for the second half of the DPE episode that
will include the juiciest bits of the checkride itself. We'll mostly be talking about PPL
checkrides but we'll also be talking about ways to prep for your checkride and things
that you need to consider even if you're a CFI to prepare your student for that checkride.
If you liked this episode please don't forget to follow, rate, review my podcast. And if
(41:06):
you're watching this on YouTube go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe to my podcast.
It's free and if there are any other guests you would like to see on my show don't forget
to comment on the video or just send me an email of something that you would like to
learn about so we can keep you guys learning and becoming the best pilots that you can
be. Alright guys I'll meet you in the sky. See you later aviators!
Welcome aviators. It's a pleasure to have you again here on The Aviator's Guide. I'm
(00:11):
Hollie Bellino and today with me I have a DP, which is a Designated Pilot Examiner and his
name is Adam Levine. Thank you for being here today, Adam.
Hollie, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to join you on your podcast.
I'm so happy that you can do this with me today. As you know, I had previously had an
AME, so it's good to get all the different facets of aviation on the show for the newer
pilots out there or even the ones who've been in for a while. So just today only I'm taking
(00:32):
a short break from my new mini series that I have out on ways that you can build flight
hours. So I will be going back into that after this episode today.
First off, how did you get started in aviation? Truth in advertising, right? Hollie sent me
like a list of questions, so I had some time to ponder this, but grew up in an aviation
family. You were a third generation pilot?
I was. That's amazing.
My dad and my granddad were both Marine fighter pilots. As long as I can remember seeing like
(00:57):
their old flying helmets or their deployment books, pictures of my granddad flying in the
Pacific in World War II or in Korea, and then pictures of my dad flying in Vietnam. I was
like, wow, that's really cool. It was never really a general aviation thing. It was always,
I really want to be a fighter pilot when I grow up. So that was kind of there in college.
(01:17):
There were several programs where you could join the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.
I remember very vividly being a freshman in college and walking through the student union
at George Washington. It was like career week, so they had all these recruiting tables out
there for different companies. I remember seeing Captain French, he was a recruiter
and there was a big poster of an F-18 behind him. And I just kind of beelined over the
(01:40):
table.
I'm like, that's it. That's what I want.
And he's like, oh, we got a sucker today. No. So they had this program where you were
guaranteed an aviation contract if you met the testing requirement, the air medical requirement.
And what it meant was you will join the Marine Corps and they'll guarantee you a spot in
flight training. It didn't mean you'd be a pilot. They just said, we're going to guarantee
you a spot in flight training.
The free training alone is really good though.
(02:02):
Yeah. You know, when you think about, so you have to like bifurcate that, right? You think
in terms of general aviation, it's like, oh my God, it's going to cost me $130,000
to become a CFI. Like none of that's a factor when you're thinking in the context of serving
your country, right? The higher order, you know, joining the Marine Corps and then becoming
a pilot. So the cost doesn't come to mind. It's that end state of, oh my gosh, if I get
(02:23):
through this, they're actually going to give me the keys to an F-18, potentially one day.
And like I said, there's no guarantee you'll be a pilot or what you're going to fly. But
essentially you go through the training. It was obviously Canada school, which had nothing
to do with flying. It had nothing to do with just surviving that experience. And then you
go to kind of an infantry course for six months where all new lieutenants go. And then after
you've been in for like a year, you finally go to the Mecca of Naval Aviation, which is
(02:46):
Pensacola, Florida. And then you wait and you wait. You do this thing called aviation
pre-flight indoctrination, which is imagine like all the ground training instruction,
you know, you would receive in the context of a professional flight school, either 61
or 141. They jam it into about three weeks. You haven't even touched an airplane yet,
but it's a lot of aero theory, weather, navigation. It's nothing more than really in that context
(03:10):
an intellectual exercise to cram as much information in and then test you on everything in very
detail minutia to wash people out essentially. And then you do a lot of survival training
where, you know, there's a lot of time in the pool with all this equipment on. But anyway,
at the end of that process, then you finally go to your primary flight training. And I
went through it in 99 or 2000. Yeah, 99. The airplane they're flying back then was called
(03:31):
the T-34C. And we'll hit pause here for a second because part of that program that the
Marine Corps had when you were going to go for an aviation contract was it actually pay
a local flight school to provide you instruction. And I would not say it was up to a pilot certificate.
It was to get a sense of you may have this idea that you want to fly. Let's not spend
(03:53):
hundreds of thousands of dollars on the T-34. Yeah. So I went to a small flight school outside
of Washington DC. I think it was like Hyde Park and then flew in a Cessna 152 for about
eight or nine hours and up to solo. And that's what they did. It says solo or 10 hours, whichever
came first. I remember my recruiting officer was like, so what do you think? I'm like,
that was awesome. So then kind of fast forward about a year and a half later in flight training
(04:13):
and the first airplane he flies, the T-34C, which has not been mostly retired from pilot
training, but it's a turbo problem. So complex high performance in the context of FAA terms,
PT six engines. So very common kind of power plan. I think that you still find in multiple
variations of turbo pop aircraft and high performance. So I mean negative two or three
to plus six G. So I mean it's fully aerobatic aircraft. Oh yeah, absolutely. And totally
(04:37):
overpowered for what it was doing. The kind of similarity with general aviation is like
you have a primary instructor and that person will take you up through your first solo and
then you kind of parse out from there. And I had this guy named Jeff Toeil, who was super
cool, old crusty Marine major, had thousands of hours of flying experience and he was like
the benevolent dictator, you know? But we had such a great time together. I learned
(04:59):
so much from him. And then I remember like getting up to that pre-solo check. It's like
the first time you go with someone else, not your instructor. You fly in the pattern, you
navigate, you communicate, fly the aircraft, pass that and then you move on to basic instruments
and then we moved on to navigation and then we actually do some formation flying. So it's
kind of all leading towards a context of military aviation where the takeoff and the landing
(05:22):
is a byproduct of the mission, right? We're going to go out there, we're going to do something,
right? So then about six months later, you get about 70, 80, 90 hours in the airplane,
depending on weather or breaks or whatnot. And then there's that selection process where
you put your dream sheet on. Back then, I don't know if it's changed, you have to do
better than 50% of the last hundred kids that went through in order to qualify for jet training.
All my buddies, I've always wanted to be fighter pilots. Some people want to buy helicopters,
(05:44):
get on them, or transports. You get your grades right at the end of the syllabus, but then
you're being compared to not just your little squadron. And we had three squadrons in our
base and then two squadrons in another base. So we're talking about five kind of graduating
classes every other week with five kids each. So it's quite a number.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you have no idea how they did, but you know how you did relative to the last hundred
people. You'll line up in front of the commander. He takes out your dream sheet. He's like,
(06:08):
all right, hey, Adam, Jets was your number one. You broke out, you were number whatever,
two out of 25. Whatever that number was. And you're just thinking, just get over it. Just
get over it.
Just tell me.
Just tell me. He's like, hey, man, congratulations. You qualify for jet training. Best of luck
to you. After you just said, congratulations, Jets, I just like, I think I mentally shut
down.
You're like, saw I wanted, I'm so excited.
Yeah. From there, I went to Meridian, Mississippi. I flew an airplane called the T2C Buckeye.
(06:31):
It's been retired for a while. It was built in like the sixties. They modified it and
went from single engine to engine. So here you are, 22, 23 years old. You got 70 hours
on D34 and then you're jumping into basically high performance subsonic fully air aircraft
twin engine reflecting back on avionics. It had an app. We call it the Aba Jabba. It was
like this big attitude indicator. It had a DME drum for VOR DME and we got a tac can
(06:54):
and it had a heading, a receiving needle on it, which is about six radials thick. Right.
So I mean, you were plus or minus always three, you know, when you're navigating around. There
was no for flight, no GPS back then. Generally now I see kids at like 50 to 60, 70 hours
going through private pilot and then you go into instrument, right? So imagine that kind
of same number of hours. Now you're flying a high subsonic aircraft, moving around at
(07:18):
300, 400 knots of the ground. First thing you do is you sit in the back for the first
couple of rides and you do basic instruments, just doing 180 and 360 turns, S patterns,
right? Just learning how to fly instruments. And then eventually you take the hood off
and get in the front seat and you learn how to take off and land. And now you're going
into naval aviation, right? There is no concept in that level of training where you're doing
a normal landing, a soft field landing, a short field landing or a powerful 180. Like
(07:40):
everything is focused on landing on the carrier. From that first starting in the front seat,
when you come back to the landing pattern, you have a carrier landing box. You have an
optical landing system, right? Think about a VASV or PAPI, but on the aircraft carrier,
it's much more precise. And then you're focusing on lineup, energy management, angle of attack
and then glide slope, right? And you're on the backside of the power curve on these air
(08:01):
points. So you're not pointing your nose at the ground. You are getting the aircraft dirty,
all the flaps come down and then you're using power to adjust your glide slope. You're using
stick inputs to adjust angle of attack and then obviously lineup. So slightly different
construct from how we think about general aviation flying.
You said that there are PAPIs on there or?
Flaws, optical landing system.
(08:23):
Okay. Yeah.
And so you know how like usually PAPI's at a normal runway, they're helping you aim for
the thousand footers. Where are they helping you aim on the carrier?
Well, on the carrier, everything is designed to spot a wire or an area in front of the
wire. And really it's to grade the hook from an approach point about three quarters of
a mile behind the ship on a defined glide slope down to touch point.
(08:44):
That makes sense.
That is between generally and the old carriers are four cables out there. You want to land
between the second and third. And I think it's about 240 or 280 feet from the aft end
of the carrier to that spot. So when you're in intermediate flight training in the T2,
it's all focused on getting to that point. We'd go do aerobatics, navigation, low levels,
whatnot. And then you'd save enough gas to come back in the pattern and do like 10 landings.
(09:06):
But all that said is you get through that training. We then moved it to T45, which is
called the GOSHAC, I think built by Boeing. At any rate, now you're going from an airplane
that was built in the sixties, you know, with seventies kind of avionics to what was then
in 2001, 2000, a modern glass cockpit. We had two digital displays, a heads up display.
(09:28):
We had ILS. I'm like, I have an ILS. This jet was capable of going to 30s, 40,000 feet,
you know, and then you learn how to fly the aircraft and immediately going into tactics,
right? We would do bombings. You carry like these little blue 25 pound bombs. We go to
the bombing pattern and you drop a bunch of bombs and you get great and how well you dropped
them. We do low level navigation. We have basically a sectional equivalent flying at
(09:50):
500 feet and about 400 knots. You're doing these low level routes called VR or IR routes.
There are kids training out there every day and you just go fly these routes all around
Mississippi, Alabama. I think we went to Georgia for a little bit. You know, you're doing your
VFR flight plan or your VFR navigation. Now you're at 4,500 feet and you're flying in
a 172 or even a Cirrus and you're like, Oh my God, I'm going to miss my checkpoint here
(10:12):
in 10 minutes and three miles away. And here you're going at 500 feet, 420. You can't even
see much more than a couple of miles in front of you. It's all happening very quickly, but
the whole concept behind that is to start employing the aircraft. So we do bombing,
you do aerial combat, a bunch of other dynamic maneuvers. In naval aviation, it's takeoff
from the carrier, do a mission, come back to the carrier. So at the end of that training
(10:33):
about a year, now we've got about 230 hours total. You actually train to go to the carrier
and we went to the carrier. So you go land on the carrier 10 times during the day and
that was a lot of fun. Very interesting experience because you practice this in a very confined
environment on a base. There's lots of pilots, you know, the ship's on a time clock, you
know, they got to get the mission done. There's a lot of pressure on there.
What are those things that are called that capture the aircraft when you don't land on
(10:55):
the carrier?
It's well, what you're seeing is actually called a cross deck pendant, but people refer
to it as the wire. You see you want to the hook, you want to touch down about 10 or 15
feet before the three wires. He catches rewire.
How long after you one pilot lands on the wires? Does it take to get everything out
of the way for the next pilot?
We're shooting for about 55 seconds. But when you're a student naval aviator, you're like,
(11:16):
I just want to land on this thing safely. But you're flying in formation. So we had
a four ship, right? So number one is instructor pilot and then two, three, four students.
So you take off, everyone joins in number one. You fly it off the coast, 60, 70 miles.
Flying in formation, I don't know if you were flown in formation?
Yes, I did once in flight school.
Okay. All right. So I mean, this is like you were flying 20, 30 feet away from your instructor,
(11:37):
you know, kind of close formation and you dare to look down on occasion and oh my gosh,
there's a darn ship down there. And you're like, I can't do this. And he kind of you
hold the radio chatter and number one goes to the downwind. And then I think you count
like 15 or 20 seconds, whatever it is, it was like, it felt like way too short, but
took like way too long. And then you just drill straight ahead. And then you turn on
your interval, you're about 600 feet AGL, you turn downwind, you configure the aircraft.
(12:01):
This is all happening pretty quick. But you've practiced this hundreds of times.
Before you're landing on the carrier.
Right. But don't forget the ship is moving all the time at 12 to 15 knots. Oh, by the
way, it's an angled deck. So your final bearing where the ship is actually heading is slightly
off step from where you're actually gonna land about six, seven degrees, right? When
you get a beam, the point of a tenant landing like think about like a powerful 180 concept,
(12:22):
like you start your turn. And it's a very deliberate, very optimum angle of attack turn
to arrive about three quarters of a mile behind the ship, I think 375 to 400 feet AGL with
lineup solved, then you are basically transitioning into that visual scan looking at the meatball,
which is the optical landing system got a datum to show optimum glide soap. And then
(12:46):
you've got a kind of a light pattern where if you're on the glide soap or above, it's
orange as you get low, what color do you think it turns into? Red, red, red is dead. So it's
a lot of visual landing aids. So you're working on glide soap, you're working on your angle
of attack and you're working on your lineup, right? Because the ship is always moving away
from you, if that makes sense at an angle, you're not supposed to actually look at the
wires or the landing area. All you're doing is you're looking for the lineup, broadly
(13:11):
speaking, angle of attack and your glide soap and you are supposed to fly that lens and
meatball all the way down a touchdown. And then we got landing signals officer out there
that are basically one grading you but to making sure that you're operating safely.
So you are aligned up left or right, they'll give you corrections that they'll say you're
a little high or you're a little low and they can actually look at your angle of attack
(13:32):
and there's an angle of attack index of lights in front of the aircraft that will repeat
what you're seeing in the cockpit. So the landing signals officer may see a green or
red light and then say you're fast or you're slow, a reminder for you to get the right
angle of attack on because there's no one in your backseat, you're by yourself. At the
completion of that training, you select a platform and now you've been a naval aviation
(13:54):
training. You've really been away from the Marine Corps for about a year or two and then
you select and I went to Naval Air Station Lemoore and learn how to fly the F-18 for
a year and that was all tactics right at the very junior level if that makes sense, like
how to be a good wingman and then at the end of that training, you are assigned a squadron.
I was assigned to go down to Marine Corps Station Miramar and beautiful San Diego but
(14:15):
I get to my first operational unit and at least in the Marine Corps then it was all
F-18s and Miramar for the fighters. But you had land base, single seat, two seat and then
you had the carrier base and I'm like I want to be in a carrier base squadron and I joined
the world famous Black Knights, VMFA 314 and like 90 days later we're on the ship getting
ready to go in deployment. I spent 10 years in the F-18 at Miramar. I did a carrier deployment
(14:39):
and I did a forward air controller tour so we take our pilots and we attach them to ground
infantry unit and they become like a liaison officer and then I went back and I did a couple
land base deployments in the F-18. Then I taught in the F-18 training squadron in Miramar
for a couple years and in that time I was fortunate to go to Top Gun and then the Marine
Corps Weapons School Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course. You went to Top Gun? I did. That's
(15:02):
so cool. I can safely say that it was a very humbling experience. You're assigned a call
sign early on in your training. If you like the call sign you keep it. If you don't like
it you keep it. There is no training it back in. So what was your call sign? My call sign
is Beavis. Beavis? Yeah. You get to their first unit and they don't know you. They're
(15:24):
like hey new guy. They have their new guy rules which I don't think I can recite here.
But it's basically join up, shut up, be humble, study as hard as you can. If you're asked
a question, answer the question. If you don't know it I'll find out the answer. There are
a bunch of tests and you join up to your first unit and the list of publications. It was
like a stack of books like this. Fun. One is how to fly the airplane, write the NATOPS
(15:48):
manual which is like the POA and then all the tactics manuals. And you're like I'm never
going to figure this out. And you're never, you can never be in the right formation. You're
always losing sight. You're not shooting the right people. But like in air to air combat
training there's a lot of employment of weapons simulated of course in training. But you know
are you shooting the right weapon? Are you shooting at the right range? Are you keeping
formation? Are you doing all the things that you need to do in order to be successful?
(16:10):
Oh by the way you have to employ the radar while you're flying. So imagine flying in
formation near supersonic speeds, dynamically maneuvering, looking at the radar, trying
to sort the right contact, trying to shoot, trying to defend, trying to find the merge,
trying to employ. And then you got to go back to ship and land on that ship. And if you're
doing it at night it's a wholly separate experience. That can be very frightening. You know during
the day it can be fun. Sometimes at night it is a deadly serious business. Absolutely.
(16:35):
Yeah. My goodness. Do you have any advice for anybody who wants to join the military
for the aviation side? Well I've got a couple jokes but you know I've not made any of these
up but today you know writ large in the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps like equipment's
all brand new. You know I get to fly the F-45 as my day job and you know we're delivering
that amazing aircraft to the fleet. Guys and girls that want to join they're going to find
(16:57):
brand new equipment which is really cool. It is state of the art, the best if you're
going to go into combat. These are the airplanes you want to go into combat with. Marine aviation
exists to support the grunts. That's the ethos of the Marine Corps. Marine aviation exists
to support the grand scheme of maneuver. Whether you're flying a fighter, a helicopter, a transport,
how do we help the grand scheme of maneuver? Air power doesn't win wars broadly speaking.
(17:17):
It's achieving that objective and that is we've got to take real estate. In order to
do that you need people on the ground generally speaking. Being a DPE is your like part time
job. Oh yeah. I did 22 years right so just to kind of go back a little bit is I did the
10 years in the F-18. When I was teaching in the F-18 training squadron they were finally
starting to build the F-35. There was a selection board. Shocker in the military, anything you
want to do of prestige. There's a selection process and people are going to talk about
(17:41):
you and look at your records. It was very very competitive. The first board I was not
selected I was alternate. I was like super bummed. But then six months later they had
another board that was selected primary. And then the F-45 program delayed so I kept teaching
at the F-18 schoolhouse. Eventually got orders to go down to Eglin. We showed up there and
were like where is the F-45? There were no jets. We sat around there, flew in the simulator
and eventually the jet showed up so I did the F-45 for another 10 years. Finished up
(18:02):
as a commander of the Marine Corps' F-45 training squadron. So think about like the
equivalent of like a part 141 school where you're teaching people how to fly. That was
the squadron in the East Coast. We had 30 airplanes. We're training American Marine
pilots that fly the aircraft. We're training British pilots that fly the aircraft and Italian
pilots that fly the aircraft. We even had British and Italian airplanes in our squadron.
(18:24):
So it was very much a multinational thing. But all that said it was focused on flying
the aircraft and employing the aircraft as good wingmen and then we'd send the kids
out to their first operational units or pilots that came from other platforms that were
learning how to fly the F-45. So maybe from the A-8 or the F-18 or the A-6B you're just
teaching them how to fly this new airplane. I was going to retire. I had this great opportunity
(18:44):
to come down here to Fort Worth to fly at Lockheed on the government side for a government
agency called Defense Contract Management Agency and then retired out of that job. Worked
at Textron for almost a year. Nice. And that kind of ties into the DPE part. And then I
had this job offer I couldn't refuse. We were hiring a civilian acceptance pilot to go fly
the F-45. Oh that's how you got there. So I had a, yeah I remember talking to my wife
(19:06):
like oh my god what do I do. I had this amazing job at Textron. I loved what I was doing.
I loved the management. We had a great mission there. I was the director of flight operations
on the Mirage program. Or is this a once in a lifetime opportunity to go back and fly
the F-45 as a civilian. I'm like I gotta do this. It's been great. I've been doing that
for four years as a full time job. And you know who you're working for. You're working
for the war fighter. You know getting the privilege to accept these aircraft on behalf
(19:27):
of the contractor and the government. Test them and then deliver them out to the war
fighter has been amazing. You know flying jets to Korea. Flying them to Israel. Flying
them to operational base in the US. You know it's really neat. So how did you become a
DP? Right so I'm a Textron or ATAC, Airborne Tactical Advantage company. So they have a
campus up at Alliance Field. Several years ago the Air Force like hey we need more adversary
(19:50):
support. They solicited industry. Textron and ATAC bid. In that background they bought
a lot of Mirage DAF-1. It's a fighter jet that the French built in the 60s, 70s, modified
in the 80s and flew them through like 2010, 2012. And then they had Half Life on them
but they retired them. They didn't need it. Textron comes around like a world by all of
them. They shipped them to the US. Took the wings off, the tails off, the engines out.
(20:13):
They assembled them up at Alliance Field and at any rate ATAC was hiring for Director of
Flight Operations. I competed for the job. I got the job. It's twofold. One is hire,
recruit, train Mirage pilots. Then it was interact with the customer to get the airplanes
and people out to the operating locations. We won three contracts. Eglin, Luke and Holloman.
In 90 days we had to send 12 or 15 airplanes out and like 20 pilots. And we had like three
(20:36):
flying airplanes and like four pilots. It was a mad scramble. How do you learn how to
fly Mirage? Well, it's not on contract yet so everything we're doing is under part 91
but it was a specialty aircraft right because it's not a general aviation airplane right
the way it's catalogued. It's a swept wing, high performance supersonic aircraft right.
So we're training under basically FAA part 61 and 91. So everything was based on executing
(21:03):
and performing an ATP style check ride in a supersonic fighter. You know we do academics
for a week and you jump in as an instructor in your backseat and you learn how to taxi
the aircraft, take off and land and do basic maneuvers. But in the ATP there's no air combat
maneuvering. You know the FAA doesn't care about that. They care about you operating
the aircraft safely so they basically said well it's not a commercial private like let's
(21:26):
just put it into an ATP. I do a couple rides and the next thing you know this specialty
aircraft examiner shows up. I had no idea what a DP was, what an ATP was. I didn't
know and didn't really care at the time. I was like I just need to pass the check ride
and he's like alright here's your 8710 so we're going to fill that out. It looks at
the log book, you know the training, all the documentations, all the endorsements. I'd
never had a civilian log book until I got in. I had to like create one. That's true
(21:49):
yeah. And based on all the hours. I had done my MILCOMP right for commercial aircraft multi-engine
land, single engine land and powered lift and I'd done MILCOMP for CFII. So I have
these military equivalents and the DP shows up. We taxi, all the things you have in your
plan of action. Took off and we did clean and dirty stalls in the Mirage which is kind
of laughable. We did unusual attitudes and then we did a precision, non-precision approach.
(22:14):
We did malfunction simulated because it is a single engine. By the way the DP is in the
back seat. There was no hood in the aircraft because you're in the front seat right. You
had to fly the aircraft so you are flying referencing your instruments and we're doing
a non-precision approach. So take a guess how fast the Mirage goes in gear down configuration
no flaps on final. 140. 220. Oh my gosh. So you're doing 210 to 220 no flap and you're
(22:40):
just screaming down final. There's not a lot of away forgiveness right because you're not
creating a lot of lift because your stubby little wings don't have the flaps down. To
kind of simulate a malfunction right and then you go and you do a precision approach and
you have full capability. So there's about a 60 knot difference between no flap and full
flap in the Mirage you know. One is a true no kidding emergency. At any rate gives me
(23:01):
my temporary airman certificate as a authorized experimental in the DAF one. I'm like wow
it's really cool. A managing specialist by and large they have to sample a certain percentage
or number of applicants that are reviewed or that are given a practical by DP. My managing
specialist really any managing specialist will do a sample and often times it could
be via paperwork to look at the quality of the paperwork right because we do a bunch
(23:22):
of entries to talk to the FAA whether it's AIAC or DMS we could do that in a little bit
but there was only one authorized experimental he had a temporary approval to do check rides
in Mirage. He was not even qualified in the aircraft at the time but industry needed to
make Mirage pilots. There are two companies out there us and Drakken. Now it's like we
need to train lots of pilots like right now. I'm sitting at my desk and I get a call one
(23:45):
day it's like FAA I'm like oh man what did I do and someone introduced himself he says
hey I'm you know I'm the managing specialist for this DPE or special aircraft examiner.
So he's like hey how did the check ride go. I'm like it's great got my temporary airman
certificate and he just has questions like did he brief in a plan of action. Did he determine
eligibility. Did he do the maneuvers that set forth and like you just just generic questions.
(24:07):
I'm like yeah I did all those things and he goes do you have any questions and I said
yeah I don't even know what a DPE is or does like this guy showed up. I feel like I'm more
qualified to be a DPE or an examiner than he is like I'm flying the aircraft I'm an
instructor pilot of the aircraft I'm actually the PIC of the aircraft and we're teaching
people how to fly the aircraft and he's like well that's actually an interesting question.
90 days later I'm sitting in phase one training to become an examiner. I had no idea about
(24:30):
any of the application process where DMS was any of that stuff. We spend what should have
been a five minute conversation turning into like three hours on the phone and then I immediately
pour myself into learning about the process of becoming an examiner. The end state behind
that was not become a general aviation designated pod examiner. It was learning how to become
an examiner only in the Mirage which is a specialty aircraft examiner so an SAE and
(24:54):
there's a long application process for anyone who wants to become a DPE but you have to
go through this big filter in order to be selected. It doesn't matter what kind of
an examiner you want to be but there's a standard. Some things get fast tracked just because
of the need of industry and the fact that we had just a few like one or two people that
need to get this training done in order to fit industry and we were more qualified in
the aircraft. The experience at the FAA was amazing. Talk about a group of people who
(25:15):
are underpaid and overworked. Absolutely incredible on that whole team. This is also in the middle
of the pandemic right so phase one training. Everything's on Teams online. Learning about
the standards and reading PowerPoint size and phase two training is now done in person
at Oak City. All the new DPE class gets together and you sit there in academics for a couple
weeks and they teach you how to become a DPE. At any rate I'm sitting there in this Teams
(25:35):
room. You're around the room. You got some 141 person there or you know a chief instructor
of another school. These people from all these backgrounds. There are no fighter pilots.
And I'm like I feel like the kid in the back of the class you know like not paying attention.
What did I get myself into? And they start talking about determining eligibility for
the applicant in the aircraft. Looking at endorsements. Looking at airworthiness. Looking
(25:58):
at all stuff that you are not familiar with at all because you weren't civilian. I had
no idea what they were talking about. It's like well the applicant presents to you their
long cross country from their you know point of departure to their first stop straight
line disk and all these things that now are like really really important in general aviation.
I'm like how do I just audit this class? You had to get through that right? And it was
(26:22):
very fascinating at the time but I'm like I just need to get through this training. So
it was two weeks of ground school? It was the time I think we did like a week of just
you do an academic space one. It was like looking at slide decks and taking an exam
if I remember it right. And then it was another week or two. It may have been two weeks. I
can't quite remember it was a few years ago. That was really how to become and exercise
(26:44):
the privilege of being a designated pilot examiner. And again like I said you have people
from very different backgrounds. It's especially aircraft examiners. You know pilot examiners.
Commercial pilot examiners. People working for airlines. And so everyone's like trying
to get a different authority from the FAA but we have to go through this training. Imagine
like you have gone through your private and some commercial mold. The FAA is not just
going to give you the keys. They go and be like yeah here have fun. Give this guy or
(27:05):
girl a pilot certificate. So there's a very specific format. My interaction with an applicant
is maybe four to six hours and I'm only able to sample a little bit of what they know.
In order for us to even start the exam you have to determine eligibility. So you have
to know how to parse out a logbook right and look at all those very very important endorsements
and making sure all the hours are valid right. Because you look in this ACCA application
(27:28):
you can put anything you want in terms of hours. You could. But you have to go back
to logbook and then you have to determine eligibility for the airplane right because
I'm going to put my pink fleshy body into that airplane and I want to make sure that
it's safe. And then you have to go through the ACS for the appropriate certificate that
the applicant is going for. How do you administer that evaluation. The oral and the practical.
So a lot of time is spent on scenario development on how you're going to approach that right.
(27:53):
Because what you don't want to do is just open up area of operation one you know section
two and look at airworthiness requirements just like ah one knowledge one risk one school
and then you want to weave that into a scenario because you have to have a reason to do the
evaluation right. And then a lot of it also has to do with how to conduct the practical
right. If you just open up the ACS and you should go in order you could sit there for
(28:14):
eight hours. Oh absolutely. You know so a lot of its mentorship on how to accomplish
everything within the ACS in a reasonable amount of time. And you're sitting there with probably
some of the most experienced DP mentors and they kind of mentor you through that process.
And then you do a bunch of demo briefs where you are going to role play with another DP
applicant. They're going to show you a sample log book and you're going to have to find
(28:36):
errors in there or make sure that they're eligible for that. So you get through that
training and then there's a really really hard test at the end. Really hard test. And
that I mentioned it's a hard test. Again I'm just trying to get through it from Mirage
training right. But everyone else is like they're going to go out and do private pilot
check rides. A couple weeks later this FAA rep shows up at ATAC. We have to teach him
how to fly the Mirage because he is going to conduct an evaluation for me to become
(29:00):
an examiner. So I have to teach him how to fly the aircraft. So we spent a week. He's
in the front seat. I'm in the back seat. We have a couple instructors. So we teach Chris
how to fly the airplane. Great great guy. Former Air Force pilot. Finally we have its
examination day. So you actually go in the aircraft for some training then. Oh 100 percent.
Okay. Check this out. You're going to be a new DPE. Let's say you got a 172. So you
get the applicant and you've got the soon to be DPE and then you have the FAA rep in
(29:25):
the back seat to conduct an observation. Right. Well that's cool because you got a couple
seats in the airplane. Well the Mirage only has two seats. So it's going to be kind of
a problem unless Chris is sitting on someone's lap. What we basically did is Chris observed
me conducting the oral with an applicant who is no kidding going to be coming up for a
(29:47):
test ride. I administered to Chris the oral as if he's going to go and fly. The whole
time he's grading me on my ability to meet that that PTS standard for the ATP and the
oral discussion as it's focused on flying the Mirage. Right. And then Chris jumps in
the front seat. I'm in the back seat and then I administered the practical to him and then
we land. Chris is like ready. He gives me my seal away to become an authorized examiner
(30:12):
on the DAF-1 and I give him a temporary airman certificate that he's authorized experimental
F-1. OK. And then in the afternoon I conduct an oral for the applicant. Chris is observing
me now administer that and then I go and fly with the applicant and Chris is basically
watching him for a flight they were doing the maneuvers and he sits in the debrief.
So it's kind of a weird way very non-standard. But at any rate we finish that and then I
(30:33):
do about 20 or 30 Mirage check rides the next year or two. At the end of the two year period
kind of leading up to the GA part Chris calls up and he says hey you ever thought about
doing general aviation. Now I'm flying the Mirage on the side. I'm flying the F-45 as
the main job. I've got eight hours and one fifty two and from 1998 I'd never even thought
about it. I'm like GA I don't know general aviation goes no man you've been administering
(30:56):
valuations on behalf of the FAA you are a special aircraft examiner in good standing.
You know how to determine eligibility like it's just it's all it's eggs and bacon. You
want to scramble. Do you want to move over easy. And how do you want the bacon cooked.
Just think about that in the context of another airplane and maybe a different ACS format.
I was like well that kind of makes sense. He puts it that way. I said well what do you
know how do we go about this. He's like well you need to ask a request to expand your seal
(31:20):
away certificate letter of approval giving the authority for an individual to conduct
examinations on behalf of the administrator of the FAA. So I had to request to expand
my seal away just from doing the Mirage or special aircraft to becoming a PE and a CE.
So to do private pilot examinations and commercial pilot examinations. I had three thousand fighter
hours but twenty five hundred of them were dual given right because I'm flying the F-18
(31:42):
in the back seat or you know evaluating someone from a wing position or in the simulator but
literally thousands of hours instructing right. So all that was there you just got to kind
of modify it into GA but the concepts remain the same. So I went out to local flight school.
I flew a bunch with their CFIs. It's kind of comical doing turns around a point. He's
like all right we're going to do turns. He puts all this stuff up there. He's like you
(32:04):
know we got to watch the winds. He's like bro we just doing like going around that house.
He's like yeah it's like really hard. I was like uh huh. Yeah cool. We go out and do it.
He's like that's awesome. I'm like how's that hard. He's like well imagine if you only got
fifteen hours flying it's like really hard. I'm like ah good point. We go through the
rest of the maneuvers. He's like are we going to do the power off 180. I'm like all right.
He's like you know you're just going to pull the power back and you have to glide the aircraft
(32:26):
and land on the runway. I'm like uh huh. Pulls the power back. Do the glide. Land the airplane.
I'm like I don't understand what's hard about this because imagine you don't have a lot
of experience. Why? Because the F-45 we do practice precautionary even flame outs from
10 or 15 thousand feet at 230 knots. You know it's bigger, faster, what not. But the concept
remains the same. So I really quickly began to appreciate what they're trying to impart
(32:50):
on me. I have to take a step back from like I have this experience. I'm like no dude you
are here to evaluate these kids, guys and girls that are going for these certificates.
This is like really important. They're new. They're new. They're new. So think about Adam
back in the T-34. I'm like oh yeah. So kind of taking a step back. At any rate I fly in
a Cessna and a Piper Warrior and we go through all the maneuvers and then do some multi-engine
rides on the mighty Piper Apache at the time. Conventional twin. A lot of fun there. And
(33:14):
then I'm able to actually watch another D.P. administer check ride. You have to get special
permission from their managing specialist in order to have someone else in the room.
But I was like this is all kind of resonating. Determining eligibility. You know going through
the oral area of operations. Doing the practical. The scenario. The plan of action. Okay all
that kind of resonates from being a special aircraft examiner. And then one day a managing
(33:34):
specialist comes down and observes me. We do a multi-engine check ride. We do a commercial
check ride. And at the end of that day he's like alright here's the updated seal away.
I was like about a year and a half ago. Now I do private instrument commercial multi-check
rides. Okay so the initial training then was about two to three weeks including ground
and flights. The initial training is about two to three weeks ground and then you have
to get on their calendar for them to come down and conduct the observations. How many
(33:57):
flights is it? Well we did one. I think we did a private and a commercial and multi.
He just had a day or two so he was able to watch several different. Okay. But to take
a step back right I think it's important is that's not the normal way to become a pilot
examiner. Okay. Right when I went through. So I did take a couple notes right. So for
your folks out there that are interested in becoming an examiner I would say the first
(34:20):
thing you want to do. You want to go to your favorite browser and type in FAA and how to
become a DPE. It will take you to the FAA website and there is a bunch of great information
on there on how to become a DPE and it will drive you to Designate Management System,
DMS. In there there is how to contact a DPE if you need to schedule a check ride that's
(34:43):
all free or it takes you to the policy and current policy is the 8095 Charlie. Not to
be confused with the Bravo. Okay. Charlie came out I think summer 23. Chapter three
is how to become a designated pilot examiner and it takes you through all the different
paths. You want to become private commercial instrument, hot air balloon, gyrocopter, all
(35:07):
these different flavors. So you got to look at the flow chart and then basically it's
like hey if you want to become a pilot examiner let's just say it's like 2000 hours of total
PIC and maybe I think 500 hours of dual given right. That's just the basic minimums that
could be awful to have been in the hours and then there is a bunch of criteria you have
to have met in terms of previous experience. What are some examples of those? Well are
you like if you've been the chief instructor of a 141 school? Are you the chief instructor
(35:30):
of a 61 school? Have you trained pilots towards achieving a type rating? Different criteria
like that is basically have you held a leadership position in some kind of pilot training environment.
So being your perk time CFI on the weekend is probably not going to meet that benchmark
or maybe if you're at one of the bigger flight schools and you've been grinding it out for
several years you know basically running that entire school you may meet that criteria right.
(35:52):
So look in chapter 3 and you'll see kind of all the requirements. I was able to leverage
while I was a chief instructor as a squadron commander I was also the training officer
you know when I was teaching the F-18 I had 2000 hours of dual given between those two
platforms. They recognized that right. It's like well you know you're teaching people
how to get a type certificate i.e. an evaluation on the F-18 and F-35 if you're doing general
aviation the same concepts apply. So do you meet the basic eligibility? Then you create
(36:16):
an account on DMS then you will apply and then you need the letters of recommendation.
There's an interview panel and probably the biggest thing is there a need. Hollie is there
a need for more examiners in the FW area? Yes absolutely. How long are people waiting
to do an evaluation? At some flight schools they've been waiting three to six months for
an evaluation. It's terrible and so we're going to kind of jump between that thing you
(36:38):
just mentioned from is there a need. Well I'm managed by AFG 970 which is like the national
branch but many DPs are managed by their local FISDEM. There's work in the FAA background
to maybe make like a national office role DPs right because we're no longer geographically
constrained. You can do evaluations anywhere in the United States. That's helpful. Yeah
I know it is. I think right now, I can't say this is 100% true but there there's probably
(37:00):
a list of hundreds of applicants waiting to go through DPE training. So they have a pool
of applicants ready to go. It doesn't mean you can't apply. You should apply if you meet
the eligibility but just human capacity. They got to look and screen all these applicants.
Oh by the way before they even consider sending you to training or being like yes you got
to thumbs up. You've got all this review and panel work that you need to kind of go through.
(37:22):
The normal way is one day some managing specialist is going to call you up and be like hey I
got your application front. They're going to do an interview with you. They're going
to go through your resume, your background and actually determine if there's any BS in
that application right. Well maybe you were an instructor pilot like 20 years ago. You
haven't flown an airplane outside of flying for an airline. You know like you've been
grinding doing something else for a long time. So let's just say you pass that and then they're
(37:44):
going to come down and they're going to fly with you. They're going to see can you fly
an airplane. Which obviously if you've done this application you should but they need
to fly with you. So you've done the interview, you've done the board process, they've flown
with you. Good and then you got to wait for a school seat. Now they can only take let's
just say 20 or 30 applicants at a time. Maybe they do a class every couple months. So you
can see how the backlog builds. The pandemic didn't help. They kind of stopped classes
(38:05):
for a little bit but I can tell you this. There is a team of people at Oak City and
the entire Airman Certification Branch. They are working day and night to set the conditions
to train the backlog of DPEs and get more people out there. But then you're also constrained
by managing specialists and there's a finite number of them. So in the FAA structure I
report to managing specialists. He's got something like 20 or 30 different DPEs. I probably talk
(38:28):
to him every week, email, text, phone. I had this issue. I got that or I got a paperwork
issue. He'll send it back. Imagine that 20, 30 people and then he's got other things that
he's got to do along with that. So it's human capacity to be able to process that. So you
get in the school seat and then they got to come back and they got to do the observations.
I've met new DPEs and I've asked them how long did it take you and I think from the
(38:48):
time they created their login and DMS until the time they got their seal away was probably
a year or two. It depends. But if you're interested and you meet the eligibility in the 8,000.95
Charlie please look at the requirements and apply. Nothing is stopping you from applying
if you meet the eligibility and then get Girela's recommendation and don't give up. Don't give
up. Are there any requirements or recurrent training you have to do as a DPE? You have
(39:13):
to do recurrent training every two years. But every year you have to request to have
your seal away updated. So I just went through mine and that's like a do you meet the annual
requirements. So I think broadly speaking it's have you flown 60 hours PIC in the last
12 months and then have you flown I think it's like 10 hours in each category and class.
So I'm doing aircraft single engine land, aircraft multi-engine land. Well, you know,
I fly the F-45 so that's aircraft single engine land. But for the multi-engine land I have
(39:35):
to go out there and maintain currency and proficiency. So rent an airplane, rent a twin
or you got to fly new twins. You need five hours PIC in order to conduct an evaluation
in a GA twin. Learn how to fly Baron or Twin Comanche last year. So it's five and five
there's ten. Well for the next year I'm going to go and fly a couple more new different
multis and make sure I maintain that. But that's for each category in class. If you
(39:57):
have the hot air balloon thing on your seal away you got to go be a pilot in command of
a hot air balloon I guess for a couple hours. It depends on what you got. And then every
other year you go through kind of refresher training. Last January I went and we did it
at the FAA office by DFW and it was great. In a room with like 50 other DPEs you get
the smartest people you know from the FAA giving you the latest trends. And then there's
(40:21):
always a test. So took another test kind of refresher test you know kind of sample all
the requirements that you have to know when you give an administrator a checkride and
then you get that updated seal away. So that's what you got to do. Oh aviation the career
of examination. That's right. Alright guys so that is the end of the first half of the
DPE episode. I hope that you enjoyed it and found it beneficial for you and maybe you
(40:42):
even shared it with somebody else that you think would like it as well. Don't forget
sharing is caring. Please come back next week for the second half of the DPE episode that
will include the juiciest bits of the checkride itself. We'll mostly be talking about PPL
checkrides but we'll also be talking about ways to prep for your checkride and things
that you need to consider even if you're a CFI to prepare your student for that checkride.
If you liked this episode please don't forget to follow, rate, review my podcast. And if
(41:06):
you're watching this on YouTube go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe to my podcast.
It's free and if there are any other guests you would like to see on my show don't forget
to comment on the video or just send me an email of something that you would like to
learn about so we can keep you guys learning and becoming the best pilots that you can
be. Alright guys I'll meet you in the sky. See you later aviators!
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