Good flight instructor renewal course (FIRC)

jtrain609

Antisocial Monster
Heya everybody,


It would seem that I need to renew my flight instructor certificate before August of 2009, so I'm wondering what everybody has been using for their flight instructor renewal course. I know I could search on the issue, but I'm interested in getting some fresh data on this and haven't seen a thread come up on this topic in a while.

It actually seems like everything is coming due for me in August, my BFR, my flight instructor certificate, blah blah blah. It should be interesting doing a BFR, as I haven't flown a piston aircraft in 2 years, and a single for something like 2.5. Of course, I haven't flown ANYTHING in nearly 9 months, so I've gotta start knocking that rust off right now less I fail my BFR in a month or two.
 
I have to do my CFI renewal in June. I plan to use the american flyers one, I'll let you know how it goes.
 
I highly recommend the Jepp/AOPA online FIRC. Great info, you can save the information you get in PDF format and it can all be done online. I just finished mine a few months ago.
 
I have to do mine next month, unless I get a signoff between now and then, and that does not look likely
 
I need to to do mine on or before OCT 31, 2009.
Have used JEPP/AOPA Online before. This time think will take a weekend off and possibly torture myself on the 2 day in person FIRC by Jepp/AOPA. Cause the next day starts a week of citation recurrent same hotel......LOL
 
I used the American flyers unlimited renewal course

:yeahthat:I use AF now. It is online and you pay one fee that is good for life. I have renewed by licnese a total of 3x times for just the onetime fee.

https://www.americanflyers.net/instruction/enroll.asp?form=b

$125 for life....If you want them to do all the paperwork for you it is $50 a pop....not worth it since the Detroit FSDO is in YPSI



I highly recommend the Jepp/AOPA online FIRC. Great info, you can save the information you get in PDF format and it can all be done online. I just finished mine a few months ago.

I use to use Jepp but found them to be too expensive in the long run.
 
Last time (in Nov '08) I went with Gleim. I don't recommend their course.

The 16-lesson course is text-based (except for a pretest and quiz for each lesson; there's no final exam). For each lesson, you have to read a 16-27 page 'knowledge transfer outline'. While the content was pretty good and I learned alot about new trends in GA, I found that all that reading was a little painful. I guess the advantage of that, however, is that I was able to study some of the lessons on my iPhone on the go. The lesson on security was more of an interactive audiovisual presentation which I felt could be used as a guide to improve the rest of the course.

The graded quizzes are a joke, so if you're just looking to 'check a box' then you could get away with just searching through the .pdf files for the right answers (for the very few questions that you don't already know the answers to) while not really studying the material. But, I actually wanted to get something out of the course, so I took the time to study everything. There are better ways to keep my interest than giving me hundreds of pages of text to read. Next time I'll probably look for a video-based course or attend the in-person class.

Just my opinion. Take with a grain of salt.
 
I've used the ASA course for the past two times now. It's really easy and it only takes me about 4 hours to complete.
 
Oh, John - you can't fail a BFR!!!

BS, you can fail anything. I had one guy fail a BFR I gave him; he couldn't tell me how the airspeed indicator worked. I mean I wasn't looking for much, just a simple, "It measures the speed of the air going into the PITOT tube" would have sufficed.

But noooooooo, couldn't even figure that out. He failed.
 
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