New Guy

Kevininsimi

Kevininsimi

Active Member
Hi everyone, my name is Kevin and I'm glad to be part of a great community--I've read quite a few interesting discussions and its definitely been helpful.

A bit about me, started flying in May 2012 based at KHND. I took the CFI-A checkride through the Salt Lake FSDO last week. Passed the oral portion (to my amazement) but we had to discontinue due to an airplane problem so I'll be taking the flight portion sometime next week. A bit disappointing but I suppose a discontinuance is better than a disapproval! Any tips on the flight portion of the CFI checkride would be appreciated :-)

Again, glad to be on the forum and I look forward to meeting new people!
 
Welcome to the freak show! This is a great place with a lot of good people who really care about each other's careers and advancement, even if we do like to argue about things a bit :)

The oral is the real work for the CFI initial, so now you can relax a little bit and enjoy the flight but still treat it with a lot of respect. As I am sure you know, the flight is basically a COM SEL check ride from the right seat while you talk a lot. It shouldn't take too long and should be relatively painless. Explain why you are doing what you are doing and explain any errors as teaching tools, "see here I've lost 80' in this steep turn, here's why... blah blah blah". Remember that it's not so much a flight test as it is a functional teaching test. You've already proved you can fly the airplane with smooth precision for the COM ride, now they want you to prove that you can teach while flying. In addition to being able to teach, evaluate, and explain errors for every flight maneuver in the task list, make sure you know as much as possible about every switch, knob, system, and avionic installed in the specific airplane you are using. One thing that threw me for a minute was when the ASI asked me to teach him how to reconfigure the data fields being displayed on the 430W. I fessed up and said that went beyond my working knowledge of that tool as I had never had a need to do so, but I could find out and help him learn it at a later time. He was ok with that but the point he wanted to make is that you're the teacher, so know everything in that airplane inside and out so that you can anticipate and accurately teach while providing value to students and aircraft owners who are relying on your expertise... but when you dont know, dont BS.
 
Thanks for the info! I would have to confess myself, I don't know how to do that with the 430 so I'll be looking around the manual in upcoming days haha. The DPE told me he's going to give me a list of maneuvers for the flight and that I can do them in any order I'd like. He asked me to teach eights-on-pylons on the ground so of course that's something I'll be doing in the flight along with "cardinal maneuvers" which I assume to be stalls, slow flight, lazy eights, etc. The rest he didn't tell me about--it would "spoil the surprise" as he stated. I'll write back as soon as I get it done!
 
Kevininsimi said:
Thanks for the info! I would have to confess myself, I don't know how to do that with the 430 so I'll be looking around the manual in upcoming days haha. The DPE told me he's going to give me a list of maneuvers for the flight and that I can do them in any order I'd like. He asked me to teach eights-on-pylons on the ground so of course that's something I'll be doing in the flight along with "cardinal maneuvers" which I assume to be stalls, slow flight, lazy eights, etc. The rest he didn't tell me about--it would "spoil the surprise" as he stated. I'll write back as soon as I get it done!
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Who are you doing the check with? Kelvin?
 
You already passed the hard part of your CFI exam. Go out and fly the hell out of the plane and you'll be fine. Good luck and welcome!
 
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