You Know You're a CFI When...

ProudPilot

Aeronautics Geek
I did a search, but couldn't find it. I think I posted this years ago, but I had this list hanging in my office for a long time. Thought I'd share again.

You Know You’re a CFI When:

1. Your headset and sunglasses are worth more than your car.

2. You utter phrases like "more right rudder", "is the nose yawing?", and "are you trimmed?" in your sleep.

3. You no longer greet the sound of the stall warning horn during engine failure practice with panic, but rather with a resigned sigh, quick, methodical instructions for recovery, and the words "let's try that one again" in your most encouraging voice.

4. Your diet consists of: coffee, PB&J, cereal, rice, coffee.

5. You fly every day and haven't logged a landing in 70+ days.

6. You wonder every day if you were this dense during your training.

7. The phrases "GRABCARD", "TOMATO FLAMES", "FLAPS", "ANDS", "UNOS", and countless others mean anything to you, and may come up in daily conversation.

8. You have (arguably, I know) the most (NOT monetarily) rewarding job in aviation.

9. You try to add your CFI number to your signature on checks, forms, and anything else you sign your name to.

10. You tell people what you do and they ask you if you can fly airplanes.

11. You've logged more than 70+ hours but only flown about 3.

12. You start telling you're driving with to start to rotate once they get to 60mph on the freeway.

13. Tower requests you by name to respond to his last call.

14. While your student is doing his preflight, your preflight is simply "how much oil do we have" as you walk around with him.

15. You don't panic when you beginning veering towards the tower on takeoff, you simply mutter "my controls" and correct for it.

16. You are suspicious of the piloting abilities of everyone you fly with, even if they're not students.

17. You expect every landing to be a train-wreck.

18. You tell people your age and they think you're joking because they have children older than you.

19. The FSDO FAA guys quiz you on every FAR they can think of on the spot when you only came in to pick up an 8710.

20. The airport refuelers are surprised to see that you're at the airport more than they are.

21. Riding shotgun in a car makes you nervous because you don't have your own set of controls.

22. You got to log the massive amount of 5 hours in December.

23. ATC is about to chew out your student when the controller pauses for a second, then asks if you are on board.

24. Your phone book has multiple facility numbers in it, not to the admin office, to the tower cab, sup's desk, or QA office.

25. You're the first one at the school in the morning and the last one out at night, every night.

26. Your local airport invites you to the dedication of their new CFI bench.

27. Someone makes a movie about your airport and you are inadvertently in it, twice.

28. You leave for a year, come back, and on your checkout flight know exactly what mistakes you are going to make, how to correct them, and proceed to make them anyways.

29. When your overloaded instrument student begs for help and you touch the controls, the rain stops, the clouds part, the turbulence smoothes, the controllers clear you direct, and your student hears a halleluiah chorus.

30. After landing from long cross-country flight after a last-minute aircraft change, an astute ground controller notices the plane moving doesn't match the call sign he cleared. You and the aircraft owner both realized you've used the wrong call sign all day.

31. You can convince avionics to start working again.

32. Same with engines.

33. "lets look that up together"

34. In regards to flight controls, you know the meaning of a "hostile take over".

35. Leaving the practice area or the pattern is an adventure again.

36. You've pulled back on your car's wheel when you are about to hit an unseen pot hole.

37. When you and your fellow CFIs go out for beer, all your story's start out "No $%%%, there I was..."

38. You tell your significant other over dinner that three people tried to kill you today and they are neither concerned nor interested in hearing the story.

39. You "balance" your logbook more than you balance your checkbook.

40. You forget what it's like in the left seat.

41. You have checklists for five completely different aircraft memorized.

42. Putting the G1000 is reversionary mode totally messes up your scan.

43. Despite not being an airline pilot, you are proficient at flying a sim.

44. You find yourself saying, "Eh, I've seen worse landings," at least five times a day.

45. You get a traffic alert from your own return at least twice a day.

46. You notice the transponder wasn't set to ALT before takeoff, but let Tower put the fear of God in your student rather than flipping the switch.

47. You say here let me show you one, not because you really want to show them, but because you just miss having your hands on the controls.

48. Your preflight consist of fuel and oil yet you can recite the preflight checklist verbatim at request.

49. When the controller says have a goodnight you say we'll see you later.

50. You have specific cross country locations that you like to go to on specific days of the week because of the FBO staff that will be there.

51. You've done steep turns so many times you sometime show off to students by entering/maintain the steep turn with nothing but rudder and trim

52. Each airplane in your fleet flies nearly identical to another one, but to your students hate flying a different tail # of the same type because "it handles funny"

53. Your student asks you a question whose answer you don't know, but the student never realizes that due to the "Let's look it up together" technique.

54. You advise your students of exactly which mistakes they will make, and are not in the least surprised when they make them anyway.

55. You think of practical jokes like replacing hoods with the cones that the vet puts on your dog's neck, installing buttons labeled "Freeze" (a la Frasca Mentor) in the airplanes, or filling a co-worker's cubicle with balloons.

56. You recite FAR references like referring to the bible "Well then let's check 91.205(b) to see if we need it and then lets check 91.213(d) to see what we need to do about it if it's broken

57. A controller-in-training gives your student an instruction, you tell your student not to do it, and you jump on the radio to say "Verify [correct instruction]."

58. The only times you need more than 3 fingers on the yoke are during takeoff, landing, and when the student is mis-operating the controls to the point where you need to take them.

59. You're no longer welcome in the FBO next door because you eat all their popcorn and drink all their coffee.

60. You know all of the top-of-the-dial AM stations in your area, and where they broadcast from.

61. You've given your number to fifteen people in the last week and none of them are women. Or under 50.

62. Your "diet" plan consists of all your students passing their checkrides and your no longer being able to afford food.

63. Your day off revolves around icing

64. Someone calls when you are busy and you say "I'll call you back in 0.7"

65. You laugh when your student can't find the zero on the transponder because its the button on the other end (and you were waiting for him to do it)

66. In the winter when your left ankle has a permanent burn from the heater and your right ankle is freezing from the leak in the air vent.

67. You draw blank stares when you present your credentials at Educator Discount Sales.

68. The day before a checkride you have an impromptu landing competition with your student and they win

69. You can do a touch and go without the nose wheel ever touching down

70. You've driven down the street late at night straddling the yellow line

71. You think about keeping the cup from your local fast food joint cuz of the free refills

72. You have a folded up approach plate in your wallet instead of money

73. You always do your simulated engine out over a closed airport or dirt strip, yet the student loves to pick a tiny field with power lines

74. You have several hundred hours of multi time, and most of it was spent with one engine idling and a scanty few knots away from a Vmc roll.

75. Your book of lesson plans that you spent weeks working on has only been used once, and even that was just for a quick confirmation

76. Your students think you're lying when they ask you a question that you don't know the answer to

77. You can't count flight instructing as a source of income because your pay on a monthly basis is so sporadic

78. Part of your routine when you get to the airport is to misplace or disable something to see if your student catches it

79. The idea of a Christmas bonus has long been abandoned by your subconscious

80. You are happy to miss lunch if it means squeezing in one more student

81. You've sent in video clips of a few of your lessons to The Discovery Channel to try to get them to have a new version of "The Deadliest Jobs"

82. You drive and think because you’re a CFI you know what the hell is going on and everyone else is clueless.

83. Bets are paid not in money, but in food.

84. You go somewhere with an intercom (bank, fast food) and say standby, affirm, say again?

85. You go to a bowling alley and get a kick out of entering a flight plan into the computer.

86. You love teaching instrument students rather than visual because the hobbs always seems to be faster that way.

87. When you know the airports, their patterns, and their freqs around you better than the local street names.

88. You are slightly confused when you see a semi-truck with a single green light on the left side of his trailer...

89. You find yourself flying the plane with one hand, tracking a VOR radial, sketching a holding pattern with the other hand, while discussing holding pattern entries with your student, at night, in IMC...and it doesn't seem unnatural.

90. You're happy when your students solo but also depressed that your paycheck is about to decrease accordingly.

91. You stop for lunch with a student and still get a Mountain Dew and Snickers.

92. You get excited because your student is as excited about the lesson as you are.

93. You have ever gotten into your car in the passenger’s side door to go drive somewhere.

94. When your ears function as a VSI.

95. 1/4SM VV001 means it's a beautiful day outside because you get to sleep in.

96. Day 1: (1/4SM VV001) "Sweet, I finally get a day off!"
Day 2: (1/4SM VV001) "Nice"
Day 3: (1/4SM VV001) "Alright I guess"
Day 4: (1/4SM VV001) "Damn, I actually miss flying"
Day 5: (1/4SM VV001) "Okay, this is ridiculous"
Day 6: (1/4SM VV001) "#^*@#%!"
Day 7: (1/4SM VV001) "Mom...dad...I need some money"
Day 8: (Sunny day) "Finally! Let's go fl....what...broken plane? #*^@#%!"

97. When you tell other pilots that you're a flight instructor and they ask you what you're full time job is.

98. When you never feel lost.... you are exactly where you think you are....until you find out you weren't where you thought you were but now know where you are.

99. When newer CFI's at your school tell you they don't know how you made it this long.

100. You go ballistic when someone confuses camber for dihedral

101. You know that it IS possible for a commercial student to get lost on the way to the practice area.

102. Wheel barrowing landings merely inspire resignation and quick verbal correction, not panic.

103. When a student puts you into a spin from a power-on stall, you're more surprised than scared just because it's something that is so different from the routine you've memorized

104. You have to call another CFI because you accidentally scheduled yourself to easily break 8 hours in a day.

105. The typical work day consists of 2 hours of work, a 2 hour break, two hours of work, a two hour break....

106. Your drinking depends on the weather

107. You're dd on weekends because you have to fly at 7am Saturday and Sunday

108. When you fly airplanes so small, questions like "Is that your cell phone vibrating in your pocket?" are in no way scandalous.

109. You have more food in your drawer/locker at the flight school than you do in your apartment.

110. When you google search "ramen recipes"

111. You see an interstate full of car head and tail lights and all you can think is "ha ha suckers" as you fly by.

112. Part of your scan includes the hobbs meter
 
When a student puts you into a spin from a power-on stall, you're more surprised than scared just because it's something that is so different from the routine you've memorized

Suprised? Hell, I saw that coming before we got to the white arc.
 
I enjoyed it as my full time job. Now that I get to do it because I want to, not because I have to. I appreciate it more.
 
I should add something I always told my students:

'Everything, EVERYTHING, is air droppable once'

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 
96. Day 1: (1/4SM VV001) "Sweet, I finally get a day off!"
Day 2: (1/4SM VV001) "Nice"
Day 3: (1/4SM VV001) "Alright I guess"
Day 4: (1/4SM VV001) "Damn, I actually miss flying"
Day 5: (1/4SM VV001) "Okay, this is ridiculous"
Day 6: (1/4SM VV001) "#^*@#%!"
Day 7: (1/4SM VV001) "Mom...dad...I need some money"
Day 8: (Sunny day) "Finally! Let's go fl....what...broken plane? #*^@#%!

This reminds me so much of trying to flight instruct during a Michigan winter.
 
90% of these, I was like WOW have you been following me around?? This is way too true...

10. You tell people what you do and they ask you if you can fly airplanes.

I'm incredibly used to this question/response, but it doesn't get any less annoying each time it gets asked...
 
Yes, this was; http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20130404X55008&key=1

Not fun to watch, the reason I became a CFI.
Since you asked earlier, if I had snippy students, I would sometimes slip the aircraft in cruise to student low and tell them that everything is air droppable once. They would usually reply by trying the same to me, or crying. Really a 50/50 chance at that point.

Ok, so maybe I was a horrible CFI, but at least I made a lot of fun memories, maybe not so much for my students.
 
I found slips fun, power on stalls more of an issue as a student pilot, but just learning to do them quickly helps.

Single engine steep turns were fun, but this was the MEI checkride...
 
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