Today I passed my Initial CFI-A checkride on the first try! I got to the flight school around 8:20am with a start time of 9am. I did weight and balance the night before and brought all my publications and notes. I had my backpack full of my lesson plans, Ipad, and laptop. I had my old Gleim pilot bad filled with the FAR/AIM, some textbooks, and some diagrams and charts. I fully expected not to get the flight portion done but we got through it.
I meet the Examiner in the flight school and we small talk and start filling out paperwork. He is currently an American Airlines pilot flying the A320. We go into the classroom and he looks over my logbook and he collects the fee. Before we start he says what he expects and knows that I'm not going to be perfect and I will make mistakes. We small talk some more and finally asks if I'm ready. My heart is racing but I say yes.
I'll try to remember as much as I can. He starts off asking about FOI. What is positive exchange of controls, why do we do it. If you always hold the breaks during run up, what happens when your student go for a solo? You have a student who is tech savvy and always uses and Ipad to fly and navigate. He does not want to learn dead reckoning or pilotage. How can you help him learn the importance of pilotage and dead reckoning. Relate Vx to the levels of learning, What will you do if a student hits a plateau. When will you know to solo a student. When will you introduce the PTS and various standards. Risk management and ADM. Heavy on scenario based training. How to maintain motivation. You have two new students - 21 year old, tech savvy and a 50 year old who owns a business and has a family. How/would you teach them differently. Pick two instructors from your past (no names) give me some good and some bad qualities and which qualities do you and don't you want to see when you become a CFI. FOI was pretty straight forward.
Next up was endorsements. I had to write out the endorsements to sign a Private Pilot applicant for his checkride. The student failed the checkride so what endorsement(s) does he need to retake it. How many years do you need to keep CFI records. Taught in depth about forces in a turn, turning tendencies and adverse yaw and importance of a coordinated turn. Density and pressure altitude and how it would affect aircraft performance. Factors involved with density altitude; temp, humidity, pressure and what it does to density and density altitude. Runway incursion and collision avoidance techniques on the ground and in the air. He said he is going for his commercial license and all he flew were 172s. What are the differences between the 172 and Arrow. Got into a discussion about the difference between a stabilator and elevator. Constant speed prop, various settings, flyweights, speeder spring, oil pressure, why do we decrease manifold before rpm in a descent, we are on final and our prop is full forward and we pull our throttle to idle, what happens to the blade angle and rpm? Landing gear describe the system and what happens with the shuttle valve, hydraulic pressure, etc when we move the gear selector down. emergency gear extension and scenario about a gear issue. He asked me to explain the electrical system and its components, normal procedures, abnormal procedures and give him a scenario on how we would use ADM. Talked to him about the starter, fuel pump, alternator, etc. What voltage and amps the battery and alternator are. Why is the alternator a higher voltage than the battery? If we shut off our master switch in air, will the engine stop running? If we have an electrical failure during the day/night what would we do? What would we do differently at night. Taught a lesson about eights on pylons. Explained what, why, and how we do the maneuver. Overall it was a straight forward oral with no surprises. I goofed up a bit on explaining the prop and landing gear but everything was fine he said. Total time was about 3 hours.
After the oral, he told me to check weather and make a decision. It had been raining all morning and skies looked pretty grey. I decided to give it a try because ceilings and visibility at FRG and the surrounding area were good and the radar only showed precipitation on the north shore. I do the pre-flight and about half way through he asks me what I'm checking for. We hop in the plane, start up the engine, do the run up, and he asks me to teach him how to do a soft field take off and climb. We depart to south and it looks pretty bad. METAR was 10SM and OVC080 at FRG but that definitely was not accurate. We got to about 1000ft and started getting in the clouds. He took the controls and we headed to the north to see if it was better. Since visibility was about 5 miles and we had a ceiling of about 1500 going up north he asked me to teach him basic instrument flying and unusual attitude recovery. We got to the north shore and weather was a little better but still not enough to do most of the maneuvers. We did slow flight and eights on pylons. I messed up the entry of eights on pylons so I asked him if I can demonstrate that better. He said no problem. We tuned in BDR ATIS to see if weather was getting better and he asked me to tune in BDR VOR and used our DME to get an idea of where we were at. He did most of the radio communications and we entered the right downwind for runway 11 at BDR. He asked me to teach him a short field landing. After the landing we did a stop and go and asked me to demonstrate and short field take off. In the downwind he had me demonstrate a slip to a landing. Another lap and I taught him how to do a power off 180 and then I demonstrated how to do one. Finally we did a short field landing and departed to the east. He was using Foreflight on his phone and got weather and we found a little hole in between BDR and HVN with great visibility and a 6000 foot ceiling. He had me do power off stalls, power on into a secondary stall, chandelles. I rolled out more than 180 degrees on my chandelle but he gave me some leeway because the visibility wasn't too great. After he told me to bring us back to FRG and we tuned in DPK VOR . As we came in for landing he told me teach him any choice of a landing. So I taught him a short field again so we could make the second turn off. We get to our parking spot and he came me a few tips and said the magic words, "Congratulations, you passed." We push the plane back and I meet him inside to finish paperwork and he hands me my temporary certificate.
Overall it was an extremely pleasant experience. I made some mistakes and didn't explain some things correctly and the examiner knew this. He was very fair and made me feel relaxed the entire time. As I finish up my last semester of college I can start to teach part time and was offered a job at the place I trained. I wore a button down shirt, nice slacks, and nice shoes
http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80901
I look forward to teaching, building time, and continuing to learn. After I give about 100-200 hours of dual I'll be looking to get my commercial multi add on. It took me about 3 months and around 15 hours in the plane to get it done. Total time sits around 280. Hopefully it will be a lot more by next year. I hope this write up helps!
I meet the Examiner in the flight school and we small talk and start filling out paperwork. He is currently an American Airlines pilot flying the A320. We go into the classroom and he looks over my logbook and he collects the fee. Before we start he says what he expects and knows that I'm not going to be perfect and I will make mistakes. We small talk some more and finally asks if I'm ready. My heart is racing but I say yes.
I'll try to remember as much as I can. He starts off asking about FOI. What is positive exchange of controls, why do we do it. If you always hold the breaks during run up, what happens when your student go for a solo? You have a student who is tech savvy and always uses and Ipad to fly and navigate. He does not want to learn dead reckoning or pilotage. How can you help him learn the importance of pilotage and dead reckoning. Relate Vx to the levels of learning, What will you do if a student hits a plateau. When will you know to solo a student. When will you introduce the PTS and various standards. Risk management and ADM. Heavy on scenario based training. How to maintain motivation. You have two new students - 21 year old, tech savvy and a 50 year old who owns a business and has a family. How/would you teach them differently. Pick two instructors from your past (no names) give me some good and some bad qualities and which qualities do you and don't you want to see when you become a CFI. FOI was pretty straight forward.
Next up was endorsements. I had to write out the endorsements to sign a Private Pilot applicant for his checkride. The student failed the checkride so what endorsement(s) does he need to retake it. How many years do you need to keep CFI records. Taught in depth about forces in a turn, turning tendencies and adverse yaw and importance of a coordinated turn. Density and pressure altitude and how it would affect aircraft performance. Factors involved with density altitude; temp, humidity, pressure and what it does to density and density altitude. Runway incursion and collision avoidance techniques on the ground and in the air. He said he is going for his commercial license and all he flew were 172s. What are the differences between the 172 and Arrow. Got into a discussion about the difference between a stabilator and elevator. Constant speed prop, various settings, flyweights, speeder spring, oil pressure, why do we decrease manifold before rpm in a descent, we are on final and our prop is full forward and we pull our throttle to idle, what happens to the blade angle and rpm? Landing gear describe the system and what happens with the shuttle valve, hydraulic pressure, etc when we move the gear selector down. emergency gear extension and scenario about a gear issue. He asked me to explain the electrical system and its components, normal procedures, abnormal procedures and give him a scenario on how we would use ADM. Talked to him about the starter, fuel pump, alternator, etc. What voltage and amps the battery and alternator are. Why is the alternator a higher voltage than the battery? If we shut off our master switch in air, will the engine stop running? If we have an electrical failure during the day/night what would we do? What would we do differently at night. Taught a lesson about eights on pylons. Explained what, why, and how we do the maneuver. Overall it was a straight forward oral with no surprises. I goofed up a bit on explaining the prop and landing gear but everything was fine he said. Total time was about 3 hours.
After the oral, he told me to check weather and make a decision. It had been raining all morning and skies looked pretty grey. I decided to give it a try because ceilings and visibility at FRG and the surrounding area were good and the radar only showed precipitation on the north shore. I do the pre-flight and about half way through he asks me what I'm checking for. We hop in the plane, start up the engine, do the run up, and he asks me to teach him how to do a soft field take off and climb. We depart to south and it looks pretty bad. METAR was 10SM and OVC080 at FRG but that definitely was not accurate. We got to about 1000ft and started getting in the clouds. He took the controls and we headed to the north to see if it was better. Since visibility was about 5 miles and we had a ceiling of about 1500 going up north he asked me to teach him basic instrument flying and unusual attitude recovery. We got to the north shore and weather was a little better but still not enough to do most of the maneuvers. We did slow flight and eights on pylons. I messed up the entry of eights on pylons so I asked him if I can demonstrate that better. He said no problem. We tuned in BDR ATIS to see if weather was getting better and he asked me to tune in BDR VOR and used our DME to get an idea of where we were at. He did most of the radio communications and we entered the right downwind for runway 11 at BDR. He asked me to teach him a short field landing. After the landing we did a stop and go and asked me to demonstrate and short field take off. In the downwind he had me demonstrate a slip to a landing. Another lap and I taught him how to do a power off 180 and then I demonstrated how to do one. Finally we did a short field landing and departed to the east. He was using Foreflight on his phone and got weather and we found a little hole in between BDR and HVN with great visibility and a 6000 foot ceiling. He had me do power off stalls, power on into a secondary stall, chandelles. I rolled out more than 180 degrees on my chandelle but he gave me some leeway because the visibility wasn't too great. After he told me to bring us back to FRG and we tuned in DPK VOR . As we came in for landing he told me teach him any choice of a landing. So I taught him a short field again so we could make the second turn off. We get to our parking spot and he came me a few tips and said the magic words, "Congratulations, you passed." We push the plane back and I meet him inside to finish paperwork and he hands me my temporary certificate.
Overall it was an extremely pleasant experience. I made some mistakes and didn't explain some things correctly and the examiner knew this. He was very fair and made me feel relaxed the entire time. As I finish up my last semester of college I can start to teach part time and was offered a job at the place I trained. I wore a button down shirt, nice slacks, and nice shoes
http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80901I look forward to teaching, building time, and continuing to learn. After I give about 100-200 hours of dual I'll be looking to get my commercial multi add on. It took me about 3 months and around 15 hours in the plane to get it done. Total time sits around 280. Hopefully it will be a lot more by next year. I hope this write up helps!
