Ken Sheppard DPE Checkride Gouges

Oral Emphasis

Ken's oral exams are heavily scenario-driven across all certificate levels. The most consistently reported topic areas include:

• Aircraft airworthiness and maintenance logs: He will have you walk through the logs, find inspections (SPAROW/AVIATES), and locate AD compliance — even if you've pre-tabbed everything. Know your TSMOH time; he has specific comfort limits on engine hours and won't fly a plane over 3,000 hours TSMOH.
• Aircraft systems: A major focus at every level. For piston singles, expect to explain the fuel system, electrical system (alternator failure procedures, battery backup, low voltage light), carburetor and carb ice, and how a four-stroke engine works. For instrument and CFII rides, he goes deep on the G5/PFD (AHRS, MEMS gyros, accelerometers, magnetometers, ADC, pitot-static integration, backup battery duration) and GPS (space/user/control segments, RAIM, FDE, WAAS, number of satellites for 2D/3D fixes).
• Regulations — pilot privileges and currency: He asks layered scenario questions about what you can and can't do. For commercial applicants, expect gray-area compensation questions (flying a friend's airplane, flying a friend's family member, sightseeing operations). For IFR, he tests 6 HITS currency with specific dates and wants you to explain how to regain currency if lapsed. For PPL, expect pro-rata share scenarios and questions about flying for your boss.
• Cross-country planning: He typically emails the destination a couple of days in advance and expects a full paper nav log (plotter, chart, E6B). Be prepared to explain every number on your nav log, justify your altitude selection, and demonstrate how you calculated TAS, magnetic heading, fuel requirements, and landing distance.
• Sectional chart symbology: Multiple pilots report extensive chart reading — airspace identification, special use airspace, TFRs on the sectional, and airport symbology. He'll find something tricky to ask about.

Common Questions

Ken's questions are almost always framed as scenarios rather than rote knowledge checks. Pilots reported these recurring styles and topics:

• Engine roughness diagnosis: He'll place you at a specific point on your cross-country and have you systematically troubleshoot engine roughness, deciding after each diagnosis whether to continue, land ASAP, or land as soon as practicable. Expect to go through 6-7 possible causes.
• Inoperative equipment scenarios: What if a specific instrument or piece of equipment is broken — can you still fly? He wants you to work through the MEL/KOEL/91.213 flow, not just recite it.
• Compensation and common carriage: Can you fly your friend in his own airplane? What about his brother? What about a sightseeing flight that lands at another airport? He pushes into the gray areas.
• High altitude operations (commercial): Time of useful consciousness, types of oxygen masks (continuous flow vs. diluter demand), hyperventilation physiology.
• For CFI/CFII rides: He evaluates your instructional knowledge, not just whether you can read from lesson plans. On one CFI ride he counted how many times the applicant said the lesson's key term and how far apart those mentions were spaced — he wants you to consistently tie your teaching back to the core objective.
• He may ask you to look things up in the FAR/AIM or POH during the oral rather than just accepting your answer — he wants to see that you know where to find information.

Practical Focus

Reported flight elements across certificate levels include:

• PPL: Cross-country with coastal routing, diversion (Blackington reported), VOR tracking and triangulation, engine fire/emergency descent/engine-out scenarios, steep turns, slow flight, stalls, unusual attitudes, lost procedures, and a full set of landings — normal, soft field, short field, and forward slip to landing with no flaps. He asks you to pick a touchdown point and evaluates whether you land in the first third of the runway.
• IFR/CFII: Expect the instrument cockpit check to be done in the airplane. Compass turns were added to one flight portion when the applicant didn't know the turning error formula (15 degrees plus half your latitude). He gave a clearance to copy and expected proper readback.
• Preflight: He's described as "kind of thorough" during the preflight. He has asked how to check brake pad wear indicators and how the stall horn works. Know the physical details of your airplane.
• When pilots made mistakes in flight — wrong altimeter setting, drifting off heading, forgetting to switch a VOR frequency — he would ask pointed questions to prompt self-correction rather than immediately failing the task. He gives you chances to catch and fix your own errors.

Examiner Style

• Warm and approachable: Virtually every report mentions that Ken is friendly, personable, and good at calming nerves. He starts with small talk and even dad jokes. He helped one applicant pull the airplane into the sun to melt ice and helped park it afterward.
• Patient and fair: Multiple pilots say he guided them in the right direction when they were off track rather than letting them spiral. He'll keep asking a question in different ways until you look it up and get it right, rather than just marking you wrong.
• Thorough but not adversarial: He covers a lot of ground but isn't trying to trap you. Pilots consistently describe him as reasonable. He values understanding over memorization and wants to see your thought process.
• Efficient with paperwork: If you have your documents and endorsements well-organized, he moves through them quickly. He's very experienced and knows exactly what he's looking for.
• CFI-specific note: He is quietly evaluative during lesson presentations — he takes notes, asks occasional questions, and then delivers detailed, specific feedback afterward. He cares about how you structure and deliver instruction, not just content accuracy.

What Surprised Pilots

• On a CFI ride, Ken actually tallied how many times the applicant used the lesson's key term and noted the longest gap between mentions. He wants your teaching to consistently connect back to the stated objective — this level of instructional scrutiny caught the applicant off guard.
• He has strong opinions on engine TSMOH — he reportedly won't fly a plane over 3,000 hours TSMOH and flags engines approaching 2,500 hours. Make sure you know your engine time.
• Several pilots were surprised by how much time he spent on sectional chart reading and symbology — he finds obscure details on the chart to quiz you about.
• The engine roughness troubleshooting exercise on the commercial ride was more extensive than expected — he kept going through cause after cause until the applicant truly ran out of ideas (6-7 rounds).
• He used a spinning quarter on a table to teach gyroscopic precession and rigidity in space during a CFII ride — then tapped it with a pen to show precession. Applicants noted he sometimes teaches you something new during the checkride itself.
• Multiple PPL applicants noted he is forgiving of mistakes as long as you recognize and correct them — he won't fail you for a single slip if you demonstrate good judgment and self-awareness in recovering from it.