True story.
Many years ago I had my first 135 job hauling rubber checks in PA-34s. They were well maintained, but pretty basic. No autopilot.
My 135 ride was also my ATP check ride and was with our POI, an FAA inspector. He was BY THE BOOK. And I mean by the book. The oral started with him opening the FARs and saying, "Let's start with FAR 1, definitions." It went that way for several hours.
Now when we flew up to Atlanta for the check ride it was mentioned that we were flying my normal airplane and the one I used for training into maintenance and picking up another airplane, one that was used to haul pax. It did not really click about the pax hauling needing an autopilot under 135 until the inspector got the supplement part of the oral and asked me about the autopilot. My look must have given it away. I told him I did not know the airplane had an autopilot and I had no idea how to use it. He looked at his watch, stretched, said he was going to use the bathroom and get a snack. We would continue the oral when he got back and an ATP probably should know the limitations and how to preflight an autopilot. Just to make sure I understood he placed the POH in front of me, open to the autopilot. I passed the oral.
When I sat in the airplane I got another shock. This airplane had an IFR certified KNS-80 RNAV. This was an old school DME/DME RNAV system. I had no clue how to use it. At this point I was silently cursing the training department. The inspector looked at it, said he had no clue how the thing worked so he would only have me use the DME portion. Yeah. Wait... the DME portion? I never used DME in the military. TACAN a few times. Never trained in a GA airplane with DME. When I flew TACAN we had RMIs and HSIs, not a CDI. I started trying to remember... how do you fly a DME arc using a CDI again? No pressure, FAA inspector sitting next to me.
Everything went well until he asked me to request a DME arc for an ILS. Crap. Now I was really wracking my brain.... something about turn 10 twist 10??? ATC came back and said unable on the ARC due to traffic, I had to take the radar vectors. Inspector said no big deal. Any instrument pilot knew how to fly an arc.
So the moral of this long winded story is, if it's in your airplane, know how to use it.
