Historically, I was planning on working on a CFI certificate in 1995-1996. Instead I stopped flying. I never intended to do that, for I love to fly! As I write this section, it is now October of 2000. The first time I went flying this year was on Monday, October 2. By mid-month I completed a extremely thorough (by my request) BFR. On October 25th I completed an IPC (the renamed ICC), including several hours of actual. Now I can use all of my ratings again!
I hope and plan to keep flying and not to let this happen again. What happened to my flying could all too easily happen to someone else's flying, or even enjoyment of something they like to do. I've written a piece on why I stopped flying to better understand how this could happen.
As of August 25, 2002 I completed the checkride to add Multi-Engine privliges to my Commercial Instrument rating. My checkride for the multi rating was going to be in late July. That was delayed until August 12th due to a combination of airplane problems and EAA Oshkosh getting in the way. Then the weather intereved and I had to wait almost three weeks before taking the ride. Unfortunate that -- I was planning on taking a trip in late August; sitting around for the checkride and remaining proficient took all my flying time. The end of the month arrived far too soon for my liking.
I planned on taking a break from "serious" flying for a while, to get a Tail-wheel endorsement in a Citabria. That went well and as of September 16, 2002, I have a I was going to take a longer break before After taking a break of a month or month and a half I plan on digging into my CFI rating. I hope to finish that by the end of 2002, and perhaps complete a CFII in early 2003.
As of Summer 2003 ... well I did start working on my CFI in fall 2002 after the tail wheel endorsement. I spent way too much time studying for the FOI, Fundamentals Of Instruction, written. Starting flying from the right seat. Put together and taught and tried to fly my first lesson plans. Pre-flight briefings that take an hour are a bit excessive :) Unfortunately work (how that seems to come up often) started intruding into my flying ... and so I stopped flying briefly. I actually managed to fly once every 2-3 months, but work on the CFI stopped. Fortunately, I started spending the time studying the FOI again in May, and I also started flying from the right seat again. So far I passed the FOI, and have done a fair amount of right seat flying. I've also improved the lesson plans and pre-flight briefings quite bit from my earlier attempts. I've also started learning to "fly the airplane with words" instead of with my hands .. the one thing that flying as an instructor is all about. That is going well, I think, and things are on track. I passed both the CFI and AGI writtens on October 15th, after a slight delay due to our annual blitz-trinken festival keeping me from studying. Sometime this fall, probably mid-October is what I'm guessing as of mid-August. Could be sooner, but I want to put a lot of effort into the CFI and take the checkride once.
As of November 13, 2003, I took my CFI ride and now have a flight instructor certificate for airplanes! I am quite pleased, I passed on the first check-ride. I'm slowly gearing up to start work on my CFII, and hope to finish that up sometime on January or February 2004. I don't know how much the holidays will interfere with studying and flying yet. Hopefully I can get the written complete before the Christmas season rolls around and destroys my study habits :) A few days later I submitted my paperwork to the FAA for my AGI, Advanced Ground Instructor, rating.
My CFII is taking a bit longer than I thought. Mostly it was running out of time to study. I was working a lot to catch up work from working on my CFI, get new projects, rolling, etc. Unfortunatly studying assiduously after working all day and being dead tired is not very productive. I finally forced myself to stop flying and force myself to leave work, and to study on the weekends ... and I finished studying and took the CFII and IGI writtens on April 13th 2004. I was waiting around 2-3 weeks to take my checkride. I cancelled the first date because I wasn't getting any sleep and resembled a zombie more than a flight instructor. Fortunately I managed to get some sleep and took my CFII checkride on Monday May 3, 2004. After taking the checkride I called my first student to make arrangements to fly with him -- there are far more people who want to do IFR ratings and IPCs than there are people looking to do VFR ratings and BFRs. I was a bit burned out doing this rating. I think I really over-trained on the flying for it due to the knowledge studying taking so long. It is great though, I fly actual IFR from the right seat as well as I do from the left.
The DE, Designated Examiner whom I took the CFII ride from made me think a lot about my knowledge-based lesson plans. I think I have been over-doing those. He pointed out that they were technically correct, but really overwhelming the student with knowledge they may not need. This has me re-thinking my plans a bit.... put the "how to use knowledge" first, and then save the technical details to explain it later. More of a top-down approach than a bottom-up approach.
What's next? Well, I'd like to finish off the Airplane CFI ratings with an MEI. I have enough hours now to rent and fly the twins at WI Aviation, and working on my MEI may get me enough hours to let me start instructing too. I may already have a student lined up, which may help with this. Fortunately the MEI is all flying and lesson plans and such, so will not be as time intensive as the other two Instructor ratings.
Hmmm, my instrument students seem to have dried up now that I can actually fly with them for ratings and IPCs. :( So, I'm going to start work on my MEI (Multi-Engine Instructor) rating while that situation resolves itself. If I can get that done I'll be set to instruct in almost any airplane. I'm hoping to finish that up by mid-June, and hopefully some of my IFR students will re-appear soon!
Well, as of June 16th I'm sitting around waiting to take my MEI check-ride. I'm hoping to do that next week. Want to polish my ME lesson plans a bit, get a few more short field landings in, but I'm pretty much ready to go.
I passed me MEI checkride on June 22nd 2004. Yay Bolo! I'm quite happy on that one, worked hard, though most of it seemed to be getting rid of rust in flying the Seneca-II -- with added refinements on the existing manuevers for the MEI. It was a big help that my original multi instructor also taught me the drag demo as a manuever, even though it wasn't needed for the Commerical Multi rating. Nothing new to do flying, refinements and improvements to existing techniques.
Now I have all the instructor ratings, which is good! I also have a lead on a one or two new students (one Primary, one Commercial) that I may be able to take on. Also talked to another instructor who wants to tag team some people, to get them flying again, which would work great for me.