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My CFI training is finally over! I passed the checkride today and have my temporary certificate in hand!
This checkride has been the worst one I’ve done as far as being worked up for it. The actual test itself wasn’t bad. You definitely need to know your stuff, but if you are prepared, it’s not particularly difficult. Just long.
One thing to remember is that the examiner is not asking you questions to see if you know the answer, but to see if you can teach it. Use the tools at your disposal. Make sure the room you use has a whiteboard and use it. And when you are teaching from the whiteboard, make sure you are facing the examiner when you are talking. My examiner complimented me on doing that and mentioned that a lot of CFI candidates talk to the board. Remember that you are acting as an instructor on this test. Be in command of the information and don’t guess at what you are unsure of. Bring your entire reference library with you. Know where to find everything. When the examiner asks you a question that no one on earth would know off the top of his head, pull out the right book and turn right to it.
One example, I was asked how to fill out the address field on an 8710 if your mailing address is a post office box. That’s not something that I’ve ever had to worry about, but I had read the instructions for the 8710 and remembered seeing something about that. So I picked up the 8710, turned to the instructions and pointed out exactly what you are supposed to do. My examiner liked asking questions that required me to go to the FARs, obviously testing me on my knowledge of where to find things rather than what I had memorized for the test.
The only thing he really corrected me on during the oral was one of the wing diagrams I drew showed the wing from the right side instead of the left side like you normally see it. He wanted everything to be drawn from the standard viewpoint. His point was that when you teach weight and balance it’s easier to show the view of the left side of the plane since positive numbers indicating the distance from the datum are more logically displayed increasing to the right. So you should make all of your airplane drawings from the same view for consistency.
To be prepared for this test you must understand everything you had to know for your private and commercial checkrides, plus your privileges and responsibilities as an instructor. By understand, I mean you need to know the why, not just the what. You will spend far more time studying for this checkride than you have for any checkride before.
As for the flight portion of the checkride, it’s pretty straight forward. Just make sure you can fly every maneuver in the private and commercial PTS from the right seat to commercial standards while explaining exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Anyone who can pass the commercial checkride can do the flying portion of the CFI checkride. You just have to practice from the right seat. It took me about 10-15 hours to get to commercial standards in the right seat (mostly the landings). The difficult part is being able to explain what you’re doing while you’re doing it and understand how to correct the mistakes students will make.
I really think that if I wasn’t so worked up over it being a checkride, it would have actually been fun. But it was a checkride, so “fun” doesn’t really describe it.
I’m just glad it’s over…