The problem is on the mend at the moment, but there is a distinct shortage of CAP instructors in the Group, and a glut of new pilots. An instructor will easily combine Form 5 and endorsement or flight review, if you can get his time for free. We have no less than seven in the squadron, with zero 182 time, and only one instructor, and a G1000 airplane for which CAP requires an unobtainable ground school. Fortunately, they are all quite interested in ES, so I'm working them through scanner training. This will improve shortly, since we've also found a gung-ho CFII, who is working on his CAP instructor approval, and another senior pilot in a neighboring squadron who just spent 7 weeks at ATP in Vegas pounding out more ratings than you can shake a stick at, including CFI and CFII.
We always had a shortage of instructors also, but it mostly had to do with nobody in the Wing being willing to appoint any more. There were qualified CFIs who couldn't get past whatever fake gauntlets someone was making them run through. Every once in a while some wonder child who was a CAP instructor from another Wing would move to town and instantly be appointed, which was downright weird.
Seven pilots waiting on instructors is nothing though. We had dozens who'd fly but weren't progressing much due to time and schedule constrained people including the few instructors. One year the instructors passed out lists of people waiting on checkrides and such and divvy'd up the lists and said they'd get everyone on their list finished up. They about killed themselves but they got about 80% done. And then a bunch of them had life happen and just left. A lot of effort by the instructors wasted. They went back to their old ways of helping whoever was the most persistent and would show up anytime.
Weekdays were always easy with a couple of the instructors who were retired and didn't have day jobs. That was by far the easiest way to get stuff done. Call them up and show up on a Tuesday morning and you'd be done long before the weekend warriors.
As far as the ground school goes, those same instructors asked for and got permission to teach that Cessna course as a group ground activity on a couple of back to back weekends. CAP had legitimate access to all of the materials and one of them had been to the factory for the class so his signature went on everyone's forms. But he enlisted help from the other instructors to do portions of the class teaching under his "supervision" with permission from the powers that be. Worked pretty well. Folks who needed the course had to commit to show up for the whole thing though.
Don't burn out that new CFII. That happens a lot in that organization. That or they do it until the logbook has enough hours to apply for a job that takes them out of town, and poof, they're gone. Similar to FBOs that way, I guess. But they have to do it for free.
I've toyed with going back with my ratings someday, but I also hear the current crop of CFIs whining that they're buried in students around here, at least right now.
I don't care about the money but students who are paying for ratings seem to be a little less flaky about showing up (kinda... A trend anyway) than some of the stories of CAP pilots not bothering to even call and cancel with some of our CFIs a few years ago.
"Free" apparently meant "disrespect my time" to a small number of idiots who didn't realize what a deal they were getting.
And teaching outside of CAP is a whole hell of a lot less paperwork. Even if most of that has moved online these days. Less messing around, more teaching, is how I look at it.
Guess we'll see what tomorrow brings. It'd be nice to extend my desire to "give back" to that organization, but man that organization also had an impressive way of wasting a LOT of my time.
I always joked it was an organizational structure not built like a typical lean and mean volunteer non-profit or charitable company, but like the military, who had butter bars galore to throw at paperwork 5 days a week.
The paperwork alone ate up at least two or three full workdays a month for me when I was a Comm Officer and a Wing Assistant DC. Unbelievable for an organization meant to be operated by people in their spare time. And that didn't count meetings, or special events, or major training events or...
Once I moved to the boonies I simply couldn't attend all the stuff I was supposed to attend. And when I did, so little actually got done, it became impossible to allow that much time to be wasted.
Just the flipping mandatory safety briefings were enough of a waste of time right there.
I'd lose an entire session of having all the right people in a room where I could move them along in their training or whatever paperwork hassles they needed help or signatures with, blown to sitting there listening to someone talk about buying proper snow tires for my truck. Or whatever stupid topic filled the time.
And the freaking audits of gear... Every freaking year.
Yes I know who has the equipment.
Yes I have a recent photo of the thing.
Yes there's one broken antenna on a radio we never use, never will, and I can't get anyone to dispose of it properly.
Yes I'll take the damned ding on it, I'm a volunteer and I really stopped caring about three hours ago. It's a useless piece of trash that nobody can get off the books.
Write whatever the hell you want on the audit form, it's 30 minutes to midnight and I'm done and going home.
LOL.
