Flight Instructor Checkride Options

[BMeister]

Hello Everyone,

A number of people in this community were kind enough to ask me how things were going with my flight training and to ask me how my flight instructor checkride went.

Yesterday after a 12 Hour CFI Initial checkride I past the FAA Flight Instructor ASEL checkride on the first attempt!

Thanks for those who were interested in knowing how I was doing.

I thought I'd update you all..
hope you all had a good Easter
Regards
BM

[Becky_KSTS]

A very hearty congratulations to you BMeister! Well done

[AirRabbit]

Did I read that correctly? A 12 (twelve) hour check ride? I'd shoot the evaluator after the first hour and a half!

[BMeister]

Did I read that correctly? A 12 (twelve) hour check ride? I'd shoot the evaluator after the first hour and a half!

Yes Sir 12 (twelve) Hour Checkride directly with the FAA no DPE.

[Fast Jet]

Hello Everyone,

A number of people in this community were kind enough to ask me how things were going with my flight training and to ask me how my flight instructor checkride went.

Yesterday after a 12 Hour CFI Initial checkride I past the FAA Flight Instructor ASEL checkride on the first attempt!

Thanks for those who were interested in knowing how I was doing.

I thought I'd update you all..
hope you all had a good Easter
Regards
BM

12 Hours! ! You`re kidding ! (Mind you if its the FAA direct, then they can do me for 24 hours I `aint gonna complain, did the Examiner have a girlfriend in Nova Scotia or something, did you use a KC5 !)

Mine only lasted for two hours !

Congrats - here, the beers are on you now !

Feels good huh? Now you can fly and get paid for it - a professional pilot no less. Oh yeh!

[AirRabbit]

Yes Sir 12 (twelve) Hour Checkride directly with the FAA no DPE.

WOW! and WOW again! I know that registering a complaint after the man gives you a thumbs up might be a questionable move, but ... good grief man, 12 hours isn't even close to a professional job of evaluation! I'm not sure what the inspector could have you do for 12 hours - without repeating everything 6 or 8 times! That really grabs me ... in a negative way! Do you mind telling us what FAA office you went to ... if for nothing else, to let us know what office to AVOID!

Anyone surviving that kind of torture should get some sort of award - waaaay beyond the certificate. Anyway ... congratulations ... you certainly deserve it.

[Fast Jet]

WOW! and WOW again! I know that registering a complaint after the man gives you a thumbs up might be a questionable move, but ... good grief man, 12 hours isn't even close to a professional job of evaluation! I'm not sure what the inspector could have you do for 12 hours - without repeating everything 6 or 8 times! That really grabs me ... in a negative way! Do you mind telling us what FAA office you went to ... if for nothing else, to let us know what office to AVOID!

Anyone surviving that kind of torture should get some sort of award - waaaay beyond the certificate. Anyway ... congratulations ... you certainly deserve it.

There are exceptions. Such as: the examiner could have been blonde, female, 25, curvaceous, voluptuous, permissive and drove a white mercedes sports (and wore Ray Bans) - did you ever think of that?

[BMeister]

There are exceptions. Such as: the examiner could have been blonde, female, 25, curvaceous, voluptuous, permissive and drove a white mercedes sports (and wore Ray Bans) - did you ever think of that?

Hello Everyone, 12 Hours is Surprisingly long??? I was under the impression that was just above average for a CFI Initial checkride... they are averaging roughly 6-9 hours for a checkride...

My day comprised of:

actually flying the airplane to the airport which was about an hour a way, the weather conditions the day of my check ride totally.... totally sucked..... Clear above 4,000AGL but... overcast all the way down to ILS minimums, I just popped out of the clouds at maybe 300AGL... that's the stress I didn't need the day of the biggest most stressful exam to date.

I got there with about 15 minutes to spare, so I locked down the aircraft, unloaded all my 10,000 books, (within CG limits of course) and headed straight to the bathroom!!!.... with 5 minutes to spare, I walked into the Goverment office which is in Southern California ( for those of you who wanted me to drop a hint where the FSDO was )

I waited to be searched... then signed in, waited a few minutes and the examiner turned up, who I might add was a not a female but... HE was actually a nice guy, friendly but very tough, professional and strict.

the day started by first unpacking all my books on the table... handing my logbook with all the relevant endorsements, and aeronautical knowledge test papers, ID, and logbooks for the aircraft o see if it was airworthy....

ORAL checkride basically went in this order, (for me personally)

FOI
Endorsements
Maintaince
Aerodynamics
Elecrical systems..
Constand speed prop system.
FAR / AIM Senario based questions on Part 61, Rules on part 91
Lesson Plans on Stalls, power on - off, Weight and Balance and Spins
Computations on landing and takeoff distances based on his figures...

and then the flight test, if I remember correctly. which was 2 hours

The examiner and the FSDO staff are very nice, they work along side the NTSB and they investigate a lot of crash sites so, a thorough checkride to ensure I'm safe is definately acceptable.

Thanks for all the Congrats I'm still celebrating haha
Needs to find a job now!

[AirRabbit]

There are exceptions. Such as: the examiner could have been blonde, female, 25, curvaceous, voluptuous, permissive and drove a white mercedes sports (and wore Ray Bans) - did you ever think of that?

Did I ever think of that? No. I've been in this business waaay too long and have occassion to meet and work with waaay too many FAA inspectors -- lemme tell ya -- the number of FAA inspectors that match the description you gave ... well, put it this way ... if you were right ... I'd finance your next weekend in Vegas!

[Ranger]

B-Man,

First, congrats. Now the real time building begins. And the learning. You'll find that you'll learn far more teaching than you did studying. It's a never ending effort to stay ahead of the questions that your students will come up with.

Now that you've completed your latest program, please allow me to give you some old guy advise. You need to get as far away from whoever has been providing your instruction as you possibly can. Let me see if I can recap this. 1) You get your chops busted going through the program. 2) Judging by some of your questions posted here your CFI didn't feel particularly compelled to actually instruct. At least on the ground side. 3) They sent you to a FSDO with a known reputation for doing ridiculously long CFI checkrides. Wow. Unless I miss my guess there isn't one rated pilot on these forums that isn't shaking his/her head over your 12 hour check. And a few of us would have been out of there after the first 3-4 hours. I've done a lot of training and checking in my career. I can tell you in almost every instance that I know how the event is going to go after the first 2-3 questions. I know whenther or not the person knows their stuff. 12 hours is a professional insult.

One last thing for you. When you sign up to do a program in which you spend your money you need to remember who works for who. Whom? I never could keep that one straight. Anyway, Dude, YOU are the customer. You get to tell them when they aren't doing what you expect them to do. You get to make reasonable demands. When you go to work on the CFI-I and the MEI-I keep that in mind. And for God's sake, find another school and do not let them send you to the same idiots that just checked you. 12 hours? If it wouldn't get me banned for life, I'd tell you exactly what I think of that. And them.

[Harmattan96]

Well,

Firstly, I congratulate you for joining the ranks of the finest. Secondly, I apologize for being so late in the congratulating orders, I should have been the first one considering how much of a vested interest I had in seeing you succeed.

I few things for all the older and wiser, namely Ranger and Rabbit. For about a decade now, it has been a fairly standard procedure to harrass FI candidates for ungodly amount of hours during their initial rides. The national average that I know is just short of 10 hours. I did 2 rides with the local FSDO, one for an initial FI at the Richmond FSDO(11 hours) and one for Chief FI at the Miami FSDO (9 hours). As you can see I fall within the national average with those two. I agree with both of the elders that it is a ridiculous hollywood production to give such long checkrides, but it is unfortunately a reality.

BMeister, Ranger's advice should resonate, as it is the exact same thing I told you a few months ago. The quality of instruction you have received at your school is appalling (I can think of a few 4 letter words words better suited actually). I advice you to pick up your stuff up and move on, I mean ruuuun. You do not want to be told by those folks how to teach students. Often times, the best place to teach is the one where everyone, other than you, has a trillion megaton of experience. For this is how you'll learn best how to teach, and the tricks and tips, that simply won't exist at your old school. I always though the fresh flight instructors who were well attended to in their first six months of teaching moved on to be the sharpest professionals around. Simply put, find the school, where you think you'll be the village idiot, and that is exactly where you want to work, you'll soon catch up to the pack.
I have offered to help in placing you in such a fine establishment; unfortunately, I have not contacts around California at all. Should you want to go play around the mighty thunderstorms of Florida, let me know.

I welcome you to the rank of my colleagues in what I find to be the most rewarding occupation in the whole of the aviation world. I certainly hope that it brings you as much pride and joy as it has done for me over the years. There are times of ups and downs, it isn't the most payed or glamorous, but it is the most important in assuring that aviation has a future. Future in which you have just become a vital link in the chain of safety and it's standards. When someone asks what you do for a living, I expect you to state with pride that you are a Flight Instructor, even if you aspire to move on, as for now this is your profession, and your goal is to train to the highest standards the candidates of the future. Secretly dreaming of another cockpit is legitimate and healthy, but saying so aloud at every opportunity damages our profession, keep this in mind.

I stand available, as always, for any questions that will arise from your endeavors in this new world, and remember that the only bad question, is the one you did not ask.



Our next target is Becky, it's been a few years that she secretly harbors the dream of being called an FI; we need to push, as she displays with unwavering regularity all the qualities needed to be an excellent one

[BMeister]

Hello Everyone

Truely you are very kind people and your words mean so much to me!!

I really would love to be a great flight instructor and build a could rep, and be requested by name and be so busy I'm in demand, that... I would love. Dreaming of a B747, GV, Challenger 300 cockpit is not far away - but I want to be a very good flight instructor, for which I will continue even though checkride past, to be even better, some area's Im very strong and comfortable on and others could do with some more time applied to deeply understand things.

I think you could honestly drive yourself nuts trying to know and remember everything and think of all the possible questions your students can ask, so you can study them before you have a student that asks. But atleast being honest to a student is a very important thing, I dont remember everything I dont know everything, but let's spend some time of the area and study it together!!

Your advice about moving from where I am, does sound like a great idea, I'm thinking very strongely, though still within California for now. I guess It's a little daunting that other schools have other methods of teaching... different airplanes some much older than what I've trained in, different airspace, the Use of classroom based teaching, when I was taught through Kings School 'Center Pilot Center' setup. but I'm really interested and not scared to try new things!!

Next step is my MEI checkride which I'm taking in 2 weeks , so I'll keep you all informed on my Progress!!!

I've put a CV together (english word for Resume) which is aproxminately a page long, I was advised to try to keep everything to a page long. any suggestions to the type of things you think are very important to have stated on there?

Best regards to everyone as always.
B

[Harmattan96]

I want to be a very good flight instructor

I am so very glad to hear this, with this mindset, you are well on your way.

I've put a CV together (English word for Resume) which is approximately a page long, I was advised to try to keep everything to a page long. any suggestions to the type of things you think are very important to have stated on there?

You mean CV as the Latin Curriculum Vitae I presume.
One page is a good idea all the time, it prevents your recruiter from making a paper airplane straight to the trash can, because it is too long. You want to put the obvious on there, ratings, radio certificate, medical, etcetera. For the rest mention any prior jobs were you were given some responsibility, and bullet point those areas of responsibility. If you don't have any of that don't worry there is a way to circumvent this weakness. Mention any schooling that is relevant to aviation, the rest won't matter, unless you need to create some fluff, which happens when it is a first job.
I highly discourage you from putting anything about your pastimes and lifestyle, that is none of their business and can be detrimental. Finally, if you have gotten any achievement through work, school, community, military, that highlight your integrity, morals, list them.
Don't give out references, just list them as available on request. That information is none of their business, unless they want to talk to you.

As a first time job seeker in aviation I highly suggest that you concentrate on your cover letter, or introduction letter (for us Europeans). That will be your major selling point. Make it a single page, obviously, three paragraphs (intro/body/conclusion). Plan on the whole thing to be about a third to half of the whole page (you want them to read it). In there, sell yourself for the future, tell them what is it you want to achieve, the areas that you are strong with, the ones that will be beneficial to them, so on, so forth. Highlight your personal qualities, integrity, morals, dependability, will to be superior in your results, ability to work with a team (as a leader and a follower).
You get the idea.
Whatever you do, never point fingers, never burn bridges, but don't pass out to be naive either (that is somewhat tricky). Whenever you deal with them, you want to talk long term future, it reassures an employer, so that they don't start thinking that you are going to bail out 3 months down the road with all the training they will have invested in you.

As far as the editing of your CV and intro letter, make it out so that it reflects your future work...IMPECCABLE. Stick with what works, no funky fonts, only 2 font sizes (one for headers, one for body of text), watch that your margins line up, and that from a distance of about 6 feet, you can clearly see the different parts of your documents. You want to stand out from the stack of papers by your attention to details, not your exuberance.
When going to an interview always show up with 2 to 3 copies of your CV and intro letter, in case there is a few interviewers that don't have their own, that will show them you are ready for the unexpected.

A few last things, in the US you don't put pictures of yourself with a CV, it is actually part of a law against discrimination, so don't volunteer those sort of things. Write everything in American, not Queen's English; programme is program, Aerodrome is airport, whilst is while; That in itself will prevent people from losing the thread of what they are reading because of unusual orthography. Speaking of orthography, and conjugation, you are not very good at it, so I recommend dictionary.com and a few reviews of your artwork by some of your friends or family members. You may want to work on this for the long term by having someone give you a dictation every now and then, this will help you greatly. Your spelling is a direct reflection to your attention to detail and professionalism, which in aviation is quintessential.
When I say this, it is all in good spirit, the ones who point out your mistakes, are the ones who actually care!

[BMeister]

Hey Harm ;)

Thank you. Im going to shoot you a message with a CV I've been handing a few people would you be so kind to view it?

orthography? my spelling sucks when I respond to thrads at 3am in the morning but Orthorgraphy?

best regards.
B

[Harmattan96]

Hey Harm ;)

Thank you. Im going to shoot you a message with a CV I've been handing a few people would you be so kind to view it?

orthography? my spelling sucks when I respond to thrads at 3am in the morning but Orthorgraphy?

best regards.
B

Yes, send it over, I'll definitely give you my view point and highlight what I think is good or not good.
Regarding orthography, that is another way of saying spelling. Note that I did not saying calligraphy, as this would mean your actual penmanship, and I do not know what yours looks like.
Don't confuse orthography, which is your actual spelling ability, and calligraphy, which is your ability to write pretty.
Now you know!

[BMeister]

Yes, send it over, I'll definitely give you my view point and highlight what I think is good or not good.
Regarding orthography, that is another way of saying spelling. Note that I did not saying calligraphy, as this would mean your actual penmanship, and I do not know what yours looks like.
Don't confuse orthography, which is your actual spelling ability, and calligraphy, which is your ability to write pretty.
Now you know!

If you would be so kind can someone enlighten me with what one needs for the MEI checkride in terms of endorsements?


61.63
61.39?(a)6??

and do I also have to log ground trianing?

best regards

[AirRabbit]

Sounds like Ranger is, once again, providing "sage advice."

Unless I miss my guess there isn't one rated pilot on these forums that isn't shaking his/her head over your 12 hour check. And a few of us would have been out of there after the first 3-4 hours. I've done a lot of training and checking in my career. I can tell you in almost every instance that I know how the event is going to go after the first 2-3 questions. I know whenther or not the person knows their stuff. 12 hours is a professional insult.

When you go to work on the CFI-I and the MEI-I keep that in mind. And for God's sake, find another school and do not let them send you to the same idiots that just checked you. 12 hours? If it wouldn't get me banned for life, I'd tell you exactly what I think of that. And them.

I am certainly one of those whose head is shaking considerably. 12 hours? Not on your friggin' life. I know things have changed over the years, but, like Ranger says if the guy giving that check couldn't figure out how the check would end after the first 15 minutes of the oral or after the first 15 minutes of the flight, the guy should seek other employment - and they're welcome to come after me if they'd like ... I've been chewed on by some of the finest ... these guys would only get scar tissue for their efforts! I'm not saying that the check should last a total of 30 minutes - but if you're asked every question in the book on the oral - maybe ... maybe that could take an hour ... and if you had to demonstrate every flight maneuver in the book - again, just maybe the flight could have lasted an hour and a half! but after that, like I said, I would have returned to the airport, landed, taxiied up to the FAA office and not-so-politely asked the SOB to get out of my airplane!

Again, its been a while (Ok, Ok ... QUITE a while), but my CFI check took about 30 minutes at the desk and about 1.1 hours in the airplane. Even if you count the flight from my airport to the airport where the FAA was located, and the return flight (about 30 minutes each direction) - the whole time I was gone was less than 3 hours - and of course the trip up and back wasn't part of the check - other than the requirement to be alive when I took the check and I had to remain alive until I returned the airplane...

[BMeister]

Hey Everyone!!

Just another update for you - I have my MEI now also CFII coming up!

that was only a 4 hour checkride

[Harmattan96]

Fantabulous!!!
Again, congratulations.
Slow your horses down Ben-Hur, what's next a Soyuz rocket type rating???

[Fast Jet]

Yes, send it over, I'll definitely give you my view point and highlight what I think is good or not good.
Regarding orthography, that is another way of saying spelling. Note that I did not saying calligraphy, as this would mean your actual penmanship, and I do not know what yours looks like.
Don't confuse orthography, which is your actual spelling ability, and calligraphy, which is your ability to write pretty.
Now you know!

Not forgetting Graphology - honey bunny.