Identify equipment for route

The graded skill isn't owning every gadget — it's the match. Name what this route warrants and why, and you've shown the judgment the element is built around.

Read the route, assemble the kit

The execution is a deliberate two-step you run during planning, on top of the regulatory floor (<CFR id="91.205-day" /> plus an ELT per <CFR id="91.207" />):

1. Read the route for its worst day — terrain, water, season, remoteness, and how far help would have to come. This is the K1 bet, made concrete for this flight: where would a forced landing put me, and what would I need to survive there until found?
2. Assemble the matching kit — the specific items that answer that route's failure mode, and confirm the gear you're counting on is current and right (the R1 check), not just present.

Worked sketch to anchor it. A summer leg across remote high desert: confirm the ELT is current, then the bet is water first, sun protection, a signal mirror, and basic shelter — cold isn't the threat, heat and dehydration are. Now the same airplane on a winter mountain leg: the bet flips to insulation, fire-starting, and high-visibility signaling, because exposure is what kills after an otherwise survivable landing. Identical aircraft, identical regulatory floor — completely different kit, because the worst day is different.

A useful way to run the second step is to ask, for each leg, "if the engine quit right here, where would I be, and how long until someone reached me?" Trace that question down the route and the gaps reveal themselves: the stretch with no road and no town for forty miles is where the shelter and water earn their weight; the coastal segment beyond gliding distance is where the vests do. The kit isn't uniform across the flight — it's sized to the worst stretch, because that's the one that decides the outcome.

That contrast is the skill. On the practical test, "identify appropriate equipment for the route" means you can look at the day's flight and say, specifically, what you'd carry and why — anchored on the §91.205/§91.207 minimum, extended by judgment to fit the terrain you're actually crossing. Naming the match, not reciting a master list, is what's being assessed. And the same survey feeds the passenger brief (S2): the gear you've identified is the gear you'll point out and demonstrate before you go.