Francesco Gozzo DPE Checkride Gouges
Designated Pilot Examiner
Preparing for an FAA checkride with Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) Francesco Gozzo? GougeHub has 2 first-hand Francesco Gozzo checkride gouge reports from pilots who tested. Review oral exam questions, flight test patterns, and examiner insights for CFI and PPL checkrides.
↓ View 2 available gouge reportsTwo reports sit on file for Francesco Gozzo, one PPL and one CFI. The PPL oral leaned heavily on cross country planning and weather. He wanted dead reckoning work, true course, and true heading, and he stressed that the two are different. He covered TAF, METAR, AIRMET, and SIGMET, and he made a point that you should not interpolate a TAF. One pilot reported a question about reading a TAF one line at a time and saying what it means.
Performance and regulations came up next. He compared takeoff and landing distances at KDEN versus KRDU, so know how field elevation changes your numbers. He asked about 91.211, 91.103, the minimum equipment list, and the documents required for pilot in command. He also wanted airspace knowledge along the route from KRDU to KHEF. The pilot noted you must carry an inflight sectional during the ride.
The flight portion ran a cross country toward KHEF with several real surprises. A low headset battery acted up right before takeoff. On the climb out of RDU the mixture sat too lean and the engine ran hot, and the fix was leaning for 1500 EGT. The dead reckoning leg to LHZ was hard because of haze and unprepared waypoints.
The engine out scenario at LHZ had a twist. The pilot first chose downwind for better ground speed, then learned Gozzo wanted a crab into the wind even with the engine out. The short field landing ended with a stop and go, and confusion came from aerodynamic braking and unclear brake timing.
The CFI report is disorganized and flags safety concerns during stall recovery and control conflicts. Treat stall recovery and clear control handoffs as areas to nail down before that ride.
Analyzed across 113 site-wide Private Pilot checkrides in the GougeHub database, the same questions keep coming up. Here’s one of the 37 in the guide:
“Describe the different classes of airspace and their VFR weather minimums.”
⚠ Common Pitfall: Class D often reverts to Class G (or another class per the chart supplement) when the tower closes. The examiner may point to a spot and ask you to describe the airspace — Class G can be tricky, so know where it starts per the chart. Watch the floor of Class E: it can be the surface, 700 AGL, 1,200 AGL, or 14,500 MSL. And remember Class E is still controlled even though you needn’t talk to anyone VFR — there may be IFR traffic in it.
All 37 questions, ranked by frequency, with Examiner Insights and Common Pitfalls from 113 real checkrides — written and reviewed by Andrew Gray, CFI-II.
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Ratings & Checkride Types
- CFI (Certified Flight Instructor)
- PPL (Private Pilot)
FAA Designee Information
FAA Oversight Office: Delegation And Resource Branch, Afg-970
Status: Active Designee
- Private Pilot Examiner: Airplane Single Engine Land, Airplane Multi-Engine Land
- Commercial & Instrument Rating Examiner: Airplane Single Engine Land, Airplane Multi-Engine Land
- ATPE: Airplane Multi-Engine Land
- Flight Instructor Examiner: Airplane Single Engine, Airplane Multi-Engine
- Flight Instructor Examiner — Instrument: Airplane Single Engine, Airplane Multi-Engine
- Ground Instructor Examiner
- Flight Instructor Rating Examiner
- Balloon Airman Examiner
Source: FAA Designee Management System · Verify on FAA.gov →
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Transparency Disclaimer: This page summarizes patterns reported by applicants. It is not an endorsement, prediction, or guarantee of checkride outcome. Every checkride varies based on the applicant and circumstances.