Ok.... Now lets talk about CFI school. After my Commercial Single, I took the last written exam... Flight Instructor Airplane (I took the Flight Instructor Instrument and Fundamentals of Instruction writtens ealier). This was a great feeling... no more writtens!
I was originally scheduled for CFI school to begin on Monday, 8/19/2013, at FXE (Ft. Lauderdale). However, two days before leaving, I was told I was going to CRG (Jacksonville, Craig Airport). I assumed this was due to back-ups with scheduling in Lauderdale, as I had heard they were having some issues getting people scheduled for checkrides in a timely manner (remember... for the CFI initial, you are at the mercy of the FAA). In reality, it was because my application had already been input with the FSDO in Ft. Lauderdale and I was assigned an examiner who supposedly has a 100% first time fail rate and is unfair to students. Once you are assigned an examiner, you must go with them unless you apply to a different FSDO (which is why I was then sent to CRG).
I flew down to JAX on 8/18/2013 and met up with the two other guys I shared the rental car with. ATP does provide a rental car for you, however it is shared between 3-5 people. Make sure you get all your names put on it when you pick it up, so that you all can legally drive it.... And drive safe! ATP is too cheap to cover the insurance... And it cost's a minimum of 25.00 per day (Enterprise)... So we drove for three weeks with no insurance!
Luckily, we got to stay in an extended stay hotel for the duration of CFI school. That is not common, as most classes end up in student housing either from the get-go, or they are moved from the hotel to student housing after about a week. The hotel they use in Jax is about 15 minutes from the airport...Not bad at all. It is also close to restaurants, shopping, and the beach... Though we didn't get any free time to go to the beach at all.
Our CFI instructor, Ricardo, was great. Funny guy and knows what he is talking about. Cares about your success and makes himself available to you pretty much all the time. That being said, he does have to follow company procedure. And company procedure for CFI ground instruction is the instructor reading line-by-line off of power point slides for 8-10 hours a day, for the first 4-5 days. It is esentially worthless. Some people can learn like that, but I haven't met many. The slides are copyied and pasted from the Pilots Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (PHAK), Aviation Instructors Handbook (AIH), and Airplane Flying Handbook (AFH). Do yourself a favor in CFI school...read the books (especially the AIH) and take notes from the books while they are doing their power points. It is a complete waste of time to sit there and listen to them read slides for hours on end. That being said, when the instructor did ghet off the slides and actually discuss topics with us, it was good information. Other than that though, I have to say that ATP's "CFI School" is really just a formality so that they can say they provided the required instruction necessary for the student to be eligable to take the exam.
I suggest finding those in you class willing to work late hours and willing to work together and team up. You simply cannot cover all the material on your own. You will be given until Friday of the first week to complete your lesson plans.... We came up with a format we were all happy with, and divided up the sections in the CFI PTS. It took forever... our lesson plans, with notes, are about 400-500 pages long. You can't do it on your own and they are required. Some examiners are big on them while others aren't. But you never know. A lot of people use lesson plans they were given from previous students or their instructors etc... This is fine and a huge help, so long as the lesson plans are OK. A lot of the lesson plans are simply the PTS tasks copied and pasted into lesson plan format (aka backseatpilot.com). That is not a lesson plan.... A lesson plan is simply an outline of what information is going to be covered (without notes included on it). So its more than just a list of PTS tasks (because most tasks willhave multiple talking points), but less than notes. We made our own lesson plans and everyone has had success with them... We did use some notes from backseatpilot.com which I found to be pretty good for the most part, though a bit in depth/long.
After the first week, you are cut loose from formal instruction and are responsibe for studying/teaching on your own and with other students. Stick with the guys willing to work hard and put in late hours. 8am-5pm won't cut it.... Trust me. There is way too much information to be covered. It is extremely daunting. We were typically there from 8 or 9am until sometime between 9pm and 11pm. It sounds •.... and It is. But there's no other way. You have to suck it up and work hard for a couple of weeks to be successful. The guys in our class who would not work with us, and who didn't show up at the school after we were cut loose failed their initials. I am not familiar with how it works at other CFI school locations, but I know at CRG its intense. You will not succeed if you don't work, teach and study like hell. Earnie Strange (DPE) will have a field day with you if you go in for a checkride and aren't prepared.... You will hear a lot of stories about this guy throughout ATP. Many are true.... We saw some checkrides take as long as 7-9 hours.... One took 12.5 hours. These were the guys who were not well prepared, but were somehow able to stumble through it and pass. The guys who were well prepared were all finishing within the 4-6 hour marks. This will be the most intense studying and prep work you ever do. Not trying to scare anyone, just trying to make you aware.
You will start flying during the second week. Two routine seminole flights (from the right seat) and your spin training flight in the C-172. Spins are AWESOME! Most fun I've ever had in an airplane by far! Went up with Tony from flight ops (for any of you familiar with him). He was great...really good pilot and a nice guy....He landed without touching the yoke once. Just trimmed it onto the ground. Again... Spins are amazing. It was a great break from all the studying.
Once you complete all you flights, you will get signed off by the instructors if they believe you are ready (we had three different instructors between ground, spins, and seminole flights). We did have a couple of guys have to buy extra time in the Seminole before they got signed off.... So make sure you spend as much time in the Sim (right seat) as you can practicing.
Advice to make CFI school easier:
1: If you have time before CFI school, READ THE AIH and study FOI's!!! We were so far behind because we had never looked at any of this material... and there is A LOT! If you can start early, you will be way ahead of the game.
2: Start teaching the material/PTS to the other students ASAP. Don't wait until you "know the info" before you start teaching. The best way to learn is to teach. And if you waste too much time reading and taking notes, you will miss out on practicing teaching, which is critical for this checkride.
I ended up having to fly home after three weeks as I had to be back to work by the 9th of Sept and still hadn't been scheduled for a checkride by the 7th (they are very backed up in Florida right now, especially CRG; There are still guys from my class down there...going on their 5th week now). I was fortunate enough that ATP let me take my checkride with the Richmond FSDO and I didn't have to fly back down to Florida on a weekend. I took the ride with an FAA Instector in Richmond on 9/13/2013 (Friday the 13th) and passed the first time through! It was very hard, but I was well prepared. The oral took about 3.5 hours and the flight was just under 2 hours. I am now a CFI-MEL! About a month left and I will finish the program. Can't wait.
Hope this sheds some light on what CFI school is like. Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Take it easy guys!
Mike