The week before my private pilot checkride, I stopped studying for a couple of hours and built a binder instead. It turned out to be one of the better decisions I made, and it had almost nothing to do with knowing more and everything to do with not having to remember under pressure. Here’s what I put in it, why, and how you can build your own.
Why I built a binder instead of buying one
I’m an entrepreneur and a GA pilot, and I earned my private certificate flying a Cessna 172 out of Livermore (KLVK) in the San Francisco Bay Area. The whole reason this tool exists is a small, stubborn frustration I kept hitting during training: the checklists I could buy were fine, genuinely, but they were never in my format. The order wasn’t how my instructor taught me. The spacing was cramped. The items I personally kept forgetting weren’t called out anywhere. So I started making the checklists I actually wanted on my kneeboard, and by the time the checkride came around, building a binder was just the natural next step.
The night I put it together, I wasn’t trying to make anything impressive. I was trying to make the checkride feel like a normal flight instead of an exam. A binder does that in a quiet way: everything you might reach for is in one place, in the order you’d reach for it, so you’re never rifling through a flight bag with a Designated Pilot Examiner watching.
What went in mine
I printed everything on half-letter (A5) pages and slid them into clear sleeves — small enough to sit on a kneeboard, sturdy enough to survive a sweaty-palmed day. The core of it was my own checklist for the 172, organized by phase of flight, with one honest addition: the items I personally tended to forget. Not the textbook killer items everyone lists, but my misses — the ones my instructor had caught me on twice. Seeing them called out on the page, in my own words, did more for me than reading the POH a fourth time.
After the checklists I added a printed chart supplement page and the airport diagram for the checkride airport, so taxi instructions and field information weren’t something I had to fish for on a tablet. And I made a safety briefing card for the 172 — the short passenger-and-emergency brief I’d give before takeoff — because saying it out loud from a card, calmly, was one of the small things that steadied me on the day. When the examiner asked, I wasn’t improvising. I just read what I’d already thought through the night before.
None of it was clever. That’s kind of the point. A binder doesn’t make you a better pilot; it just removes the small frictions that eat your attention when you’d rather be flying the airplane.
Build your own checkride binder
You don’t need my binder. You need yours — matched to your airplane, your airport, and the specific things you tend to forget. Here’s a generic, safe starting point. Treat it as common prep practice, not a rule, and confirm the specifics with your own instructor.
- Aircraft normal checklists. Your before-start through shutdown sequence, organized by phase of flight so it mirrors how you actually fly. Short sections, challenge on the left, response on the right. If you want the reasoning behind good checklist design, I wrote it up in how to build a checklist for your aircraft.
- Aircraft emergency and abnormal items. Kept separate from the normal flow, with the true immediate-action memory items made visually distinct so they never blend into the read-and-verify steps.
- A personal weak-spot list. The handful of items you miss — the ones your instructor keeps catching. This is the highest-value page in the binder and the one you can’t buy.
- A weather and NOTAM briefing page. A clean spot to write the day’s brief: winds, ceilings, TAF trend, and the NOTAMs for your airport and route. Pull it from an official source and keep it current.
- The airport diagram and a chart supplement page. For the checkride airport, so taxi layout, frequencies, and field information are on paper and instantly readable.
- Weight and balance. Run for the actual airplane and the actual people flying that day, not a generic example. Keep the numbers you used and the source data with them.
Keep the approved POH/AFM in the airplane where it belongs. Everything in the binder is a memory aid derived from those documents, and every item should match — never contradict — the official procedures. When something in your binder disagrees with the current POH, the POH wins, every time. For the FAA handbooks, the ACS, and the weather and chart sources I actually used while building mine, the student pilot hub has them all in one place, free.
How this tool helps you build one
This is the part where the tool earns its place, and it’s a small role by design: it just makes the pages.
- Print at half-letter or A5. The same compact kneeboard size I used, so your binder is light and readable, not a full sheet of paper folded in half.
- Custom sections in your order. Add the phases you fly, drop the ones you don’t, and put your personal weak-spot list right where you’ll see it.
- Your own phrasing. Write the items the way your instructor taught you and the way you’ll actually read them at 1,000 feet, not the way a generic PDF happened to word them.
If you fly a Skyhawk, the Cessna 172 checklist is a sensible starting point to customize. Change everything you want, verify it against your airplane’s POH, and print it.
Build a checklist — freeIt’s free forever for personal use. I keep it that way on purpose; any donations go toward my instrument rating and keeping the site online. Build the binder that makes your checkride feel like a normal flight — and verify every page against your aircraft’s current POH/AFM before you fly it.
Common questions
What should be in a checkride binder?
Most students build a binder around a few core pieces: the aircraft's normal and emergency checklists, a personal weak-spot list of the items they tend to forget, a weather and NOTAM briefing page for the day, the airport diagram and a chart supplement page for the checkride airport, and a weight-and-balance sheet for the actual airplane and people flying. Keep the approved POH aboard too — the binder is a memory aid built from it, not a replacement.
Do I need a checklist for my checkride, or is the POH enough?
The approved POH/AFM has to be in the airplane regardless. A checklist is the working memory aid you run in the cockpit so your head isn't buried in the book at a busy moment. Many pilots build their own checklist from the POH procedures so it's in a format they can actually read on a kneeboard, then verify every item against the current POH before they fly.
Can I use my own custom checklist on a checkride?
Practices vary by examiner and by instructor, so confirm with your CFI and your DPE ahead of time. What's consistent is that a custom checklist should be derived faithfully from your aircraft's approved POH/AFM, the approved manual still has to be aboard, and your checklist should match — not contradict — the official procedures. When in doubt, verify against the POH and ask.
What's the difference between a checkride binder and a checklist?
The checklist is one piece — the challenge-and-response items you run by phase of flight. The binder is the whole package you bring to the checkride: checklists plus your weak-spot list, the weather brief, the airport diagram, a chart supplement page, and weight and balance, usually in half-letter or A5 sleeves so it's compact on a kneeboard.
How should I organize a checkride checklist?
By phase of flight, mirroring how you actually fly: preflight, before start, before taxi, before takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, before landing, after landing, shutdown, with emergency and abnormal items held separately. Keep each section short enough to take in at a glance, make the killer items obvious, and cross-check every line against your POH.