A New Homebuilt And Rusty Pilots

They expressed their nervousness, which was understandable. Who wants to show their flight skills to a critic when those skills are at low proficiency? It is human nature to want to show your best side, but a rusty pilot flight review will show the naked truth. I explained there is nothing wrong with being out of practice, and a flight review is not a test, but an opportunity to learn. Their anxiety acknowledged, we moved on to the needed practice.

Mike Hart

Sunday, June 02, 2019 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

A flight instructor guided two rusty pilots through a rigorous flight review to prepare them for the maiden flight of their newly built, high-performance, tailwheel experimental aircraft after a five-year hiatus.
The comprehensive training addressed general proficiency recovery, mastering high-performance tailwheel aircraft characteristics (e.g., ground loops, power management), and critical engine-out-on-takeoff practice—a common risk for experimental amateur-built aircraft.
The article demonstrates that complex, high-risk aviation scenarios can be safely mitigated by acknowledging specific risks and addressing them methodically, step-by-step, even when combining rusty pilots with a maiden test flight of a unique aircraft.

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Not all flight reviews are equal, and rusty pilots are not at all uncommon, but I recently faced a scenario that gave me pause. It read like the beginning of an NTSB report with a stack of extremely novel circumstances. My choice was either be one of the contributing factors to an accident or one of the mitigations. My goal was the latter.

I recently had the opportunity to provide a flight review for two pilots—a father and son—who had taken a roughly five-year break from flying. During that time, they built a new plane. It was now ready for its maiden flight, but they, as pilots, were not.