FAQ Introduction to RideReady Video RideReady is the best way to prepare and be confident for your next FAA Practical Test (also known as a "flight test" or "checkride."). The content of RideReady consists of large, often illustated, and regularly updated question sets drawn from actual checkride experience (our editorial team consists of senior flight instructors and designated examiner pilots) that you study in an active challenge-response way to mimic actual Practical Test conditions, where an examiner will ask you similar questions. It is unique in both including specific questions pertaining to a large number of common training aircraft and in offering lifetime free updates, meaning that you can start studying early without worrying of being 'locked out' of new content as it becomes available and that you can review long after your checkride. It is available on a number of platforms, including PC and iPhone/iPad and has won industry praise both of its depth of content, innovative use of technology, and providing time and cost efficiency to the end user compared to review booklets that are too thin on content and nearly totally lacking in insight and DVD/video based reviews that are are boring beyond words, expensive, and consequently ineffective. RideReady has been used by tens of thousands of pilots to successfully prepare for FAA checkrides and is in use institutionally at a large number of professional flight schools and university flight departments. We invite you to be next!

RideReady has many, many more checkride oral exam questions than those booklets do. Our questions are drawn from actual pilot checkride de-briefings and examiner experience. We work to constantly update the material to keep it up to date as we get post-checkride reports from pilots like you and as FAA rules change. Updates are always free and are simple to get using the built-in update utility. Compare this to a book which is basically becoming obsolete the moment that it is printed. While such books write generically about airplanes, chances are that this software knows about the specific aircraft that YOU fly. You tell RideReady which aircraft you are training in and then it will ask you questions from its database about your airplane. While RideReady's database includes questions for many common trainer types, if your aircraft is not included, you can enter 'custom' aircraft details. Typical books ask only dry, fairly "rote" questions. While you are likely to be asked some such questions on your checkride, you will also be asked a number of reasoning and scenario-type questions. RideReady includes all types of questions that you are likely to be asked on your FAA checkride oral. RideReady includes hundreds of charts and figures to assist your learning. RideReady is easy and convenient to use. We take pride in making products with excellent usability so that you get the most studying possible done in a given amount of time. Because it is regularly updated and updates are free, RideReady is useful as a refresher tool long after your checkride. (In fact, some pilots buy RideReady for certificates / ratings that they are already certified for just for that reason.) RideReady is field-tested and tens of thousands of pilots agree that is the best way to gain the knowledge and confidence required to impress the examiner... ... but don't take our word for it! You can download the (PC version) demo of RideReady FREE and decide whether it's right for you before you buy it.

We can't give you a full answer, since we've never been able to find anybody who has sat through one of those DVD-based preps without falling asleep. Seriously though--there is definitely that, but there's much more, too. Most of the items in the above list apply as well (including, crucially, that you can get the latest updates for life, quickly from ours, while those DVDs are static forever), but what it really compes down to is that RideReady lets you study up-to-date information at your own pace at a far, far more reasonable price than competing DVD sets. Certain DVD companies seem to have made a fortune based on luring pilots into believing that because the DVD sets are ridiculously expensive that this will somehow translate to effective learning when. In reality, a great many of those DVD sets go unwatched beyond the first few minutes. Smart pilots have come to appreciate the speed and effectiveness of RideReady - remember - all of our materials are maintained by an editorial team of Designated Pilot Examiners and Flight Instructors with real experience that you can count on.

If you do choose to buy it, the ordering process for RideReady is easy, secure, and immediate.

You can be studying for your checkride oral exam prep in just moments from now!

Note: The Frequently Asked Questions below are intended to familiarize you with the basics of the product. For technical support FAQs for this product plus, additional FAQs, please visit our helpdesk
	Who is RideReady for?
	Be confident and ready for your next FAA checkride (practical test) oral exam. RideReady checkride oral exam prep is intended for all pilots who are contemplating taking an FAA Practical Test (more commonly known as a "checkride" ). A practical test is the certificate test that you take with an examiner pilot at the end of your training for a certificate or rating. The checkride (essentially) consists of a flight portion, wherein you are tasked with performing maneuvers that you will have been trained on and an oral portion, where the examiner will quiz you on any of a large number of aviation matters. RideReady is basically a collection of hundreds and hundreds of realistic and fully ACS-compatible FAA checkride questions and answers. The questions are maintained by an editorial team of professional instructors and FAA designated pilot examiners. RideReady is available on several platforms. The learning content is exactly the same no matter what platform you choose to get it on. RideReady's primary goal is to help you be ready for the oral portion of the checkride. As a secondary benefit, it will also to some degree help you study up on the flight maneuvers that you will need to perform as a double-check that your knowledge of those is up to standards. Because this software contains a large question bank, it is also useful not just for checkride applicants, but also for certified pilots who can use it as a lookup and refresher tool. Yes! RideReady is 100% compatible with FAA Airman Certification Standards (ACS). The FAA Airman Certification Standards is a system through which the FAA: classifies information that pilots need to know for their practical tests (and written tests, and flight tests) standardizes the checkride experience to help ensure that pilot checkride experiences are roughly similar from examiner to examiner and that they are comprehensive. ACS replaces older systems of standardization and classification such as the FAA Practical Test Standards (PTS). What ACS does NOT do is in and of itself introduce new material. The things that you need to know for a given checkride - weather, airspace, aerodynamics, regulations, and so on, didn't change at all when the FAA switched to ACS. In fact, from the standpoint of a pilot taking a checkride, it's basically a non-issue - a bureaucratic reshuffle. RideReady is 100% ACS compatible. That is to say, we check our question banks against the ACS codes and make sure that we cover all or essentially all of the ACS subject matter and knowledge areas that may appear on your checkride. As RideReady was already comprehensive in its coverage of knowledge areas before ACS, this required little to no change in our question banks. Individual FAA and Designated Pilot Examiners still have fairly wide latitude in what exact questions they ask you within the required ACS subject areas but now with ACS you're far less likely to encounter the two historical problem areas of the examiner system - "too easy" examiners who would rush through oral exams, perhaps for financial benefit, and "too hard" examiners who would quiz applicants on material too far afield. ACS helps rein in both extremes. It's important to remember that oral exam questions are not knowledge test questions. With good examiners, you're very much having a discussion rather than ticking boxes. A very good applicant will be able to answer questions correctly and also demonstrate the deeper insights and connections that they have come to understand. As such, it is possible for a given question, answer, or discussion to cross the lines of several ACS codes. In a very real sense, you can let the examiner worry about the bureaucratic nuances of ACS codes. This leaves you free to concentrate on the material itself. RideReady helps you do this in a highly effective way.
	What specific aircraft does RideReady include system information for?
	RideReady is a useful tool regardless of whether you fly one of the below aircraft or not. Each RideReady version contains hundreds of questions that are generic to the specific practical test being studied for. However, one of the places that RideReady shines is in that it also contains questions that are specialized for particular aircraft. This is particularly important since, as you know, systems and performance questions are stressed on every checkride. When you use RideReady, you select which aircraft you are flying, and RideReady customizes the questions for that airplane. If your aircraft is not included in RideReady, you can add it as a 'custom airplane.' RideReady includes the following: Private / Recreational Pilot: Cessna 150 Cessna 152 Cessna 162 Skycatcher Cessna 172N Cessna 172RG Cessna 172SP Cessna 182Q Cirrus SR20 Cirrus SR22 Diamond Katana DA20-A1 Diamond Star DA40 Piper Archer PA-28-180 Piper Archer II PA-28-181 Piper Warrior II PA-28-161 Instrument Rating: Cessna 150 Cessna 152 Cessna 162 Skycatcher Cessna 172N Cessna 172RG Cessna 172SP Cessna 182Q Cirrus SR20 Cirrus SR22 Diamond Katana DA20-A1 Diamond Star DA40 Piper Archer PA-28-180 Piper Archer II PA-28-181 Piper Arrow II PA-28R-200 Piper Warrior II PA-28-161 Commercial Pilot: Same as Instrument Rating Flight Instructor: Same as Instrument Rating Airline Transport: Beech Duchess Cessna 310 Diamond DA42 Twin Star Piper Seminole Piper Seneca Piper Twin Comanche MultiEngine: Same as Airline Transport If your aircraft is not listed above, don't worry! You can always add it as a "custom airplane" in RideReady.
	When should I start studying for my checkride oral?
	Ideally, you should start studying as early in the training process as you can. Having more knowledge earlier on will help you make the most of your training flights and therefore likely save you training money / time over the course of your training. That said, RideReady is perfectly suitable as a "night before the checkride" cram tool.
	How does RideReady compare to those little FAA Oral Exam prep books that I have seen?
	RideReady is a great tool that can get you better prepared and often in less time than limited-content books. RideReady is designed to better simulate the sorts of questions that you see on the checkride plus RideReady is updated in REAL TIME from post-checkride "after action" reports from pilots. The editorial team that manages RideReady content is comprised of professional instructors and FAA Designated Examiners. RideReady content is 100% FAA ACS compatible and is regularly updated. Here's our Top Ten list of why RideReady is better than such books: More Content. RideReady has many more questions than those booklets do. All of our questions are drawn from actual pilot checkride de-briefings and examiner interviews. Regular Updates. We work to constantly update the software to keep it up to date as we get post-checkride reports from pilots like you and as FAA rules change. RideReady is 100% FAA ACS compatible. Free Lifetime Updates. Updates are always free and are simple to get using the built-in update utility. Compare this to a book which is basically becoming obsolete the moment that it is printed. Aircraft Type Specific Content While such books write generically about airplanes, chances are that this software knows about the specific aircraft that YOU fly. You tell RideReady which aircraft you are training in and then it will ask you questions from its database about your airplane. While RideReady's database includes questions for many common trainer types, if your aircraft is not included, you can even enter 'custom' aircraft details. Rote, Reasoning, and Scenario Type Questions. Typical books ask only dry, fairly "rote" questions. While you are likely to be asked some such questions on your checkride, you will also be asked a number of reasoning and scenario-type questions. RideReady includes all types of questions that you are likely to be asked on your FAA checkride oral. Illustrated! RideReady includes hundreds of charts and figures to assist your learning. Polished User Experience. RideReady is easy and convenient to use - featuring timesaving features such as the ability search questions and tag questions as easy or difficult to focus and streamline your study. Lifelong Learning. Because it is regularly updated and updates are free, RideReady is useful as a refresher tool long after your checkride. (In fact, some pilots buy RideReady for certificates / ratings that they are already certified for just for that reason.) RideReady is field-tested and pilots agree that is a great way to gain the knowledge and confidence required to impress the examiner... ... but don't take our word for it! You can download the demo of RideReady FREE (PC version) and decide whether it's right for you before you buy it.
	Who wrote the questions and answers of RideReady?
	RideReady was written by professional pilots and flight instructors at Dauntless. It was helped along by conducting exit interviews of dozens of flight students throughout the country. Additional material and suggestions were supplied by at least four current and former FAA Designated Pilot Examiners (DPEs). Where it is advantageous to do so, many answers contain text directly from the FAA and other government agencies so that you are trained on answers exactly per the FAA's thinking on the matter.
	Why does RideReady not grade answers right and wrong like, for example, your GroundSchool FAA Written Test prep does?
	Unlike on FAA written tests where questions have obvious and definite answers, many checkride oral questions are intended to probe your functional literacy and reasoning skills. Answers are often rich and detailed. Therefore, it is impractical to grade your answers strictly. Rather, RideReady leaves it up to you to see how your answer compares to ours. That said, RideReady allows you to flag questions as easy, neutral, or hard so that you can zero in on questions of importance to you. By the way, if you need FAA written test prep, check out our best in the business GroundSchool test prep.
	Do I have to know ALL of the content of RideReady before taking my checkride?
	The answer is "definitely no! however..." No examiner expects you to know everything. RideReady is written such that if a person knew everything that is in there, he/she would likely be an amazingly outstanding applicant. A small percentage of the questions included in each test prep (especially the earlier stage ones, such as Private and Recreational Pilot) are beyond what is normally expected of applicants. We nevertheless include a few such questions to allow you to potentially be truly impressive. So, don't worry if you don't know all of the answers. Your goal is really to be functionally literate in the subject matter. "I don't know, but I know where to look that up" is a perfectly good answer for some checkride oral questions - but just don't use it too often! Your primary goal is to demonstrate to the examiner that you have competence in the material and that you have good, safety-minded judgment. The examiner is not expecting you to know everything, but don't take the oral lightly - people probably fail the oral exam portions of their checkride just about as often as they fail in flight tasks. You want to be over prepared rather than under prepared.
	How does RideReady ask me specifics about my aircraft?
	Yes! RideReady has aircraft-specific questions and answers. In RideReady, you select from a list of common aircraft for a given certificate or rating. For example, for Private / Recreational Pilot, RideReady has question sets for a variety of common Cessna, Cirrus, Diamond, and Piper aircraft. Once you select an aircraft, the RideReady will ask you questions about that particular aircraft (for example, it could ask you questions that pertain to the fuel system design of your particular aircraft). Furthermore, because for a number of reasons there are variations between even the same type of aircraft (for example, one particular aircraft might have special wing tips installed that lower the published stall speeds), RideReady allows you to further customize many specifics so that its questions will best reflect your particular aircraft. Furthermore, if RideReady just doesn't have the aircraft you are using, you can always enter data for a generic aircraft. Since aircraft systems, performance, and limitations are a key FAA emphasis areas on checkrides, the ability to customize the quizzing to your aircraft's needs is a particularly important advantage of RideReady over books, which typically only talk about generic aircraft. To be best prepared for your checkride, make sure you thoroughly study your aircraft's Pilot Operating Handbook / Approved Flight Manual in addition to using RideReady. The aircraft-type-specific content in RideReady is invaluable, but please remember that it's designed to check your knowledge, not to teach you every last thing about the aircraft. During your flight training, you'll learn about the aircraft hands-on with your instructor and simultaneously you should develop a deeper understanding of its particulars (specifications, procedures, systems, performance, quirks, etc.) by spending some quality time with the AFM/POH.
	How much does RideReady cost?
	To see pricing or to order, please see the RideReady order page.
	How many questions in RideReady?
	Each test bank covered by RideReady includes hundreds upon hundreds of questions. The exact number that you will see depends on the aircraft, specific test, and other configuration options that you have selected. Each version of RideReady ships with at least approximately 1000 total questions / answers. Certainly, each RideReady test bank has many more questions than those oral exam prep books do, and more questions still are being added as feedback comes in and FAA rules change. Private and Recreational Pilot Airplane: 1174 Private Pilot Airplane: 1149 Recreational Pilot Airplane: 1080 Instrument Rating Airplane: 1116 Instrument Rating Airplane: 1107 Flight Instructor Instrument Airplane: 1083 Commercial Pilot Airplane: 1242 Airline Transport Pilot Airplane: 1533 Flight Instructor Airplane: 1372 MultiEngine Airplane: 1017 Hot Air Balloon Pilot: 295 Private Pilot Hot Air Balloon: 219 Commercial Pilot Hot Air Balloon: 248 Private and Commercial Pilot Helicopter: 1067 Private Pilot Helicopter: 1060 Commercial Pilot Helicopter: 1047 Instrument Rating Helicopter: 967 Flight Instructor Helicopter: 1202 Seaplane Pilot: 246 Glider Pilot: 740 Tailwheel Transition: 87
	What happens when updates are released?
	Updates are always free, so, unlike limited-lifespan books, RideReady will serve you well into the future! There is an update link from the main menu. Click that, select the test you want, and follow the instructions to get the latest and greatest. Getting upgrades is integrated, fast, and free.

Thanks for checking out RideReady! Good luck in all of your aviation goals!

FAA Checkride Oral Exam Prep - Private through ATP