Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

IR profcheck

A couple of weeks ago I did the yearly IR profcheck.
I shared the examiner with a fellow IR pilot. Since we need to fly to an IFR airport (Groningen or Rotterdam) this safes some cost as you will fly only one way instead of a return flight.

We had to fly one holding, one VOR/DME and one ILS approach.
And that was it. No stalls, no unusual attitude recovery, no limited panel, no questions about intercepting a VOR radial. Nothing.

IMHO the whole excersise was a waste of time and money with zero learning value.
The examiner was agitating against flying single pilot IFR without AP, so most flying was done using the autopilot :-)

My SEP rating was also signed off, so it is now in sync with the IR profcheck.

We paid 100EUR each for the examiner. A shared examiner must be about the cheapest way to maintain an IR…

If you add to your list that the examiner requires it to be a CAVOK day, then you have a pretty representative EASA IR checkride

All depends on the examiner. If you know how to fly then you should be lucky to only have to spend 100 € to fulfil your legal obligations. If you want to be challenged, then look for another examiner.

I can do without showing how to intercept a VOR radial. First of all I know how to do it and secondly, I never need it in real life.

Mine lets me fly in conditions I cannot describe here. The last time i didn’t see the wingtips and he let me do stalls in IMC … Intercepting VOR radials: part of many missed approach procedures!

Nothing.

I’ve had this discussion with some of the examiners who took my various IR, class- and type rating checks (the latter twice per year) over the years. I must have flown around one hundred IR checkrides by now. If they would do the full programme (i.e. tick every box on the 5-page-attachment of the check ride form) an IR check on a complex aircraft can easily take two or three hours. This triplicates the cost involved, both for aircraft and examiner time. Nobody would ever book that same examiner again after going through that once. So what they do is to use their experience and common sense and see how the candidate performs during normal operations. If he can fly a decent holding (which contains almost anything that an IR pilot must be capable to show) and a stable NPA then he will be capable to do all the other stuff as well.

EDDS - Stuttgart

and a stable NPA then he will be capable to do all the other stuff as well.

The NPA has gotten a bit difficult with the GNS430W and GTN. My checkride aerodrome is EDTY and its RNAV approaches are traditionally for the NPA bit. Now “unfortunately” there is an LPV and the Garmin boxes have no means to turn off the glideslope and revert to the lateral navigation. At least I am not aware. So how do you demonstrate an NPA if all the airfield has is ILS and LPV?

So how do you demonstrate an NPA if all the airfield has is ILS and LPV?

You don’t have to call up the LPV on your GPS or FMS but fly the normal GPS approach instead. Or if that should not be possible (I’m not really familiar with the latest generation Garmins) you can enter “direct to” the runway threshold or the localiser identifier (like “ISTE” or “ISTW” at my homebase) and fly in OBS mode or have your screen display a bearing needle instead of a CDI. At least this is how we do it. One examiner I used to do my MEP checkrides with for many years liked to pull the CB of the glideslope receiver to turn an ILS into a localiser DME approach. But I guess you can’t do that any more on many modern avionics suites or all-in-one boxes like the GNSs.

Last Edited by what_next at 18 May 14:32
EDDS - Stuttgart

The OBS approach would work but that’s not really an RNAV, very different sensitivity and overall behavior. With a glass panel like mine and a GNS430W, there is no way to hide the glideslope when loading the RNAV approach for a runway where either an advisory glideslope or LPV exist.

The first year my examiner was delighted by my high precision continuous descent. The second year I told him and he asked me to not look at the glideslope

If you hold a type rating you can now revalidate your IR SPA by experience. I did it a few weeks ago – free! You need to have completed a type rating revalidation in a sim or an aircraft and flown three IFR departures and approaches in the previous twelve months in the SPA.

Spending too long online
EGTF Fairoaks, EGLL Heathrow, United Kingdom

Are there pilots actually failing the IR profcheck?

There are a lot of unemployed ATPL graduates that keep their ratings valid by armchair flying on FSX and fly for real maybe 5 hrs per year.
Yet they manage to pass the CPL ME/IR check year after year.

The 2-yearly VFR check ride is not a check ride and you cannot fail it. The IR check ride is a check ride and you can fail it. However, in reality there is no real difference. If an examiner fails you, he does you a lot of harm and he threatens his business because you have free choice of examiners. For the VFR training flight, the CFI can also choose to not sign it with the same consequences.

What happens in real life is that the examiner would turn the check ride into a training flight and continue to do so until he can do a check ride with you. There is little value in failing you and documenting that.

25 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top