How do you keep yourself current?

Cessnaflyer

Cessnaflyer

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
It's been close to two years since my initial checkride and now I am begining to feel a little rusty. I've been going through all the PTSs and refreshing myself with the associated FARs and information but it just doesn't seem to be enough.

So how do you refresh yourself?
 
How much more proficient would you like to be? Some schools/FBOs will let you take the plane for about an hour every week or two for no charge to stay proficient...just ask.
 
Cessnaflyer said:
It's been close to two years since my initial checkride and now I am begining to feel a little rusty. I've been going through all the PTSs and refreshing myself with the associated FARs and information but it just doesn't seem to be enough.

So how do you refresh yourself?
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Cessnaflyer, i am the same boat. I am coming up on two years since I walked out of the FSDO for the first time.

A co-worker and I were thinking about putting aside some time each week, just to get back up to that level of rote memorization. :)

At the same time though, we are active full time guys so maybe that rote bull fell a way for a reason.
 
mojo6911 said:
I feel that I am more knowledgeable now than when I took the checkride at the FSDO in Feb. 2007. No doubt in my mind.
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Mine was a year ago and I feel the same way.


Is it that you feel rusty on the stuff you don't teach? In that case Im with you. I dont teach much instrument stuff right now so Im always going over that.
 
I just skim through the stuff I have to teach that day and it comes back, after a while I do it enough that I seem to retain enough, its a constant process though
 
Cessnaflyer said:
It's been close to two years since my initial checkride and now I am beginning to feel a little rusty. I've been going through all the PTSs and refreshing myself with the associated FARs and information but it just doesn't seem to be enough.

So how do you refresh yourself?
Click to expand...

Here is an interesting alternative to real flying and it might sound completely ridiculous, but take up remote control flying. Those models are subject to all the same aerodynamic factors as your larger plane, it won't help out your stick and rudder skills in a real aircraft. However, seeing what your actions on the control surfaces do to the aircraft can give you an interesting outside in orientation when you do fly again.

Remote control is actually how I started flying and to this day I still discover random things while flying RC. For instance I picked up tailwheel flying recently and found that the knowledge I learned on how to takeoff a tailwheel helped me taking off my little RC aircraft in a smoother fashion. Had I only spent a couple hours reading a book and then practicing it with my RC plane before hand I might have saved myself some dollars.

All you will have to do is be able to associate your fingers moving the controls in the RC to what is actually happening and then correlate that with the same stick/rudder movement in your real aircraft. Note: This won't work much for instrument or any larger aircraft, it will only give you a practical look at whats happening each time you do things in your real aircraft for visual "seat of your pants" flying.

Good luck
 
escapepilot said:
How much more proficient would you like to be? Some schools/FBOs will let you take the plane for about an hour every week or two for no charge to stay proficient...just ask.
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I fly quite a bit I don't worry about that. It's the knowledge part that seems to escape me sometimes.

Douglas said:
Cessnaflyer, i am the same boat. I am coming up on two years since I walked out of the FSDO for the first time.

A co-worker and I were thinking about putting aside some time each week, just to get back up to that level of rote memorization. :)

At the same time though, we are active full time guys so maybe that rote bull fell a way for a reason.
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Yeah it is the same way here. We are both full time and when we aren't flying he is working the line and I help with our contract on the commercial side of the airport.

Sidious said:
Mine was a year ago and I feel the same way.


Is it that you feel rusty on the stuff you don't teach? In that case Im with you. I dont teach much instrument stuff right now so Im always going over that.
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Yeah I was the same way about teaching instruments. I felt rusty but once I got to reading again it was better. I was just hoping for a more efficient way of bringing myself back up to speed.
 
I mostly do it by arguing with other CFI's on the internet about why a localizer signal won't work to drive an RMI.
 
Roger said:
I mostly do it by arguing with other CFI's on the internet about why a localizer signal won't work to drive an RMI.
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Yes it does roger...when the student realizes what he thinks is the RMI is really the HSI. ;)
 
SIUav8er said:
In that case, just read everything you can. I think many of the non airline/industry/union BS on this site is pretty good too.
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I would completely agree. Challenge yourself to bring something up to your Assistant Chief or Chief but be able to back it up with the regs. I didn't get t fly much, long story, but when I had to talk to the chief and I wanted to see what the response was I was ready to back up everything with the regs. Helped me alot, that and teaching 1 month long ground schools.

Now, it's gone.
 
I don't bother.

I'm only partially joking. I stay fairly current simply because I do this full time and have a wide variety of clients as well as teach a few ground schools per year. I'm always reviewing material for private, instrument, aircraft systems, ground school, etc.

However, I don't bother to refresh myself on minutia. That's what POHs and FAR/AIMs are for. I'm not going to waste my time memorizing pointless details that I'll have to look up again later anyway. We have reference books and kneeboard cheat sheets for a reason.



Even so, I know the feeling of feeling "stale." I haven't taken a checkride since my MEI ride more than two years ago and my last "real" checkride was six months before that (multi commercial add-on). I feel like I need a challenge.

That's why I decided to save up my pennies and do my ATP next fall. Then I'll probably wait a year or two and do my glider commercial add-on. After that I'll wait a while and tack on my CFI-G. Then of course I could do a seaplane add-on. After that...hmm...I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Along the same lines, but a much cheaper option, would be to take a CFI ride with the FSDO to renew your certificates every year or two. It's free and even if you fail, that doesn't mean your current certificates get revoked. It just means you have to rent the plane for another hour or two later to retest, or else put up with 16 hours of classroom training through a FIRC ;)

I knew a career CFI and aerobatic pilot who always renewed via checkride. He said he and the FSDO inspector were friends so it was actually fun. Fly around for a while, swap tips, see if they could find a way to stump the other guy, and get a new ticket at the end of the afternoon. Sort of the "ultimate flight review" you might say.
 
Cessnaflyer said:
So what was found with the RMI experiment?
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Well, I don't know about tgrayson's experiment...never heard what came of it. However, I did tune up the VOT at KDAL and set up an RMI bearing pointer in the G1000, and it stuck pointed at 180.
 
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