Frank Brooks Black DPE Checkride Gouges

Oral Emphasis

The oral starts early (around 7:30) and covers a wide range of topics with a strong emphasis on Fundamentals of Instruction, flight instructor responsibilities, and your ability to actually teach — not just recite knowledge. Key areas reported include:

• FOI concepts: primacy, forgetting, memory and retention strategies
• Aerodynamics tied to maneuvers (e.g., steep turn aerodynamics, aspect ratio, forward vs. aft CG effects, left turning tendencies)
• Flight instructor responsibilities and limitations, including endorsements, IACRA procedures for new students, and when to have students obtain their medical
• Aircraft systems: fuel system, pitot-static system, oil system, VOR/GPS — all specific to the Piper
• Pressurization and oxygen requirements
• Weight and balance, E6B calculations, performance calculations, and navigation log review — he wants you to explain how you arrived at your numbers
• Sectional chart interpretation, airport signs, and light gun signals
• Situational teaching scenarios: how you'd teach a student to navigate back when lost (heavy emphasis on visual waypoints) and lost comms procedures
• Traffic pattern entry and whether your home airport has adequate distance for LAHS operations

Common Questions

Pilots reported questions that test both your knowledge and your ability to teach that knowledge to a student. Expect questions like:

• Explain a core FOI concept (e.g., why people forget, how to help students retain information)
• Walk through your lesson plan and then teach a specific maneuver from it (chandelles were requested)
• Describe the aerodynamic principles behind specific maneuvers
• Explain your nav log calculations step by step
• Scenario-based questions about handling student situations — lost communications, getting lost, finding visual references
• "Make and model" questions related to instructor privileges and training requirements

Practical Focus

The flight portion is comprehensive and covers a full spread of CFI maneuvers and landing types:

• Soft field takeoff on departure
• VOR awareness — he asked what radial they were on from a nearby VOR (FLL)
• Slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls (full stall), and accelerated stalls (full stall)
• Steep turns, lazy eights, and chandelles
• Simulated engine failure with the full ABCDE flow, steep spiral, and simulated landing on a runway
• Eights on pylons and S-turns as ground reference maneuvers
• Position awareness check — he asked where they were and how long to reach a specific fix
• Multiple landing types at a practice airport: soft field landing (full stop, taxi back), short field takeoff, no-flap forward slip to landing, and power-off 180
• Return to home airport for a short field landing on specific markings (500 ft markers)

Examiner Style

Brooks Black is thorough and methodical. He moves through topics steadily and expects you to demonstrate teaching ability, not just answer questions. He'll hand you your lesson plan and have you actually teach a maneuver. In the airplane, he checks situational awareness by asking about your position and timing to fixes. The checkride covers a lot of ground — come prepared for a full day. Reports suggest he's professional and straightforward, not adversarial, but he holds you to standard on every item.

What Surprised Pilots

• He required full stalls on both power-on/off and accelerated stalls — not just approaching the stall, but through the break
• The emphasis on visual waypoints and teaching a student to navigate visually when lost was a bigger deal than expected
• He specifically checked whether the home airport had enough distance for LAHS operations — a detail some pilots hadn't considered
• The breadth of the flight portion was notable: nearly every commercial/CFI maneuver plus multiple landing types across two airports