Tristar
Pattern Altitude
The initial CFI checkride admittedly is one of the hardest checkrides to pass but rightfully so. You're asking someone to sign his name off that you're competent enough to teach someone to fly. Thats a huge responsibility for both the CFI candidate as well as the examiner. But this can be a huge learning experience as well.
I will start off by saying no I did not get through the ground portion of my CFI checkride thus was unable to do the flight too but before you go "aww, I'm sorry" let me explain.
I woke up at 6:30 this morning to have the airplane and me down at Wiley Post by 8. My examiner got caught in a traffic jam so we didnt get to start until 9.
The first things we go over are pretty basic to every checkride, paperwork. So we went over 8710s, all the 100hrs, annuals, transponder checks, ADs, etc and how long they're good for. What are the required instruments for flight (TOMATOFLAAMES). He was really impressed with my written grades of 100 and 87.
Next was FOI. I actually did great on that. For those who are wondering, the examiner picks and chooses what he wants to test you over. If you're better at the fundamentals of learning than the teaching process, he sticks with the fundamentals of learning (REEPIR, characteristics of learning), the other required portion is instructor professionalism. Thats easy enough to answer because you just ask yourself, "what would you define as a professional?" Well they have to act like one. So basically this means wear something appropriate, don't use foul language, do your research, etc. That's it! FOI is done. Task 1 done.
Next was Technical Subject areas. We did aeromedical factors first. The DE tends to make scenarios with this such as "if I lost an arm and I came up to you and wanted to fly, can I?" The correct answer is you would be happy to teach him however he needs to go to an AME to get a medical. It is not your right to tell him he can't, you just smashed his hopes if you did. So the AME will probably give him a SODA. SODA is the key word. Next was "what is hypoxia and its symptoms." That was easy enough from the altitude chamber experience. Cyanosis, dizziness, fat people get tired quicker (that was his,
). Then, "what is spatial disorientation." He also asked me about scuba diving. I didn't have to go into what causes the bends just what does the FAA say the recommended times are for decompression/non decompression stop dives (24, 12 hrs above 8,000 ). If you notice, the DE doesn't go down the list but more picks and chooses his questions from each topic. If you're doing good, he moves on.
The next big topic was Principals of flight, or in his terms, "how does an airplane fly?" So I drew out on the board an airplane with "lift weight, thrust and drag" and said I would describe each individually. Lift was the first. I stated Newtons laws that were the biggest factors (1st and 3rd) then I explained Bernoulli's as well as drawing the pinched tube, explaining "increase in velocity, decrease in pressure" I cut the pinched tube in half to demonstrate that its actually a wing. The examiner was impressed with my correlation with that. Then I made the airfoil bigger and explained how newtons laws effect the wing with downwash as well as air deflected downwards, and of course bernoulli all in one drawing. This easily demonstrates how Newton and Bernoulli are all working together. He really liked this. He briefly asked me what kind of flaps are on my airplane (slot type) and what the purpose of flaps are (increase in descent without an increase in airspeed). I was also the first recent candidate to mention that they help with takeoff as well. I was not asked to describe drag, weight, or thrust. This concluded technical subjects.
We moved onto task 3. This is the one that got me. The questions were, "what are the characteristics of an AFT and forward CG." I rattled out a few but I couldn't think of enough of them. I answered the questions for Max gross CG okay but I got the forward CG mixed with max which confused me on forward. He also gave me a scenario question that, "if we the weather was 600 scattered and 4 miles, can we go?" I said no, and then changed my answer. Unfortunately I defined scattered as broken. The one that I absolutely knew better but didn't think to review was what was the most important Vspeeds. I got Vne, Vno, and Vfe. So huge lesson of the day is they're not kidding when they say, "look something up if you don't know it." However, no one defines how much you can look things up and the DE is not going to tell you whether to look something up or not or how much. If you get to the point where he's not happy, it's a quick and automatic "sorry, you're not up to PTS standards." It's frustrating since I was doing great up to that point but just hit a bump and didn't think to look it up.
The Brighter note:
The flight home was absolutely beautiful, I dont think I've seen it that nice in a very long time. No winds, clear skies, 40 minute flight where I could see stillwater half way home. It made the day better.
When I got back, my flight instructor was there so we talked through what I did. I assumed that I hadn't even gotten halfway through my oral since IMO we didn't talk about as much as I had expected. But we looked through the PTS and realized that I didn't have much left at all. The DE called my instructor while I was there. I couldn't believe what he said. The DE said I was a top notch candidate, had great communication skills, I really knew my stuff and would be an awesome CFI and quote, "a great addition to our staff down here." I was thinking, "wow!" He said that I just got caught on a few things that I should have looked up but didn't and that all I needed to do was go over the things that I missed and come back for the rest of the ground and the flight. Apparently that's a huge thing to get a bunch of compliments like that straight from the DE. So although I didn't get what I had hoped for meaning the CFI ticket, I did get some great compliments to work off of and just try again.
We decided that our course of action was to take a few days off and relax and let me work on some homework I need to catch up on. I'll call later this week and we'll meet up to work on the things that I missed and probably a flight to keep things sharp. After that, we'll try again.
I will start off by saying no I did not get through the ground portion of my CFI checkride thus was unable to do the flight too but before you go "aww, I'm sorry" let me explain.
I woke up at 6:30 this morning to have the airplane and me down at Wiley Post by 8. My examiner got caught in a traffic jam so we didnt get to start until 9.
The first things we go over are pretty basic to every checkride, paperwork. So we went over 8710s, all the 100hrs, annuals, transponder checks, ADs, etc and how long they're good for. What are the required instruments for flight (TOMATOFLAAMES). He was really impressed with my written grades of 100 and 87.
Next was FOI. I actually did great on that. For those who are wondering, the examiner picks and chooses what he wants to test you over. If you're better at the fundamentals of learning than the teaching process, he sticks with the fundamentals of learning (REEPIR, characteristics of learning), the other required portion is instructor professionalism. Thats easy enough to answer because you just ask yourself, "what would you define as a professional?" Well they have to act like one. So basically this means wear something appropriate, don't use foul language, do your research, etc. That's it! FOI is done. Task 1 done.
Next was Technical Subject areas. We did aeromedical factors first. The DE tends to make scenarios with this such as "if I lost an arm and I came up to you and wanted to fly, can I?" The correct answer is you would be happy to teach him however he needs to go to an AME to get a medical. It is not your right to tell him he can't, you just smashed his hopes if you did. So the AME will probably give him a SODA. SODA is the key word. Next was "what is hypoxia and its symptoms." That was easy enough from the altitude chamber experience. Cyanosis, dizziness, fat people get tired quicker (that was his,
). Then, "what is spatial disorientation." He also asked me about scuba diving. I didn't have to go into what causes the bends just what does the FAA say the recommended times are for decompression/non decompression stop dives (24, 12 hrs above 8,000 ). If you notice, the DE doesn't go down the list but more picks and chooses his questions from each topic. If you're doing good, he moves on. The next big topic was Principals of flight, or in his terms, "how does an airplane fly?" So I drew out on the board an airplane with "lift weight, thrust and drag" and said I would describe each individually. Lift was the first. I stated Newtons laws that were the biggest factors (1st and 3rd) then I explained Bernoulli's as well as drawing the pinched tube, explaining "increase in velocity, decrease in pressure" I cut the pinched tube in half to demonstrate that its actually a wing. The examiner was impressed with my correlation with that. Then I made the airfoil bigger and explained how newtons laws effect the wing with downwash as well as air deflected downwards, and of course bernoulli all in one drawing. This easily demonstrates how Newton and Bernoulli are all working together. He really liked this. He briefly asked me what kind of flaps are on my airplane (slot type) and what the purpose of flaps are (increase in descent without an increase in airspeed). I was also the first recent candidate to mention that they help with takeoff as well. I was not asked to describe drag, weight, or thrust. This concluded technical subjects.
We moved onto task 3. This is the one that got me. The questions were, "what are the characteristics of an AFT and forward CG." I rattled out a few but I couldn't think of enough of them. I answered the questions for Max gross CG okay but I got the forward CG mixed with max which confused me on forward. He also gave me a scenario question that, "if we the weather was 600 scattered and 4 miles, can we go?" I said no, and then changed my answer. Unfortunately I defined scattered as broken. The one that I absolutely knew better but didn't think to review was what was the most important Vspeeds. I got Vne, Vno, and Vfe. So huge lesson of the day is they're not kidding when they say, "look something up if you don't know it." However, no one defines how much you can look things up and the DE is not going to tell you whether to look something up or not or how much. If you get to the point where he's not happy, it's a quick and automatic "sorry, you're not up to PTS standards." It's frustrating since I was doing great up to that point but just hit a bump and didn't think to look it up.
The Brighter note:
The flight home was absolutely beautiful, I dont think I've seen it that nice in a very long time. No winds, clear skies, 40 minute flight where I could see stillwater half way home. It made the day better.
When I got back, my flight instructor was there so we talked through what I did. I assumed that I hadn't even gotten halfway through my oral since IMO we didn't talk about as much as I had expected. But we looked through the PTS and realized that I didn't have much left at all. The DE called my instructor while I was there. I couldn't believe what he said. The DE said I was a top notch candidate, had great communication skills, I really knew my stuff and would be an awesome CFI and quote, "a great addition to our staff down here." I was thinking, "wow!" He said that I just got caught on a few things that I should have looked up but didn't and that all I needed to do was go over the things that I missed and come back for the rest of the ground and the flight. Apparently that's a huge thing to get a bunch of compliments like that straight from the DE. So although I didn't get what I had hoped for meaning the CFI ticket, I did get some great compliments to work off of and just try again.
We decided that our course of action was to take a few days off and relax and let me work on some homework I need to catch up on. I'll call later this week and we'll meet up to work on the things that I missed and probably a flight to keep things sharp. After that, we'll try again.
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Unfortunately we sometimes don't get what we want the first time but persistence is the key. I'm sure you'll do better next time. 
