Additional Resource from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown

© 2015 Gregory N. Brown • Published by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc. (ASA)

Notes from one pilot’s Initial CFI Checkride

(By A.M.)

[This is not intended to be comprehensive nor representative of every CFI checkride, but it does
provide good insights into what typically happens there.]

Ride with FAA - Aviation Safety Inspector

Ground 7:30 AM - 11:45 AM
45-minute lunch break. 30 minutes for preflight inspection/questions. Flight 1.9 Hours.

Oral Portion
• Examiner verified that I had all the required endorsements.
• Checked my FOI and FI-A test results. [I had scored in the high 90s on both so he just
laughed and said there was nothing for him to do there and handed the reports back to
me.]
• Checked that the aircraft was airworthy - my stickers made it easy to confirm

Questions
• What’s the difference between a 100 hour inspection and an annual inspection?

• Once you have your certificate can you train someone for CFI?
• Where does it say you have to have 200 hours before you can train someone for CFI?
• How do you renew your flight instructor certificate?

• What does PTS stand for? What does that mean? - minimum standards not the goal
• What are the things that are in every PTS? The special emphasis areas. What are some
of those areas?
• Do you have a copy of the PTS? [I forgot my print copy at home but I already had it up
on my laptop.]

• Levels of Learning (rote, understanding, application, correlation) - what level do we train

for?
• What are the stages of teaching (prepare, present, etc.…)
• What are the laws of learning (readiness, primacy, etc…)
• Common defense mechanisms.
• Parts of a lesson plan. [When the ASI called to schedule he told me lesson plans off
the internet were fine, but if I had done that he would have me write a lesson plan from
scratch in front of him. I had researched and written all of my own lesson plans so I
didn’t need to do that.]

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Additional Resource from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown
© 2015 Gregory N. Brown • Published by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc. (ASA)

• How do you teach risk management - I told him I have a lesson using the standard FAA
tools but the main thing I’ll do is demonstrate risk management constantly. He re-
emphasized how important it is to demonstrate risk management and ADM.

Aeromedical factors
• What’s the first thing you tell a prospective pilot to do? If they are serious about flying
tell them to get their Medical, and if they are wanting to be a professional pilot go for
the first class medical.
• How long is a first class medical good for? - looking for answers about how it’s valid for
private pilot privileges just as long as a 3rd class medical is.
• Talked about hypoxia but I can’t remember the scenario that got to that question.
• What are the effects of drugs and alcohol on a pilot?
• Smoking’s effect on a pilot’s ability to see at night.
• Something about what organ is most sensitive to oxygen deprivation??

• Scenario - write out the endorsement that will allow a post solo student to fly to the
practice area to practice. I put in visibility, ceiling and wind limitations. He asked how
would I teach 5000’ ceiling or 10 SM visibility. He didn’t want to hear about getting
the METAR or ATIS - he wanted things like if you can see over the top of the hills the
ceiling is over 3000' or airport to the hills is 4SM.

• Your student is flying solo and has a pilot deviation, what do you do? Who is responsible?
The CFI.
• Wanted to hear the corrective actions and emphasized it is best to call the FSDO
proactively rather than wait for the call. “FAA is here to help”.

• What is a learning plateau? What do you do if/when your student gets to one?
• What would you do if you are training someone that you know should not (or cannot) be
a pilot.

Systems Questions
• Explain the fuel system
• Explain the electrical system
• Explain how the controls work - yoke attached to a rods and cables that adjust the
position of the ailerons

Aerodynamics Questions
• What causes a plane to turn - horizontal component of lift
• Teach me about stalls
• Where do stalls typically start on the wing and why do we want it to start there?
• What’s the last control surface that’s effective in a stall?
• How do you teach slow flight and stalls in the air? He focused on how slow flight is flight
below normal cruise, doesn’t have to be at MCA.
• How would you teach stalls to someone who has never done a stall before? (the flight
portion). I covered and (he re-emphasized) the signs of a stall. I covered (and he re-
emphasized) how stalls can happen at any airspeed or attitude.
• That led into a discussion about accelerated stalls

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Additional Resource from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown
© 2015 Gregory N. Brown • Published by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc. (ASA)

• Effect of CG outside of the W&B envelope - what happens when CG is too far forward
and too far aft.

• How does lift work? How would you explain how lift works to a 16 year old?
• How do you recover from a spin? (be aircraft specific)
• Why do we teach straight and level flight?
• How do you teach straight and level flight in the air? How would you teach it on the
ground?
• Why do we teach turns, climbs and descents?

• Teach me about the national airspace system and VFR weather minimums. Said I’m the
first one that didn’t trip over the Class Golf VFR weather minimums. How would you
explain that to a 16 year old?
• When would you have your students start using a VFR sectional?

• How much time are we required to train a private pilot under the hood? why do we train
them on instrument flying at all?
• He said the hood time for private does count as dual towards an IFR certificate in spite
of me not being a CFII. [This is being heavily debated in our FSDO right now. A legal
interpretation was requested and we’ll see what it says.]

• Teach about instrument flying. (Liked that I immediately went to the board and drew
an AI in full color.) He spent some time telling me some rules of thumb for picking a
pitch for a climb rate based on speed (or climb rate based on speed and pitch). Similar for
descent rate.

• Went through the runway flashcards (because he had to - he said), after the first 3 he
started asking “Do we have to keep doing this?” until I told him no.

• What ground reference maneuver will we definitely be doing?

• What is a chandelle?

— break for lunch —

Flight Portion
• Preflight - explain the structure of the wing - skin, spar, ribs
• What are the different colors of aviation fuel - he brought up fuel types that are used in
WWII planes.
• Asked about the antennas - how do you know these are comm antennas?
• What do you want to look for on a constant speed prop - oil / sign of prop seal leakage
• What’s the spring on the nose gear for?
• What’s this - pointing at the shimmy damper. How would you teach about that?
• What’s this - access panel in front of the stabilator.
• What’s the difference between a stabilator and horizontal stabilizer / elevator.
• Difference between the anti-servo tab (on Arrow) and trim tab (on 172)

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Additional Resource from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown
© 2015 Gregory N. Brown • Published by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc. (ASA)

• What are the - baffles, flywheel for the starter, exhaust and oil cooler exhaust
• What cools the engine

• Preflight brief I briefed the taxi route, fire, failure, loss of control

Start up…
• As we taxi - what would you teach for radio com (who you’re talking to, who you are,
where you are, what you want), how to respond, when you can abbreviate your tail
number, what you acknowledge vs read back vs do not respond at all
• On zulu give him the controls to taxi, he immediately veers away from the centerline. I
take the controls. Talked about instrument checks on taxi.

• When I parked in the runup area I mentioned we park facing the tower. He asked why
so I said 1 - typical winds and cooling and 2- so we can see light gun signals. Since I
mentioned light gun signals he asked me what those were.

• What are you doing when you’re checking the mags?

• What does it mean if there is no RPM drop during a mag check?

Teach and demonstrate

• Soft field takeoff - very nice :)
• Clearing turns first - good thing I remembered.
• Once over 500' he takes the controls and has me put on the foggles to fly under the
hood. We head towards the practice area by Lick. I do the climb out and turns under the
hood as he gives different headings then we level off. Then he puts the plane in unusual
attitudes and has me recover and teach as I recover.

• I teach slow flight, then he takes the controls and I “evaluate”. Then I teach an approach
stall. Then he demonstrated one doing a much slower approach into the stall.
• He demonstrated power on stall by reducing speed to Vr, pitching to 80 and adding
power to induce the stall. I told him I do it simulating attempting a take off at a high
density altitude. He liked that. Another option we discussed was “partial power loss”. We
had covered accelerated stalls on the ground.

• Headed further south, I teach commercial steep turns and barely stayed within spec but I
did teach. He then did one and I critiqued.

• Further south I teach/demonstrate a Lazy 8 and he does one and I critique.

• Emergency descent - teach and perform. Level off.

• Fly further south and he wants to see what I would do if someone freezes at the controls.
He suggested as an option of last resort strike at the person’s neck, their reflex reaction
should be to let go of the controls.
• Lose engine (at 2500ft) - emergency approach to landing over a grass strip airport -
break off once landing was assured
• He demonstrates one - emphasizing being very mellow about it.

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Additional Resource from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown
© 2015 Gregory N. Brown • Published by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc. (ASA)

• 8s on Pylons - I teach/demonstrate.
• He does Turns on a Point and I critique
• What do you teach to do if someone is lost (at 1000') and needs to get back to San Jose?
talked through that scenario = using GPS as one option. VORs if higher, climb, talk to
ATC, etc.

• Head towards a small non-towered airport and teach a soft field landing. He pulls power
on base and asks if we’d make the runway. I didn’t think so but I pitched for best glide
(gear already down and 10 degrees of flaps) and definitely would have made it, then on
short final I get the engine back and have to do/teach a soft field landing.
• Teach short field take off - then give him the controls to teach him a short field landing.
He flies 100' off pattern altitude and I correct him on that. Then on downwind/base and
base/final he gets squirrely. Finally on final I take the controls because at that point the
purpose of the exercise (performing a short field landing) was moot.
• Go around and come back again. This time I teach him through the landing. Have to
make sure he gets across the runway hold short line.
• Do a normal take off - on the takeoff roll he points at the oil pressure gauge and says
“Oil pressure in the red! oil pressure in the red!” I look and say, “No, it’s not.” I was
thinking he was pretending to be a panicky student. He says it again and I realize he’s
simulating oil pressure in the red so I abort take off. Then he has me go ahead and take
off.
• Stay in the pattern, on down wind he says to do a power off 180. Set up and pull power
1000 AGL abeam the numbers and announce a short approach. About 1/3rd of the way
through the arc back to the runway a plane takes the runway to takeoff… I said I wasn’t
sure the plane would be clear before we got there. He says this sort of stuff happens to
CFIs all the time. The plane did clear the runway and I did land well within the 200'
allowed for the power off 180.
• Take off and head back towards home base. He flies and we debrief. He asks how I
thought I did. I didn’t realize he was asking me to critique myself. Then he critiqued me.
On the way back he had me do the radio work and headed to the east of the airport. We
call in right over the usual waypoint (south and east of the airport) and are cleared to
land on 31L. Finally I told him to level off and go more west to approach on the correct
runway. Had to stay on top of the pre-landing checklist. He did a good landing and he
taxies and I do all radio work. We taxi back and park. I kept an eye on him the whole
time and when I was shutting down he reached for the key so I told him no and put the
mixture lean and then turned off the key.
• He watched me secure the aircraft and then announced the ride complete.