Anyone taken the CFII written lately?

GCA319 said:
So you're saying the many hours of studying and practice teaching I spent working towards my CFI initial were not appropriate? Additionally, after 2 years of teaching primary (but plenty of real world IFR in a corperate setting), I had to pull out the books and refresh myself on some of the more trivial instrument stuff that doesn't come up on every flight to adequately prepare for my CFII? Does that make me a bad CFII?
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There's a difference between a quick refresher and having to cram and memorize for fear of not passing an exam. If one is that close to the edge of failing, maybe that person need to reassess their decision. And if that person is having to memorize answers to pass, I question their ability to teach. I'm not talking memorizing things like 3 degree lapse rates, or which suffix do you need to put in the flight plan block, but you better damn well know, and be able to explain things to do with navigation, flying, etc without having study up on it. Someone that has to cram to teach shouldn't be teaching. I feel sorry for their students.
 
GCA319 said:
Yep. People mix it up all the time. The way I explain it is that you are given a heading and a relative bearing, so therefore they have to be on one side of the equal sign while you are looking for the magnetic bearing so therefore it has to be on the other side of the equal sign.I don't do the flipped around equation since most written prepware used by students preaches rb+mh=mh.
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Which is a perfect example. You know the concept, and can teach it, you aren't just puking it out.
 
EdFred said:
There's a difference between a quick refresher and having to cram and memorize for fear of not passing an exam. If one is that close to the edge of failing, maybe that person need to reassess their decision. And if that person is having to memorize answers to pass, I question their ability to teach. I'm not talking memorizing things like 3 degree lapse rates, or which suffix do you need to put in the flight plan block, but you better damn well know, and be able to explain things to do with navigation, flying, etc without having study up on it. Someone that has to cram to teach shouldn't be teaching. I feel sorry for their students.
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I haven't failed a practice test even when I was just starting the II stuff. But I don't want a 70 either because I got a 71 on the commercial and my DPE gave me a little grief before the oral for such a low score. My oral went great so he didn't mention it again but it's the same dpe so why be harder in myself? You don't know what questions you get, so if I get 10 NDB questions I'd like to know them.




And I want to be a CFII to teach. I enjoy flight instructing and I am not using it to time build to go work for some regional airline. I want to teach students how to be comfortable and safe in the ifr environment. If I didn't have CFII friends who said "hey let's go expand your horizons today" I would have had 0 actual and just a merger 1 cross country in the ifr system. I truly want to instruct because I enjoy it.
 
I think some people in this thread are overlooking that there are different ways to learn stuff, different ways to teach it and different ways of retaining information. Everyone is different. What works for one may not work for another and as subjective human beings, some people can't get that one thing that works for them doesn't for another and then slam that person for it.

I have never been great at steep turns but I was able teach it several different ways to get the job done. Teaching does not require being a perfect subject matter expert.

David
 
And if someone came to me with an airplane that had an ADF I'd give them the business card of the CFI who did my CFI because he was shooting real NDB approaches long before I was born.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Case in point, I am a CFII but I have not actively instructed instruments in years. If I want to teach it, I have to go brush up on it. A lot of times it would take me more prep time for a lesson than it would for the student.
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I would have to do a lot more than just brush up in order to teach anything in a small airplane. :eek:

Another case in point, I haven't seen that equation (RB+MH=MB ) in years and can't ever remember having to actually do the computation in flight.

I also recently took a online CFI renewal course for the first time in a long time and realized I know next to nothing about sport pilot and LSA.
 
Everskyward said:
Another case in point, I haven't seen that equation (RB+MH=MB ) in years and can't ever remember having to actually do the computation in flight.
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You have without realizing it. Getting vectors is pretty much the same thing. "Right 30 degrees" = ( RB ) You look at your HSI/DG and see you are flying 110 (MH), and you know your new course is 140 ( MB ). That's why I say the FAA over-complicates things. Or to make it station specific you are given vectors to join an airway. Granted the last part of it is just turning to keep the needle centered once on the airway, but we do that computation a lot without realizing it.

Where they get stupid is when you need to go 30 degrees left...oh no the RB isn't 30, it's 330. :rolleyes:
 
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EdFred said:
You have without realizing it. Getting vectors is pretty much the same thing. "Right 30 degrees" = ( RB ) You look at your HSI/DG and see you are flying 110 (MH), and you know your new course is 140 ( MB ). That's why I say the FAA over-complicates things. Or to make it station specific you are given vectors to join an airway. Granted the last part of it is just turning to keep the needle centered once on the airway, but we do that computation a lot without realizing it.

Where they get stupid is when you need to go 30 degrees left...oh no the RB isn't 30, it's 330. :rolleyes:
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While all that may be true it makes learning the equation irrelevant. Or maybe that's what you mean by "overcomplicating things".
 
I took and passed the II written today! I will say however that they are serious about the test changes... I had not previously seen about half the questions. I got very few ADF questions but I ended up with one question twice which was very weird.
 
I'm looking to take it in a couple weeks, should the ASA TestPrep (I'm using the iOS App) be up to date?
 
kevmor99 said:
I'm looking to take it in a couple weeks, should the ASA TestPrep (I'm using the iOS App) be up to date?
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Sheppard air is, ASA and the rest i have had less luck with
 
anybody using anything OTHER than sheppard air is flying against good advice.
 
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