Category Image Earl begins a new career as a CFI


Earl starts taking the two-week crash course to become a Certified Flight Instructor at "The Flying School"

After my first two days of CFI training, I'm still drinking from the firehose, but it's all starting to make sense. It's quite a shock to find that those Commercial maneuvers from 1993 aren't too hard to dredge back up out of memory. Flying a Cessna "Chickenhawk" (the name one of my fellow students calls the 172R we fly) is a bit of a change from flying a Pitts, but the old muscle memory is coming back (slowly, admittedly). Muscle memory should have fully returned after another day or two.

Today, a thunderstorm swept in just as we were starting our maneuvers. We zoomed back to the airport and landed into about a 35 knot headwind. Made for very slooooowww groundspeed.

"The Flying School" is a superb place to learn. One student sits in the back seat of the Chickenhawk while the other explains the maneuvers to the instructor. Watching someone else is one of the very best ways to learn. In fact it's such a good method I wonder why it isn't used more for primary students. I could certainly have benefitted from watching someone else learn those early turn, stall, and landing lessons.

Posted: Sunday - July 08, 2007 at 05:53 PM          

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