Congratulations to PoA's newest CFI!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Congrats! :D
 
Great news! Glad it all came together for you. Good luck with your first teaching job!
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Well after a lot of hard work I am completely done with not only college but all of my ratings. CFI has been the most challenging but rightfully so. The ground portion emphasized the Laws of Learning, what makes a good flight instructor, weight and balance, oxygen requirements, aircraft paperwork, and many questions on sectional chart symbols. A lot of the chart work was him pointing at a symbol and asking, "what's this?" and "can I fly there under (specified) conditions." I was also asked to explain on the board how a wing creates lift as well as how to do a lazy eight. Btw, bring your own markers. When it came to the flight portion, it started pretty predictably with showing the examiner how to do a preflight and what all the antennas are. They love to ask about them. We taxied to the runway and did a normal takeoff. All first takeoffs are usually normal ones or so the examiner said. I was immediatly put under the hood on the crosswind departure. I did climbs and turns with reference to instruments. When he was satisfied we headed to Kingfisher which is a small town and VOR about 20+ miles from the field. I thought it was a bit far but the intention was to stay away from OKC class C. Once we got to the practice area, I did steep turns, a lazy eight, slow flight, power off and on stall, and an elevator trim stall. The traffic pattern was later used in conjunction with the rectangular course. When I did the landing portion it was actually pretty simple. The examiner walked me through what we were going to do which was a normal takeoff to a short field landing, then a soft field takeoff to a soft field landing, and finally a short field takeoff to a normal landing. There was also a go around but what was interesting is he actually warned me of it on downwind. We were on final when he said, "is that a deer on the runway?" which I replied, "yep, we're going around." I talked through how to go around as well as radio calls. The simple fact is all of what I've done in the past is the same as what I did on my checkride except for now I was talking through what I was doing when such as verbalizing checklists and airspeeds and when to turn on different portions of the traffic pattern. He told me on final for the last landing, "well if you dont scare me on this landing, you'll get a new white certificate." I did a great last landing, we taxied back to Atlantic Aviation at Wiley Post airport. He shook my hand and said, "congraduations, you passed." You have no idea how much I wanted to jump up and down and even hug the guy but I refrained and said thank you with a smile. I was handed my certificate and after waiting for a storm to pass, I flew home. I'm a happy official Certified Flight Instructor. :)


 
Congratulations and good job.


Hey, shouldn't those tiedowns be taut? :smile:
 
"completely done with not only college but all of my ratings"

Congrats. What an accomlishment. That has to be great to say/type. . .
 
Very good job Tristan! I bet it feels good to be a graduate and a professional. I knew you would breeze through the checkride this time.

Rick
 
Thanks!

The chains actually are tight. If you can't get the last loop through the tie down hole, you have to use the next to last so it looks loose. Its a pain in the butt to get off when someone gets them too tight. That usually calls for two pilot maneuvering. Show me that in the airplane flying handbook! hehe

You know you're in Oklahoma when students have to be shown separately how to tie down an airplane with a rope because the winds have always required chains.
 
nice report tristan. Leah and I are looking forward to seeing you at Gastons on Thursday.

Those chains at Stillwater still give me nightmares...
 
wabower said:
What the hell took so long? We've been talking about this deal for three months for Pete's sake. It's taken so long my clothes have gone out of style.
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Doggon weather! We had 20 days of straight rain, all of the colleges along with other flight schools finish up about this time of year so its always packed with the Feds to begin with. For CFI they like you to go to the actual FAA instead of a local DE. Its more of quality control. However there are problems behind it including only doing one checkride a day. I believe this is period. I called down there the other day and said, "I am having a checkride on Tuesday June 2nd and would like to know who my examiner is." I didn't say who I was or where I came from or anything. The FAA was able to tell me with no further questions. So unless I missed something, one per day period. For those of you that may wonder, they do require weather to be at least 5,000 AGL for maneuvers. If you need to do just landings, I'm not sure if that is still the same. So because of these challenges, my checkride was always scheduled for at least 3 weeks out which of course were then canceled because of weather. I was extremely lucky on Tuesday though, I flew down just ahead of a storm system. Thankfully we were able to get everything done and tied down at the FBO before it hit. There's a great restaurant on the field I took advantage of. I flew back after it cleared about an hour and a half later. It was great timing.
 
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You have no idea how much I've been holding my breath on this one! I was turning purple! It's a huge sigh of relief. It hasn't quite hit me yet that I'm a flight instructor. I still feel like I'm back in the RG trying to figure out why we do lazy eights. What's funny is I think I'll miss those airplanes but nowhere near enough to miss fighting weather to get it done.
 
Wow, Tristan, congratulations!!! What's next for you?
 
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